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Space: The Final Frontier

M

Maklershed

Member
shuyin_ said:
Because there's no sense od direction in space? :/
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??? You can tell when you're moving forward, backwards, left, right, up or down can't you? My apologies if I'm misunderstanding your statement.
 
G

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
Maklershed said:
??? You can tell when you're moving forward, backwards, left, right, up or down can't you? My apologies if I'm misunderstanding your statement.
Click to expand...
only with a frame of reference.

On earth, "up" and "Down" are simply normal vectors perpendicular to the surface.



have you ever tried navigating a room in pitch black darkness? I'm sure there's been times where you've done so and ended up slightly off to the side from where you intended to be. But you didn't know that until you touched a wall or table, of course.

Now imagine if instead of going left right/front/back you're operating in 3 dimensions in blackness and you've never been in this particular place before. What's up? down? you don't know. You have no information to work off of, or preconceptions.
 
K

Kaper

Member
Maklershed said:
??? You can tell when you're moving forward, backwards, left, right, up or down can't you? My apologies if I'm misunderstanding your statement.
Click to expand...

Those directions are all relative to oneself, "up" will always be above your head, "down" somewhere below your feet, etc etc. Think of it this way: You and a friend are in different places in space, and he phones you and asks for directions on how to find you. What do you tell him, without a proper reference frame? Go down 20ly and left 5ly? That only works if both people are pointed in exactly the same direction.

Edit: mannnnnnnnnnnnnn, I always get beaten when I decide to answer questions.
 
S

shuyin_

Banned
Maklershed said:
??? You can tell when you're moving forward, backwards, left, right, up or down can't you? My apologies if I'm misunderstanding your statement.
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Hahaha, lol... you completely misunderstood. I know why there's a lack of direction in space.

What i meant was that it's a bit absurd that he said time is like space because there is a lack of direction in space. I just disagreed with his analogy, i didn't ask how come there's a lack of direction in space :D

English isn't my 1st language... sorry
 
E

Escape Goat

Member
Not exactly news but more evidence that Europa has huge oceans under its crust. I wonder what this would mean for future space travel in the outer solar system. Or what kinds of biologic lifeforms could be developing there as we speak. I would be super excited to be the first scientist to land on/explore first hand Europa or the other ice moons.


111116-space-europa-10a.grid-10x2.jpg



111116-space-cutaway-10a.grid-5x2.jpg



New research shows that the jumbled ice blocks crowning the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa are signs of large liquid lakes below, a key finding in the search for places where life might exist beyond Earth.

Drawing from studies of underground volcanoes in Iceland and Antarctica, scientists ran computer models to see if the chaotic formations on Europa's surface could be explained by the same geologic processes seen on Earth.

"We looked at melt underneath the ice, and the fracture and collapse of ice shelves," Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, told Discovery News.

"We come with these large pockets of water that form lakes. As they melt, they actually break up the ice above it, like what you see on Earth," she said.

The study provides "the best model so far" for the ice formations on Europa, Paul Schenk, a staff scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

"If we go back with penetrating radar instruments we should be able to see into the ice shell, determine the stratigraphy of the layers in the shell and verify which model works best," Schenk said.

Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, is believed to have a large ocean of salty water beneath its frozen crust.

"Europa has more water than all of Earth's oceans," planetary scientist Simon Kattenhorn, with the University of Idaho, told Discovery News.

An artist's conception shows a cutaway of Europa's "Great Lake." Scientists speculate many more exist throughout the shallow regions of the Jovian moon's icy shell.

While the ocean itself is of interest to scientists searching for life beyond Earth, a mechanism to churn the surface ice and subsurface water makes Europa an even more compelling target.

The vigorous mixing of ice and water provides one mechanism for nutrients and energy to get from the frozen surface to the ocean below.

A mission to Europa is second on planetary scientists' wish list after a sample return mission from Mars.

"Europa is likely to have a deep ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust, making it an object of enormous interest as a possible abode for life," planetary scientist Steve Squyres, with Cornell University, testified at a Congressional hearing this week.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45325075/ns/technology_and_science/#.TsFyfD2Vrm0
Click to expand...
 
N

noah111

Still Alive
Teh Hamburglar said:
Not exactly news but more evidence that Europa has huge oceans under its crust. I wonder what this would mean for future space travel in the outer solar system. Or what kinds of biologic lifeforms could be developing there as we speak. I would be super excited to be the first scientist to land on/explore first hand Europa or the other ice moons.


111116-space-europa-10a.grid-10x2.jpg



111116-space-cutaway-10a.grid-5x2.jpg


New research shows that the jumbled ice blocks crowning the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa are signs of large liquid lakes below, a key finding in the search for places where life might exist beyond Earth.

Drawing from studies of underground volcanoes in Iceland and Antarctica, scientists ran computer models to see if the chaotic formations on Europa's surface could be explained by the same geologic processes seen on Earth.

"We looked at melt underneath the ice, and the fracture and collapse of ice shelves," Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics, told Discovery News.

"We come with these large pockets of water that form lakes. As they melt, they actually break up the ice above it, like what you see on Earth," she said.

The study provides "the best model so far" for the ice formations on Europa, Paul Schenk, a staff scientist with the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, wrote in an email to Discovery News.

"If we go back with penetrating radar instruments we should be able to see into the ice shell, determine the stratigraphy of the layers in the shell and verify which model works best," Schenk said.

Europa, which is slightly smaller than Earth's moon, is believed to have a large ocean of salty water beneath its frozen crust.

"Europa has more water than all of Earth's oceans," planetary scientist Simon Kattenhorn, with the University of Idaho, told Discovery News.

An artist's conception shows a cutaway of Europa's "Great Lake." Scientists speculate many more exist throughout the shallow regions of the Jovian moon's icy shell.

While the ocean itself is of interest to scientists searching for life beyond Earth, a mechanism to churn the surface ice and subsurface water makes Europa an even more compelling target.

The vigorous mixing of ice and water provides one mechanism for nutrients and energy to get from the frozen surface to the ocean below.

A mission to Europa is second on planetary scientists' wish list after a sample return mission from Mars.

"Europa is likely to have a deep ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust, making it an object of enormous interest as a possible abode for life," planetary scientist Steve Squyres, with Cornell University, testified at a Congressional hearing this week.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45325075/ns/technology_and_science/#.TsFyfD2Vrm0
Click to expand...
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Europa always brings back memories of 2001 (or was it 2010/2061?) for some reason. That book had a great visual of what it could be like on (and in) Europa. I hope we send something within my life time.
 
M

Maklershed

Member
Imagine if we send a bunch of people to live in Europa and after hundreds of years for some reason or another we just lose contact with each other and after thousands of years we start to diverge on an evolutionary scale. It would be like two alien species meeting each other if/when we got back together. Maybe one group would even try to attack or dominate the other.
 
H

Hootie

Member
eravulgaris said:
I don't know if you guys have seen it, but Neil deGrasse Tyson did an interesting AMA on reddit this week. Obviously a lot of space related questions!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/
Click to expand...

Wow, awesome stuff. I've never been to reddit before but that was an interesting read for sure. I fucking love the Horace Mann quote he mentioned.

And I totally forgot the sequel to Cosmos is airing NEXT spring. Holy shit!!
 
A

Asbel

Member
eravulgaris said:
I don't know if you guys have seen it, but Neil deGrasse Tyson did an interesting AMA on reddit this week. Obviously a lot of space related questions!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/
Click to expand...

From the reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/c2zg3nw
When do you think we would be able to explore Europa, given the current pace and funding of space exploration?

permalink

[–]neiltyson 1038 points 3 days ago

Europa is not on the planetary scientist's priority list, for an obscure combination of reasons that relate to cost and whether we are technologically prepared to undertake such mission versus missions to other tasty targets in the solar system.
Click to expand...

:sadface
 
A

Asbel

Member
Hootie said:
Fuck it, we'll get there eventually. Europa is just faaaar away. Gotta learn the ropes of space travel a bit more before we can try that. Baby steps dude.

Unless you're talking about unmanned exploration?
Click to expand...
I didn't ask the question but I think Tyson is talking about unmanned exploration too.
 
H

Hootie

Member
Damn. Well it does sort of make sense though, right? In order to drill through to the oceans in Europa we'd need some serious machinery.
 
A

a176

Banned
Hootie said:
Damn. Well it does sort of make sense though, right? In order to drill through to the oceans in Europa we'd need some serious machinery.
Click to expand...

not really. just a torpedo with a nuclear reactor. ie a melt probe.

ps i thought we were supposed to leave europa alone?
 
W

Woorloog

Banned
Europa is the new Mars. Every thinks there might be life, how cool it would be etc... but in the end, there won't be a thing.
Interesting read and nice pic of Europa though.
 
T

Tawpgun

Member
Woorloog said:
Europa is the new Mars. Every thinks there might be life, how cool it would be etc... but in the end, there won't be a thing.
Interesting read and nice pic of Europa though.
Click to expand...
There's still a decent chance Mars has life on it, and a good chance it HAD life on it. We've barely touched Mars.
 
N

noah111

Still Alive
Woorloog said:
Europa is the new Mars. Every thinks there might be life, how cool it would be etc... but in the end, there won't be a thing.
Interesting read and nice pic of Europa though.
Click to expand...
Umm, hate to inform you but Mars is fucking huge, with a land mass equivalent to that of earth, so we haven't even really started looking yet. The area we've covered is quite tiny in comparison.

If you were to come to earth at a certain period in time and walk every square foot of texas, you might not find life but there certainly would have been in other areas. You get my point.

We're almost certain it had life at one point or another, and that remnants may still be there. We just don't know yet, it's like search for a needle in a haystack in a lot of ways.

Europa is promising, but the search for life will be even more complicated ins such a place since you're not covering land mass and atmosphere, but serious depth.
 
S

shuyin_

Banned
a176 said:
not really. just a torpedo with a nuclear reactor. ie a melt probe.
Click to expand...
That would probably contaminate the fuck out of everything. You'd need some pretty good drill, since the ice in Europa is hard as granite AND a method to not conaminate the ocean once you reach it.
 
A

Akira

Member
A mission to Europa manned by the BBC documentary crew is one thing I want to see before I die. Heck, clear DSLR quality images from the surface of any planet would do too.
 
Angry Fork

Angry Fork

Member
eravulgaris said:
I don't know if you guys have seen it, but Neil deGrasse Tyson did an interesting AMA on reddit this week. Obviously a lot of space related questions!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/mateq/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ama/
Click to expand...
This deserves it's own thread imo, there are some incredible (exciting) answers by Tyson on a number of important questions. I think i'll collect all the questions/answers and make a new thread posting them so people don't have to find them.
 
F

fierrotlepou

Member
Angry Fork said:
This deserves it's own thread imo, there are some incredible (exciting) answers by Tyson on a number of important questions. I think i'll collect all the questions/answers and make a new thread posting them so people don't have to find them.
Click to expand...

That would be great.

Such an interesting human being. I'm fully confident that the new Cosmos series will be great. He'll be doing monthly AMA's by the way.

Something's not quite clear though:

"A mission to Europa is second on planetary scientists' wish list after a sample return mission from Mars."

While Neil said it's not even on the priority list. I guess it got moved up on the ladder since they found liquid water?
 
F

fallout

Member
Sentry said:
Sure, but with Mars getting poopooed more and more lately, Europa's gaining attention again.
Click to expand...
I don't know where you're getting this poopooing from. Maybe in the media, but the scientific community is always going to see Mars as a strong target for exploration.

In terms of ground-based exploration, in the coming future, we have:

2012: Mars Science Laboratory with the Curiosity Rover
2019: ExoMars
2020-2022: A proposed Mars sample return mission

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Future_missions
 
J

jett

D-Member
Going to Europa is a pipe dream. It would require a gargantuan drill to get to the supposed oceans. And it'd have to self-deploy and self-operate. And after making the massive god knows how many miles deep hole this machine would have to deploy another one that would collect samples somehow, several miles into the ground. Yeah I don't know about that.
 
N

noah111

Still Alive
The media effects the scientific community and how far they are allowed to reach, plain and simple. My point was simply Europa is 'the next big thing', while personally Mars is more important/feasible imo.
 
T

Tawpgun

Member
jett said:
Going to Europa is a pipe dream. It would require a gargantuan drill to get to the supposed oceans. And it'd have to self-deploy and self-operate. And after making the massive god knows how many miles deep hole this machine would have to deploy another one that would collect samples somehow, several miles into the ground. Yeah I don't know about that.
Click to expand...

jett
Mr. Negativity
(Today, 11:02 AM)

Don't sell human ingenuity so short. We'll get there, eventually.

Hell, we went from the first powered human flight in 1903 to landing a man on the moon in 1969. Think about that for a second.
 
J

jett

D-Member
A27 Tawpgun said:
jett
Mr. Negativity
(Today, 11:02 AM)

Don't sell human ingenuity so short. We'll get there, eventually.

Hell, we went from the first powered human flight in 1903 to landing a man on the moon in 1969. Think about that for a second.
Click to expand...

I mean a pipe dream during our lifetimes. ;)
 
B

BruiserBear

Banned
Alienshogun said:
That's the problem with human shortsightedness, if it "doesn't happen in our lifetimes" it's either not worth pursuing, or not worth worrying about.
Click to expand...

I think it's more a matter of "why should we care" if it doesn't happen in our lifetimes.

Of course we'll visit Europa at some point, but if it happens in 200 years why would I care? It's a forgone conclusion that we'll get there eventually.
 
A

a176

Banned
jett said:
Going to Europa is a pipe dream. It would require a gargantuan drill to get to the supposed oceans. And it'd have to self-deploy and self-operate. And after making the massive god knows how many miles deep hole this machine would have to deploy another one that would collect samples somehow, several miles into the ground. Yeah I don't know about that.
Click to expand...

like i said before ... its alot easier than people think
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHohF2DOoek
 
X

XMonkey

lacks enthusiasm.
A

AAequal

Banned
Just found out about SNAP, http://snap.lbl.gov/
Pretty cool!
SNAP - the SuperNova Acceleration Probe - is a proposed space observatory designed to measure the expansion of the Universe and to determine the nature of the mysterious Dark Energy that is accelerating this expansion. SNAP is being proposed as part of the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), which is a cooperative venture between NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. If selected it will be launched before 2020.
Click to expand...
ftiAh.jpg
 
ColonialRaptor

ColonialRaptor

Member
The problem with humanity is that we have become stagnant because there is nothing left of our planet to easily discover and explore without great fianacial expense.

Where did we take the wrong turn?
 
L

Log4Girlz

Member
ColonialRaptor said:
The problem with humanity is that we have become stagnant because there is nothing left of our planet to easily discover and explore without great fianacial expense.

Where did we take the wrong turn?
Click to expand...

Nasa does not do fast and cheap well. I really expect humanity to do amazing things in space when we have robots design and create everything in the cheapest, yet most intricately designed and perfect way possible. Until then we're sticking to Earth.
 
C

Clevinger

Member
ColonialRaptor said:
The problem with humanity is that we have become stagnant because there is nothing left of our planet to easily discover and explore without great fianacial expense.

Where did we take the wrong turn?
Click to expand...

What? When have discovery expeditions ever been cheap, even on our planet? It's always been expensive and high risk.
 
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