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Space: The Final Frontier

E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
duderon said:
The back looks much more inspiring than the front. It's hard to believe that the general public may be traveling in (sub-orbital) space in a short amount of time. Incredible stuff.
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What's the main purpose of this (commercially)? Is it actual travel, as in from one destination on the globe to another, or just for sightseeing/experience?
 
T

Teknoman

Member
Extollere said:
What's the main purpose of this (commercially)? Is it actual travel, as in from one destination on the globe to another, or just for sightseeing/experience?
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So far, it seems like just the experience.
 
G

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
200C 'WaterWorld' found 40 light years away - may be most earth-like exoplanet found to date

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo..._Outside_The_Solar_System_40_Light_Years_Away

Astronomers have discovered a new "waterworld" 40 light years away, raising the chances of the existence of Earth-like planets.
Evidence suggests it has an atmosphere, and astronomers believe it to be more like Earth than any planet found outside the Solar System so far.

Although the planet is thought to be too hot to sustain Earth-type life, it is believed to consist of 75% water.

Planet GJ1214b is six times bigger than Earth and was discovered orbiting a small faint star 1.3 million miles away.

Although its red dwarf parent star is 3,000 times less bright than the Sun, it hugs the star so closely that its surface temperature is an oven-hot 200C.
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He said some of the planet's water should be in the form of exotic materials such as Ice Seven - a crystalline form of water that exists at pressures greater than 20,000 times the Earth's sea-level atmosphere.

Scientists want to turn the Hubble Space Telescope towards the planet to allow astronomers to discover its composition.

Dr David Charbonneau, also from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre, said: "Since this planet is so close to Earth, Hubble should be able to detect the atmosphere and determine what it's made of.
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Getting closer... cannot wait for the day when we can detect planets our own size more easily, and can start scanning the skies on a mass scale. The finding of the first confirmed really earth-like planet will be an incredible milestone. To know there is a planet very like our own out there - whatever about life - will be mindblowing on its own.
 
M

Memphis Reigns

Member
gofreak said:
200C 'WaterWorld' found 40 light years away - may be most earth-like exoplanet found to date

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo..._Outside_The_Solar_System_40_Light_Years_Away






Getting closer... cannot wait for the day when we can detect planets our own size more easily, and can start scanning the skies on a mass scale. The finding of the first confirmed really earth-like planet will be an incredible milestone. To know there is a planet very like our own out there - whatever about life - will be mindblowing on its own.
Click to expand...

A lot of astronomers think that this day will be in our lifetimes. I feel lucky to live in an age where we are starting to explore space. I would feel even luckier to live in an age that found another Earth-like planet, and possibly other life.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HAPPEN!
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
gofreak said:
Getting closer... cannot wait for the day when we can detect planets our own size more easily, and can start scanning the skies on a mass scale. The finding of the first confirmed really earth-like planet will be an incredible milestone. To know there is a planet very like our own out there - whatever about life - will be mindblowing on its own.
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Yeah it's exciting. However if we do find planets close by similar to Earth, and if we can deduce that those planets harbor life, we might as well also deduce that such planets are inhabited by lifeforms less advanced than we. I'd imagine that if intelligent life were on those planets we'd be the ones being discovered by them. Since it isn't so (unless you're a crazy person), I think we'd be lucky to find planets that have similar atmospheres or temperatures. And crazy lucky if they had some kind of bacteria or plant life.
 
M

McNei1y

Member
Anything can happen. Exploring space is risky because, like you said, we could be the ones being found. Something could be watching us!

I don't mind though. Id rather us find something very similar to our planet sometime in this lifetime whether its a young planet or a planet with age that harbors bacteria or intelligent life... I just want to find something to know that we are on our way.

This water planet sounds awesome.
 
L

lupin23rd

Member
gofreak said:
200C 'WaterWorld' found 40 light years away - may be most earth-like exoplanet found to date

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wo..._Outside_The_Solar_System_40_Light_Years_Away

Getting closer... cannot wait for the day when we can detect planets our own size more easily, and can start scanning the skies on a mass scale. The finding of the first confirmed really earth-like planet will be an incredible milestone. To know there is a planet very like our own out there - whatever about life - will be mindblowing on its own.
Click to expand...

I hope the Japanese get here first and turn this place into an amazing hot spring resort.
 
W

Walshicus

Member
1.jpg

Light reflecting off the sea "Ligeia Mare", on Titan.
 
D

DarkKyo

Member
Do you guys know of any sweet high res universe image screensavers? I want my monitor to traverse the stars when I step away.
 
W

WillyFive

Member
Opportunity found a rock!

1262877982_7818-2_Sol2117B_P2548_L456.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-1CS3Lw0Y0&feature=sub

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity examined a rock called "Marquette Island" from mid-November 2009 until mid-January 2010. Studies of texture and composition suggest that this rock, not much bigger than a basketball, originated deep inside the Martian crust. A crater-digging impact could have excavated the rock and thrown it a long distance, to where Opportunity found it along the rover's long trek across the Meridiani plain toward Endeavour Crater.
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N

nemesun

Member
I thought this article was quite intriguing:
Why hasn't ET made contact yet?
The scientist is most famous for the equation that bears his name.

Drake's Equation is an attempt to express the potential number of intelligent civilizations that might exist in the Milky Way.

The number is dependent on several factors, such as the scale of star formation, the presence of planets around those stars that might harbour life capable of sophisticated communication, and the length of time over which any evolved species would be able to get in touch.

Remember, although we've existed as a species for at least 200,000 years, it's only in the last 100 years that we've developed the technology necessary to send messages into space.

Seti Allen antenna.jpgThere are a lot of assumptions in this game but when Drake plugs numbers he describes as conservative into his own equation, he comes out with a figure of 10,000 civilizations.

It sounds a lot until you consider there are at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way.
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Talking with Drake today, he also raises another complicating factor:

"In searching for extraterrestrial life, we are both guided and hindered by our own experience. We have to use ourselves as a model for what a technological civilisation must be, and this gives us guidance for what technologies might be present in the Universe.

"At the same time, this limits us because we are well aware that all the technologies that might be invented have not been invented; and in using ourselves as a model, we may not be paying attention to alternatives, as yet undiscovered and as yet unappreciated by us."
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In other words, we've been listening for extraterrestrials' radio signals but this may not be how they're trying to announce their presence.

It's one of the reasons why Seti, in the last few years, has also started to look for the optical flashes that might originate from powerful alien lasers systems.

Alien landscape.jpgDrake highlights another fascinating issue - and that is that we ourselves are becoming invisible to the extraterrestrials searching for us.

The signals emanating from Earth most likely to reach distant civilisations are our TV broadcasts. But the switchover from analogue to digital television means "our voice" is being diminished.

Part of this is down to the TV satellites which deliver targeted beams to the Earth's surface; and also to cable TV which runs direct to the home underground. Both don't "bleed" as much into space as the old high-power analogue TV transmitters; and the digital signal itself requires a good deal more sophistication to interpret it.

Drake says this may mean in future we have to establish a dedicated system of beacons to broadcast our presence.

"There are people who're saying we should be running a beacon - a simple message that we send to one star after another, pointing out that we exist.

"When you think about that, you quickly reach the conclusion that there should be two beacons - one that's easy to detect and has only the information on it that tells you what radio frequency you should tune to to get the other beacon with a great deal more information.

"Right now, we don't have to do this because we're sending all this information through our television, but when the Earth goes quiet it makes much more sense."
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B

bone idle

Member
nemesun said:
I thought this article was quite intriguing,
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Is Frank Drake now advocating METI/Active SETI? I seem to remember him being more cautious about the wisdom of setting up beacons.

Here's David Brin's essay on the subject:Shouting at the Cosmos

David Brin said:
Let there be no mistake. METI is a very different thing than passively sifting for signals from the outer space. Carl Sagan, one of the greatest SETI supporters and a deep believer in the notion of altruistic alien civilizations, called such a move deeply unwise and immature. (Even Frank Drake, who famously sent the "Arecibo Message" toward the Andromeda Galaxy in 1974, considered "Active SETI" to be, at best, a stunt and generally a waste of time.)

Sagan — along with early SETI pioneer Philip Morrison — recommended that the newest children in a strange and uncertain cosmos should listen quietly for a long time, patiently learning about the universe and comparing notes, before shouting into an unknown jungle that we do not understand.
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S

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
In other words, we've been listening for extraterrestrials' radio signals but this may not be how they're trying to announce their presence.
Click to expand...
Pretty much it. The whole "we're looking through the wrong end of the telescope" argument whereby science and astronomy need to think outside of the circle of knowledge that humans have produced.
 
N

nemesun

Member
bone idle said:
Is Frank Drake now advocating METI/Active SETI? I seem to remember him being more cautious about the wisdom of setting up beacons.

Here's David Brin's essay on the subject:Shouting at the Cosmos
Click to expand...

I think over the years he has changed his stance on many of the notions that he advocated early on in his career. sometimes an idea outlives the technology; but in this case, as scientists/engineers made gigantic strides in the communication field, the technology itself became ever more sophisticated. some of his more prominent concepts of how and what we should use to make contact with outside world/s became outdated, and he understood that times are changing and what they thought 40 odd years ago as a de facto, no longer was. at least that's my take.
 
S

Shanadeus

Banned
Calling out into the great unknowns on the hopes that whatever civilazition hears it will be benign is more than unwise, it's just stupid.
Not to apply any human reasons to any pootential alien lifeforms, but since we ourselves can come up with a number of concievable reasons for them to be hostile; it is certainly a possibility that giving out our exact location in space might have a disastrous outcome.
 
N

nemesun

Member
We will find 'twins of Earth' this year, says astronomer Michel Mayor

Scientists will have detected the first truly Earth-like planet outside the solar system by the end of the year, one of the world’s leading astronomers predicted yesterday.

Professor Michel Mayor, of Geneva University, who led the team that discovered the first extrasolar planet (or exoplanet) in 1995, said he was confident that a planet of a similar size and composition to Earth would be found in the near future.

Addressing a Royal Society conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programme, he said: “The search for twins of Earth is motivated by the ultimate prospect of finding sites with favourable conditions for the development of life. We’ve entered a new phase in this search.”

He told the audience, which included representatives from Nasa, the European Space Agency and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, that dramatic technological progress over the past 15 years had led to the discovery of more than 400 exoplanets orbiting stars similar to the Sun.

However, very few if any of the the planets discovered so far are likely to be viable candidates for incubating life, as most of them are too large. Very large planets are likely to have very active tectonic plates, making for a highly turbulent environment. To date, the smallest exoplanet found is 1.7 times the mass of the Earth.

A further condition for a planet to be habitable is that it orbits its star at such a distance that its water would be liquid. “If the planet’s too close, it will be blazing hot and all the water will evaporate and if it’s too far away, it will be ice,” Professor Mayor said.

He said that Nasa’s Kepler spacecraft, which is carrying the largest telescope to have been sent beyond the Earth’s orbit, will be the first to find a planet that meets both these criteria. The telescope, which has been in orbit around the Sun since March last year, is focused on a dense star field in the Orion spiral arm of the Milky Way. Monitoring more than 100,000 stars every half-hour for three years, it is looking for variations in the brightness of stars caused by planets as small as Earth passing in front of them.

Within about four years Kepler is likely to have found planets of the same size as Earth that are also in the “habitable zone”.

Professor Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University, also spoke. “When I was a student, I couldn’t find anyone who took the idea of life elsewhere in the Universe seriously. Now it’s pretty much the party line in the scientific community. A big part of that has been the discovery of extrasolar planets,” he said.
Click to expand...
 
D

DarkKyo

Member
Shanadeus said:
Calling out into the great unknowns on the hopes that whatever civilazition hears it will be benign is more than unwise, it's just stupid.
Not to apply any human reasons to any pootential alien lifeforms, but since we ourselves can come up with a number of concievable reasons for them to be hostile; it is certainly a possibility that giving out our exact location in space might have a disastrous outcome.
Click to expand...
It's unlikely hostiles would spend the endless amounts of time and energy that is needed to travel to a monkey planet that may or may not have anything they actually need(that they can't get from closer locations). Anything that is sophisticated enough to travel that far through the universe would be far more logical, I think.
 
F

fanboi

Banned
Dechaios said:
It's unlikely hostiles would spend the endless amounts of time and energy that is needed to travel to a monkey planet that may or may not have anything they actually need(that they can't get from closer locations). Anything that is sophisticated enough to travel that far through the universe would be far more logical, I think.
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Wait.

Will Smith post on this forum?!
Welcome to GRAF!
 
N

nemesun

Member
Dechaios said:
It's unlikely hostiles would spend the endless amounts of time and energy that is needed to travel to a monkey planet that may or may not have anything they actually need(that they can't get from closer locations). Anything that is sophisticated enough to travel that far through the universe would be far more logical, I think.
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But what if they crave alien flesh? I sometimes wonder what a Chewbacca would taste like! I certainly would make a thousand lights trip just for a quick bite. McDonald should invest in space technology if you ask me.
 
I_D

I_D

Member
Willy105 said:
Opportunity found a rock!

1262877982_7818-2_Sol2117B_P2548_L456.jpg
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What's the circle on it?

Dechaios said:
It's unlikely hostiles would spend the endless amounts of time and energy that is needed to travel to a monkey planet that may or may not have anything they actually need(that they can't get from closer locations). Anything that is sophisticated enough to travel that far through the universe would be far more logical, I think.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't the opportunity to meet an alien species be enough?
I'm sure other races out there have just as many "where did we come from?" and "are we alone out here?" questions as we do, so meeting another intelligent life would be a major event.

As far as violence is concerned, I'd like to think humans are intelligent enough not to start firing unless fired upon. Hopefully aliens would be the same way.
 
Y

yoopoo

Banned
Chittagong said:
Amazing new shot from Mars via NASA / Discover magazine, on formations that look eerily like trees

1876712-mars400.jpg
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Hi-res image here http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100119.html

Explanation: They might look like trees on Mars, but they're not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The above image was taken in 2008 April near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice. When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks -- streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows. Objects about 25 centimeters across are resolved on this image spanning about one kilometer. Close ups of some parts of this image show billowing plumes indicating that the sand slides were occurring even when the image was being taken.
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Melchiah

Melchiah

Member
Insane Metal

Insane Metal

Member
Willy105 said:
Is the white dot it? Was it added before or after? Because if the dot is the 'ship', it doesn't look like a ship, just a dot. And if it was added after, then it's in the way of the 'ship'.
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The DOT IS THE COMET. The X is what they can't quite explain. Yet.
 
Y

yencid

Member
Willy105 said:
Is the white dot it? Was it added before or after? Because if the dot is the 'ship', it doesn't look like a ship, just a dot. And if it was added after, then it's in the way of the 'ship'.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure its not the white dot that they are referring to. :lol
 
G

GONz

Member
Some of the pictures in this thread should just be framed and put in museums, or printed in huge size and displayed on buildings' façade, instead of ads... While some graphics (notably the ones on the probes shown a few pages ago) are cool enough to be some kind of pop-art or album covers :lol

OTOH, mind assplode facing the mysteries of the universe
 
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