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Space: The Final Frontier

Gosh, I hope they keep working on detecting quantum entangled photons. There is like, some crazy type of camera that uses this method to drastically enhance resolution for free. God I need to find that article. But anyway, the eventually pay off will be massively clearly deep space pictures with simple equipment.
 
WeAreStarStuff said:
Still so many years away.....
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the wait definitely sucks (just like with the SLS) but damn, just think about how close it was to getting scrapped. and hey, we'll be seeing some mindblowingly awesome photos by the end of the decade. its a long wait but it'll be more than worth it once we start seeing what it can do
 
Hootie said:
the wait definitely sucks (just like with the SLS) but damn, just think about how close it was to getting scrapped. and hey, we'll be seeing some mindblowingly awesome photos by the end of the decade. its a long wait but it'll be more than worth it once we start seeing what it can do
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I'm incredibly excited for JWST and thrilled that it didn't fall victim to the budget ax last year, but it is the poster-child for terrible management and cost overruns. When it launches, it will be a technical marvel and scientific triumph, but (much like the F-35 program) it has proven to be a drag on other science funding within NASA's budget. It was originally supposed to cost $1.5 billion and launch in 2010. Now it is estimated to cost $6.5 billion (with $8 billion budget cap) and is scheduled to launch in 2017 at the earliest. Regardless of the quality of the science or the mission at hand, this is no way to manage a project (i.e. start by deliberately low balling the cost and than suckle money for the project as it grows in size) and it doesn't help efforts like Penny4NASA when Congress sees behind schedule and over budget projects.
 
Bowdz said:
I'm incredibly excited for JWST and thrilled that it didn't fall victim to the budget ax last year, but it is the poster-child for terrible management and cost overruns. When it launches, it will be a technical marvel and scientific triumph, but (much like the F-35 program) it has proven to be a drag on other science funding within NASA's budget. It was originally supposed to cost $1.5 billion and launch in 2010. Now it is estimated to cost $6.5 billion (with $8 billion budget cap) and is scheduled to launch in 2017 at the earliest. Regardless of the quality of the science or the mission at hand, this is no way to manage a project (i.e. start by deliberately low balling the cost and than suckle money for the project as it grows in size) and it doesn't help efforts like Penny4NASA when Congress sees behind schedule and over budget projects.
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Not that there isn't some genuine bloat, but...

Has a JWST been built before? Ok, obviously not. So you're the guy who budgets it. You take some guesses -- pessimistic guesses, you think, but not too pessimistic (otherwise the project won't get funded at all!). And your guesses, surprise, turn out to be wrong.

This happens all the time in any sort of product planning. The estimation is based on the "happy path", "what it would take if everything went right", because humans are doing the planning, and humans are delusionally optimistic. The more realistic scenarios never hit the radar until they actually happen. There are even silly enterprise rules about this: I work as a software engineer, and my boss once said it was his general practice to multiply all his subordinate engineers' time estimates for how long something was going to take by a certain number. (He didn't tell me the number.)

As a general rule: pushing boundaries == going over budget. Budget can be time, or money, or both. This is expected, and almost always worth it anyway, because progress is worth it.
 
JWST is my most anticipated science event EVER. I hear from it since it was first announced (It was back in the 90's wasn't it? I just know that it was a looong time ago).
 
So I was out trying to view M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) with my 8” Dobsonian Telescope and was looking in the general vicinity of the Andromeda constellation. I noticed an object, looked like a pinhead of light, “fly” across my field of vision. I’ve never seen a satellite with my scope but this thing was moving pretty fast. Also pretty positive it wasn’t a plane, I didn’t notice any blinking lights and I live near an airport, most planes that do fly by are going pretty low.

Most likely it was a satellite but it’s fun to think I saw a UFO.
 
Setre said:
So I was out trying to view M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) with my 8” Dobsonian Telescope and was looking in the general vicinity of the Andromeda constellation. I noticed an object, looked like a pinhead of light, “fly” across my field of vision. I’ve never seen a satellite with my scope but this thing was moving pretty fast. Also pretty positive it wasn’t a plane, I didn’t notice any blinking lights and I live near an airport, most planes that do fly by are going pretty low.

Most likely it was a satellite but it’s fun to think I saw a UFO.
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I've had this happen several times when viewing the heavens with my 'scope. At first I was like "holy shit UFO", but then I was like..errr probably a satellite or military vehicle, haha.
 
Setre said:
So I was out trying to view M31 (the Andromeda Galaxy) with my 8” Dobsonian Telescope and was looking in the general vicinity of the Andromeda constellation. I noticed an object, looked like a pinhead of light, “fly” across my field of vision. I’ve never seen a satellite with my scope but this thing was moving pretty fast. Also pretty positive it wasn’t a plane, I didn’t notice any blinking lights and I live near an airport, most planes that do fly by are going pretty low.

Most likely it was a satellite but it’s fun to think I saw a UFO.
Click to expand...
Heh, I see satellites every now and then in my scope. Always weird. The strangest one I've seen was a very slow moving blinking light. I'm pretty certain it was a rotating satellite on a very eccentric orbit.
 
WeAreStarStuff said:
Warp Drive May Be More Feasible Than Thought, Scientists Say.



HOUSTON — A warp drive to achieve faster-than-light travel — a concept popularized in television's Star Trek — may not be as unrealistic as once thought, scientists say.

A warp drive would manipulate space-time itself to move a starship, taking advantage of a loophole in the laws of physics that prevent anything from moving faster than light. A concept for a real-life warp drive was suggested in 1994 by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, however subsequent calculations found that such a device would require prohibitive amounts of energy.

Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.

An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind.

Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.

"Everything within space is restricted by the speed of light," explained Richard Obousy, president of Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit group of scientists and engineers devoted to pursuing interstellar spaceflight. "But the really cool thing is space-time, the fabric of space, is not limited by the speed of light."

With this concept, the spacecraft would be able to achieve an effective speed of about 10 times the speed of light, all without breaking the cosmic speed limit.

The only problem is, previous studies estimated the warp drive would require a minimum amount of energy about equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter.

But recently White calculated what would happen if the shape of the ring encircling the spacecraft was adjusted into more of a rounded donut, as opposed to a flat ring. He found in that case, the warp drive could be powered by a mass about the size of a spacecraft like the Voyager 1 probe NASA launched in 1977.
Furthermore, if the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time, the energy required is reduced even more, White found.

White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.

They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.

"We're trying to see if we can generate a very tiny instance of this in a tabletop experiment, to try to perturb space-time by one part in 10 million," White said.

More here: http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html

So awesome, I wish I could be alive a few centuries from now....so much I'll never know; so much I'll never see. Though, I suppose every generation feels like this.
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Didn't Wesley already try this?
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_bubble
 
Hubble Telescope Reveals Farthest View Into Universe Ever

hubble-extreme-deep-field.jpg
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It's amazing and sad at the same time. Sad because there is no teleport button and amazing because of all the thoughts that go through your mind looking at this.
 
So my friend informed me a while ago that the Space Shuttle on the Intrepid is a very mediocre exhibit.

First of all, the shuttle there was a test prototype, it never made it into space.
Second of all, you can't go inside and the layout of everything is really bad.
 
WorriedCitizen said:
I believe that's the current scientific understanding of it. Check youtube for some lectures from Lawrence Krauss where he talks about his book "A Universe from Nothing".
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I watched/listened to a couple of these videos again today. I don't know how much of the content is still theoretical, but he's articulate and the ideas he presents are fascinating.

microtubule said:
Hubble Telescope Reveals Farthest View Into Universe Ever

http://i.space.com/images/i/22146/original/hubble-extreme-deep-field.jpg?1348595451

It's amazing and sad at the same time. Sad because there is no teleport button and amazing because of all the thoughts that go through your mind looking at this.
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Absolutely. It's mind-boggling how much is out there and what might be hidden among it.
 
That pic makes me realize once again that knowing there is so much I will never see or learn about the universe is the one and only thought that can manage to depress me. Even the pic is old as hell, since we are viewing the ultra distant past with the whole light travel thing. So much could actually be happening right there and we are completely blind to it since we can't see it in it's present form.

:^)

:^(
 
Has anyone read these two popular college level introductory books on astrophysics?

-Universe, Roger Freedman, Robert Geller, etc
-The Cosmic Perspective, Jeffrey Bennett, Megan Donahue, etc

They both cover the same stuff but I'd like to know opinions.
 
The cost of that project is $8.8 billion. It sounds like a lot, but then you realize we have spent that much 156 times over on the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq.
 
Dice said:
The cost of that project is $8.8 billion. It sounds like a lot, but then you realize we have spent that much 156 times over on the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq.
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It's $8.8bn across 10 years, so that's actually a very small amount compared to other budget spendings.
 
Gorgon said:
Has anyone read these two popular college level introductory books on astrophysics?

-Universe, Roger Freedman, Robert Geller, etc
-The Cosmic Perspective, Jeffrey Bennett, Megan Donahue, etc

They both cover the same stuff but I'd like to know opinions.
Click to expand...

Anyone?
 
Hey guys and girls,

I think it was already asked but I cannot seem to find the answer. Can you guys recommend me a good book about space with a lot of images? Lots of Hubble and such.

A nice big high quality book but still a good read too.

Thanks so much, for this awesome thread and for any advice.


Go James Webb go!!
 
ShinHayase said:
Hey guys and girls,

I think it was already asked but I cannot seem to find the answer. Can you guys recommend me a good book about space with a lot of images? Lots of Hubble and such.

A nice big high quality book but still a good read too.
Click to expand...

Hubble Imaging Space and Time:
"In the spirit of National Geographic’s top-selling Orbit, this large-format, full-color volume stands alone in revealing more than 200 of the most spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope during its lifetime, to the very eve of the 2008 final shuttle mission to the telescope. Written by two of the world’s foremost authorities on space history, Hubble: Imaging Space and Time illuminates the solar system’s workings, the expansion of the universe, the birth and death of stars, the formation of planetary nebulae, the dynamics of galaxies, and the mysterious force known as "dark energy."
 
 
Big Telescopes Reveal the Maelstrom Around a Black Hole

http://galileospendulum.org/2012/09/27/big-telescopes-reveal-the-maelstrom-around-a-black-hole/

Holy shit. A black hole 6.6 billion times the size of the sun. 6.6 billion times.

m87_jet_combined.jpg
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The large image shows the jet streaming from the center of the galaxy M87, in visible light. The inset (in radio light) zooms in on the black hole, and shows the swirling gas around the galaxy’s core. M87 is one of the largest galaxies known, and has the largest-known black hole, estimated around 6.6 billion times the mass of the Sun.
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That is just incredible. If you consider that that image covers less than 1% of the night sky, and each galaxy there may have 200 to 400 billion starts... just... well... you got the idea.

SWEET JESUS.
 
So do I get this right: the universe is a space filled with disc shaped (flat) galaxies floating in arbitrary angles, and fairly uniformly distributed, like atoms of a gas filling a room. And the room is expanding, making the gas less and less dense.
 
Chittagong said:
So do I get this right: the universe is a space filled with disc shaped (flat) galaxies floating in arbitrary angles, and fairly uniformly distributed, like atoms of a gas filling a room. And the room is expanding, making the gas less and less dense.
Click to expand...

Not all the galaxies are "flat" spirals, there are irregular and elliptical galaxies that both come in different types. The "surface" on which the galaxies lay is space-time and this is a curvature, and not analogous to an empty room. This is to say that there is a topology or geometry to the universe that is not "common" to our frame of reference.

Here is some Neil De Grasse Tyson to get the gears spinning some more.
 
Partial Gamification said:
Not all the galaxies are "flat" spirals, there are irregular and elliptical galaxies that both come in different types. The "surface" on which the galaxies lay is space-time and this is a curvature, and not analogous to an empty room. This is to say that there is a topology or geometry to the universe that is not "common" to our frame of reference.

Here is some Neil De Grasse Tyson to get the gears spinning some more.
Click to expand...

Also, they are not evenly distributed, they are organized (to a certain extent) into clusters and superclusters.
 
Partial Gamification said:
Not all the galaxies are "flat" spirals, there are irregular and elliptical galaxies that both come in different types. The "surface" on which the galaxies lay is space-time and this is a curvature, and not analogous to an empty room. This is to say that there is a topology or geometry to the universe that is not "common" to our frame of reference.

Here is some Neil De Grasse Tyson to get the gears spinning some more.
Click to expand...

That is mindboggling. A great video though, love how he explains it. To me it makes perfect sense that the total energy is zero, any other number would have been arbitrary and would have required some exotic explanations about how stuff became to be. But I must say that I struggle to grasp the shape of spacetime, other than using the stretching balloon analogy, in case the gas analogy is inaccurate.

clusters and superclusters - if you zoomed back enough though, wouldn't they eventually seem evenly distributed too? Meaning that there is no centre etc.
 
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