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Space: The Final Frontier

E

Escape Goat

Member
CabbageRed said:
He thinks our atmosphere is a miniature soap bubble. This means that not only is his grasp on reality unstable, but that--by his own admission--he is a member of an alien race of staggering enormity. And you want to question him?
Click to expand...


Of course not. Its just that my simple human brain cannot process such alien concepts.
 
C

CabbageRed

Member
Teh Hamburglar said:
Of course not. Its just that my simple human brain cannot process such alien concepts.
Click to expand...

When we wax poetic, we stand at the cusp of revelation, breath in the fruit of knowledge, and dive deep past the sky and clouds. It is here that we, plucking majesty from each branch of this arid desert we call 'the ocean,' hope to hide from those who expect our words to have meaning.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Teh Hamburglar said:
What do you mean by 'alien'? How can something be alien if its indigenous to the planet.
Click to expand...

I meant we speak in foreign tongues compared to each other. Different languages. You might speak English, another person might speak Romanian or so on. Compared to the universe our form of language is alien. It's not likely that there is another planet out there with life of it's own speaking in English, or even using compressed airwaves as a form of audible communication. Those life forms, if they exist, would use communication entirely alien to us, as ours would be to them.

Edit: :lol Cabbage.
 
T

TheFatOne

Member
Instead of making a new thread I decided to make a request in this one. I want to learn more about astronomy and astrophysics, but I am unsure where I should start. If anyone could provide links etc.. I would appreciate it.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
CharlieDigital said:
Reminds me of one of my favorite images of Earth:

ISS-view-shuttle-2.jpg


To me, it looks like the tendril of a microorganism reaching out into the abyss to probe the surroundings (well, in the case of an amoeba, it's for food).
Click to expand...


What's crazy about this picture is how much it reminds me how low orbiting they really are. I can't wait until they start putting humans into LEO of other planets!
 
N

Neverender

Member
TekkenMaster said:
So....

What are the chances of any of us on this forum standing on the moon someday? (as a tourist)?
Click to expand...

Not impossible but I doubt it. I'd just be happy to see anyone back on the moon in my lifetime =/
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Neverender said:
Not impossible but I doubt it. I'd just be happy to see anyone back on the moon in my lifetime =/
Click to expand...

It's so sad, but same here. I'd be thrilled just to see us go back to the moon before I die. Ecstatic if Mars.
 
D

Deku

Banned
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11775803


_50025153_eso1045a-2.jpg


Astronomers claim to have discovered the first planet originating from outside our galaxy.

The Jupiter-like planet, they say, is part of a solar system which once belonged to a dwarf galaxy.

This dwarf galaxy was in turn devoured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, according to a team writing in the academic journal Science.

The star, called HIP 13044, is nearing the end of its life and is 2000 light years from Earth.

The discovery was made using a telescope in Chile.

Cosmic cannibalism

Planet hunters have so far netted nearly 500 so-called "exoplanets" outside our Solar System using various astronomical techniques.

A video shows how the distant solar system may appear

But all of those so far discovered, say the researchers, are indigenous to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.


This find is different, they say, because the planet circles a sun which belongs to a group of stars called the "Helmi stream" which are known to have once belonged to a separate dwarf galaxy.

This galaxy was gobbled up by the Milky Way between six and nine billion years ago in an act of intergalactic cannibalism.

The new planet is thought to have a minimum mass 1.25 times that of Jupiter and circles in close proximity to its parent star, with an orbit lasting just 16.2 days.

It sits in the southern constellation of Fornax.

The planet would have been formed in the early era of its solar system, before the world was incorporated into our own galaxy, say the researchers.

"This discovery is very exciting," said Rainer Klement of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who targetted the stars in the study.

"For the first time, astronomers have detected a planetary system in a stellar stream of extragalactic origin. This cosmic merger has brought an extragalactic planet within our reach."

Dr Robert Massey of the UK's Royal Astronomical Society said the paper provided the first "hard evidence" of a planet of extragalactic origin.

"There's every reason to believe that planets are really quite widespread throughout the Universe, not just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but also in the thousands of millions of others there are," he said, "but this is the first time we've got hard evidence of that."
End Days

The new find might also offer us a glimpse of what the final days of our own Solar System may look like.

HIP 13044 is nearing its end. Having consumed all the hydrogen fuel in its core, it expanded massively into a "red giant" and might have eaten up smaller rocky planets like our own Earth in the process, before contracting.

The new Jupiter-like planet discovered appears to have survived the fireball, for the moment.

"This discovery is particularly intriguing when we consider the distant future of our own planetary system, as the Sun is also expected to become a red giant in about five billion years," said Dr Johny Setiawan, who also works at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and who led the study.

"The star is rotating relatively quickly," he said. "One explanation is that HIP 13044 swallowed its inner planets during the red giant phase, which would make the star spin more quickly."

The new planet was discovered using what is called the "radial velocity method" which involves detecting small wobbles in a star caused by a planet as it tugs on its sun.

These wobbles were picked up using a ground-based telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile.
Click to expand...
 
E

expy

Banned
Neverender said:
Not impossible but I doubt it. I'd just be happy to see anyone back on the moon in my lifetime =/
Click to expand...
The moon, probably not, Mars is most likely, we'll see someone land on MArs, never to return to Earth again... =(
 
T

TekkenMaster

Banned
Extollere said:
It's so sad, but same here. I'd be thrilled just to see us go back to the moon before I die. Ecstatic if Mars.
Click to expand...

When I was 9 years old I was certain we would be sending people to Mars by the time I was in my 30's or early 40's. Looks like that's not going to happen. Sad, really...

I wish Obama would set an actual concrete goal of either moon or mars landing...not this nebulous "we'll develop tech with private companies" policy.

But, on the positive side! ---

1). We'll be seeing the first real pictures of Pluto EVER in summer of 2015.

2). The new Mars rover Curiosity will be super awesome and take 720P 3D video at 10 fps. On friggin Mars

3). A multibillion dollar mission to orbit Europa is funded and will depart Earth by 2020 or so.
 
O

owlbeak

Member
TekkenMaster said:
When I was 9 years old I was certain we would be sending people to Mars by the time I was in my 30's or early 40's. Looks like that's not going to happen. Sad, really...

I wish Obama would set an actual concrete goal of either moon or mars landing...not this nebulous "we'll develop tech with private companies" policy.

But, on the positive side! ---

1). We'll be seeing the first real pictures of Pluto EVER in summer of 2015.

2). The new Mars rover Curiosity will be super awesome and take 720P 3D video at 10 fps. On friggin Mars

3). A multibillion dollar mission to orbit Europa is funded and will depart Earth by 2020 or so.
Click to expand...
Edit: Nevermind! Excited for the MSL mission. :D
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/22/faa-gives-spacex-the-first-ever-commercial-license-for-spacecraf/

NASA Statements on FAA Granting Reentry License to SpaceX

WASHINGTON Nov. 22, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA issued the following statements Monday after the Federal Aviation Administration issued SpaceX a license for spacecraft reentry:

"Congratulations to the SpaceX team for receiving the Federal Aviation Administration's first-ever commercial license to reenter a spacecraft from Earth orbit," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said. "With this license in hand, SpaceX can proceed with its launch of the Dragon capsule. The flight of Dragon will be an important step toward commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station. NASA wishes SpaceX every success with the launch."

"Milestones are an important part of space exploration and SpaceX achieved a very important one today," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. "I congratulate SpaceX on this landmark achievement and wish them the best with their launch of the Dragon capsule."
Click to expand...
 
C

Cyrillus

Member
The Estimated Number of Stars in the Universe Just Tripled

A study by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum just took the estimated number of stars in the universe—100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 100 sextillion—and tripled it. And you thought nothing good ever happens on Wednesdays.
Van Dokkum’s study in the journal Nature focuses on red dwarfs, a class of small, cool stars. They’re so small and cool, in fact, that up to now astronomers haven’t been able to spot them in galaxies outside our own. That’s a serious holdup when you’re trying to account for all the stars there are.
As a consequence, when estimating how much of a galaxy’s mass stars account for – important to understanding a galaxy’s life history – astronomers basically had to assume that the relative abundance of red-dwarf stars found in the Milky Way held true throughout the universe for every galaxy type and at every epoch of the universe’s evolution, Dr. van Dokkum says. “We always knew that was sort of a stretch, but it was the only thing we had. Until you see evidence to the contrary you kind of go with that assumption,” he says. [Christian Science Monitor]
But van Dokkum’s team, using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, surveyed eight elliptical galaxies nearby (between about 50 and 300 million light years away) for these dim stars. Their spectrometer could catch the collective signature of these faraway red dwarfs and estimate how many of them the neighbor galaxies harbor. In the Milky Way there are about 100 red dwarfs for every one star like the sun, but in these galaxies that number may be more like 1,000 to one.
Elliptical galaxies are some of the largest galaxies in the universe. The largest of these galaxies were thought to hold more than 1 trillion stars (compared with the 400 billion stars in our Milky Way). The new finding suggests there may be five to 10 times as many stars inside elliptical galaxies than previously thought, which would triple the total number of known stars in the universe, researchers said. [Space.com]
While van Dokkum’s Nature paper was released to the public today, it’s been raising a more private ruckus already:
For the past month, astronomers have been buzzing about van Dokkum’s findings, and many aren’t too happy about it, said astronomer Richard Ellis of the California Institute of Technology. Van Dokkum’s paper challenges the assumption of “a more orderly universe” and gives credence to “the idea that the universe is more complicated than we think,” Ellis said. “It’s a little alarmist.” Ellis said it is too early to tell if van Dokkum is right or wrong, but it is shaking up the field “like a cat among pigeons.” Van Dokkum agreed, saying, “Frankly, it’s a big pain.” [AP]
And besides tripling the number of stars in the universe (isn’t that enough??) and infuriating some astronomers, van Dokkum’s find has some serious secondary implications. More stars, of course, means the opportunity for more planets, and many recently found exoplanets orbit red dwarfs. That includes Gliese 7b, the would-be Goldilocks planet, and GJ 1214, which the same issue of Nature reports could possibly have an atmosphere of steam.
Furthermore, the plethora of red dwarfs could explain a dark matter mystery:
Elliptical galaxies posed a problem: The motions of the stars they contained implied that they had more mass than one would get by adding the mass of the normal matter astronomers observed to the expected amount of dark matter in the neighborhood. Some suggested that ellipticals somehow had extra dark matter associated with them. Instead, the newly detected red dwarfs could account for the difference, van Dokkum says. [Christian Science Monitor]
Click to expand...

Bolding is mine, sorry for the shitty formatting. Still, fascinating stuff!
 
A

Alucrid

Banned
TekkenMaster said:
When I was 9 years old I was certain we would be sending people to Mars by the time I was in my 30's or early 40's. Looks like that's not going to happen. Sad, really...

I wish Obama would set an actual concrete goal of either moon or mars landing...not this nebulous "we'll develop tech with private companies" policy.

But, on the positive side! ---

1). We'll be seeing the first real pictures of Pluto EVER in summer of 2015.

2). The new Mars rover Curiosity will be super awesome and take 720P 3D video at 10 fps. On friggin Mars

3). A multibillion dollar mission to orbit Europa is funded and will depart Earth by 2020 or so.
Click to expand...

Probably could have had 60fps if it wasn't for 3d.
 
O

opticalmace

Member
Naked Snake said:
Shiiiiiit. So the concept of Dark Matter might be tossed out of the window? Yeah I can definitely see astronomers not too happy about this.

With this and tomorrow's NASA conference, it's been an exciting week!
Click to expand...
No, dark matter stays, but it seems elliptical galaxies appeared to have an extra abundance of dark matter compared to other galaxies--and that might be explained by these red dwarfs.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Naked Snake said:
Shiiiiiit. So the concept of Dark Matter might be tossed out of the window? Yeah I can definitely see astronomers not too happy about this.

With this and tomorrow's NASA conference, it's been an exciting week!
Click to expand...


Dark Matter won't be tossed yet. But remember it's still just a model. The model has helped sustain some theories and equations IIRC, but there's no actual confirmation of its existence.

fallout said:
So, we've gone from approximately 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to .... approximately 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Nice!

Obviously, the big news here is that we're learning more about the abundance of red dwarfs in galaxies. Like opticalmace said, this could help explain some of the dark matter quandaries in elliptical galaxies.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's awesome news!! But I think it's still the analysis of one scientist. I image several others will have to do studies and come to the same conclusion before we have any kind of widely accepted factual changes.
 
L

Lucky Forward

Member
Dragon spaceship splashes down

A privately built rocket named Falcon 9 climbed into orbit and turned loose a privately built spacecraft named Dragon that scooted around Earth twice, maneuvering its flight path before parachuting on the eastern Pacific Ocean 500 miles from its flight control center in Hawthorne, Calif.

It was an unqualified success for American private industry. Its builder, SpaceX, put $600 million into the project while NASA donated $278 million in seed money.

The commercial venture is now well on track to deliver supplies to the International Space Station, possibly as early as next year.

It was the second success for Falcon 9 in a row, and the first for the spacecraft Dragon. If this success continues, the private rocket and spacecraft could be hauling astronauts to the space station in two to three years -- within a year or two after the space shuttle fleet has been retired.

Veteran space observers feared there would be a five- to six-year hiatus in astronaut flights from Cape Canaveral. Today's success goes a long way toward dispelling those fears.
Click to expand...

elon-musk-11.jpg
 
B

besada

Banned
CharlieDigital said:
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHERE THA HATERS AT NOW?!
Click to expand...

Pointing out that they're two years behind schedule already? I'm glad that they finally got the Falcon 9 up and delivering a payload, but they are seriously behind their original schedule, which is part of the reason Constellation got cancelled.

I'll be even more glad when they show Dragon can dock with the ISS and fulfill the COTS contract.

Mega-props for getting something in orbit, though. They're smoking Cygnus.
 
Z

zalemale

Member
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20101208.html


PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with previously published ground-based observations...............

...............Carbon is a common component of planetary systems and a key ingredient of life on Earth.
Click to expand...
 
Synless

Synless

Member
TekkenMaster said:
When I was 9 years old I was certain we would be sending people to Mars by the time I was in my 30's or early 40's. Looks like that's not going to happen. Sad, really...

I wish Obama would set an actual concrete goal of either moon or mars landing...not this nebulous "we'll develop tech with private companies" policy.

But, on the positive side! ---

1). We'll be seeing the first real pictures of Pluto EVER in summer of 2015.

2). The new Mars rover Curiosity will be super awesome and take 720P 3D video at 10 fps. On friggin Mars

3). A multibillion dollar mission to orbit Europa is funded and will depart Earth by 2020 or so.
Click to expand...
Let me get this straight. We have no real photos of Pluto? How the fuck do we have these super detailed pics of nebulas and other galaxies (not to mention the Hubble deep space picture) and no real picture of Pluto? Are those pics not real? Have I been living in a lie my whole life?
 
M

McNei1y

Member
Synless said:
Let me get this straight. We have no real photos of Pluto? How the fuck do we have these super detailed pics of nebulas and other galaxies (not to mention the Hubble deep space picture) and no real picture of Pluto? Are those pics not real? Have I been living in a lie my whole life?
Click to expand...


I may be wrong but aren't the pictures of nebulas really fleshed out by artists? At least thats what I thought. I'm probably wrong though. And yeah, I agree about the Pluto pics... WTF?
 
C

Crazymoogle

Member
The only "real" pictures we have of any discernable detail are from Hubble, and even those are just brightness maps. Pluto is just so astoundingly small and far away that even with our best space telescope it looks like a bright light (when reflecting sunlight) with some large (100+km features) visible as light or dark spots.

We're at basically the 3x3 pixel quality photo. :lol

Voyager 1 has a chance to drop by Pluto but opted for Titan instead.

New Horizons, for this, is going to be really awesome. Provided that Nix and Hydra - moons discovered AFTER launch - don't mess up the flight plan.
 
M

msv

Member
TekkenMaster said:
3). A multibillion dollar mission to orbit Europa is funded and will depart Earth by 2020 or so.
Click to expand...
Nnnoooooo, I want it sooner!!! You have more info on this? I wonder if it will be able to peek under the ice surface.

Also, the James Webb Telescope's launch is due 2014. That will definitely provide some sick data.
 
O

Orgun

Member
msv said:
Nnnoooooo, I want it sooner!!! You have more info on this? I wonder if it will be able to peek under the ice surface.

Also, the James Webb Telescope's launch is due 2014. That will definitely provide some sick data.
Click to expand...

I read that in Professor Frinks voice :lol
 
N

ntropy

Member
Synless said:
Let me get this straight. We have no real photos of Pluto? How the fuck do we have these super detailed pics of nebulas and other galaxies (not to mention the Hubble deep space picture) and no real picture of Pluto? Are those pics not real? Have I been living in a lie my whole life?
Click to expand...
it's because stars are big and bright. pluto is tiny and dark.
 
F

fallout

Member
Extollere said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myjaVI7_6Is
Click to expand...
Nice video. I've been met with similar reactions when making those kinds of statements. People generally just come back at you with: "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light!" and you can't get anywhere further with them.

Synless said:
Let me get this straight. We have no real photos of Pluto? How the fuck do we have these super detailed pics of nebulas and other galaxies (not to mention the Hubble deep space picture) and no real picture of Pluto? Are those pics not real? Have I been living in a lie my whole life?
Click to expand...
Those pictures are indeed real. You're talking about completely different kinds of objects. As others have said, those objects are massive. A nebula can span many light years (trillions of km), whereas Pluto is estimated to have a diameter of somewhere around 2200 km.

It all comes down to distance, size and resolution. Hubble can't even come close to making out the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 moon landing sites, and that's right in our backyard. We don't have detailed images of others stars, either. This is because of how far these objects are, how small they are and how well we can resolve the object with our technology. The more I magnify something, the less resolution I have. Take an image on your computer screen and zoom in on it as far as you can go. The number of pixels doesn't magically increase, you're just making them bigger.


For reference, here are three pictures of Pluto.

800px-Pluto-map-hs-2010-06-a-faces.jpg
 
O

opticalmace

Member
Synless said:
Let me get this straight. We have no real photos of Pluto? How the fuck do we have these super detailed pics of nebulas and other galaxies (not to mention the Hubble deep space picture) and no real picture of Pluto? Are those pics not real? Have I been living in a lie my whole life?
Click to expand...
To observe Pluto we must see light from the Sun reflected off its surface toward us. It is a pitifully small amount of light in comparison to very luminous objects much further away.
 
N

Naked Snake

Member
opticalmace said:
To observe Pluto we must see light from the Sun reflected off its surface toward us. It is a pitifully small amount of light in comparison to very luminous objects much further away.
Click to expand...

Put that way, it's amazing that we could see it at all.
 
F

fallout

Member
Naked Snake said:
Put that way, it's amazing that we could see it at all.
Click to expand...
You can actually see Pluto with a relatively modest telescope ... it just looks like another point of light. In fact, the only way to know that it's not a star is to compare it with the known star field and track it over a number of nights.

And just for some random comparison, this is an image of the dwarf planet Ceres taken from the Hubble Space Telescope:

250px-Ceres_optimized.jpg


Ceres is a Dwarf Planet located in between Jupiter and Mars. It's less than half the diameter of Pluto (~900km across).
 
F

fallout

Member
Alucrid said:
Dwarf planet? Between Jupiter and Mars? News to me. D:
Click to expand...
Was discovered in 1801 and was labeled as an asteroid before the whole Pluto thing. That was part of the issue ... if Pluto was a planet, why was Ceres only an asteroid? Effectively, they "demoted" Pluto, but "promoted" Ceres.
 
E

Extollere

Sucks at poetry
Alucrid said:
Dwarf planet? Between Jupiter and Mars? News to me. D:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've known about that for a while. I wonder if there are more dwarf planets like that in our solar system that we haven't discovered yet. Btw, that is one small ass planet. Isn't the moon like 3,000KM across? If so, that makes Ceres at least 3 times smaller.
 
J

Jasup

Member
Alucrid said:
Dwarf planet? Between Jupiter and Mars? News to me. D:
Click to expand...
It's the largest object in the asteroid belt. It was considered a planet before other asteriods were found in the same region.
 
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