Space and Astronomy Megathread (MERGED)

[:eek:]

Do Black Holes Create New Universes? Q&A With Physicist Lee Smolin

http://www.space.com/21335-black-holes-time-universe-creation.html

 

[moviedoors]

WWWHHHAAATTT?

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421999/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

 

[redmarvel]

Big asteroid with its own moon flies by Earth

Asteroid 1998 QE2 made closest approach at 4:59 p.m. ET on May 31st

An asteroid the size of Vancouver's Stanley Park, and which has its own moon, zipped past the Earth today, NASA says.

At 4:59 p.m. ET Friday, the pair of space rocks, known together as a binary asteroid, made their closest approach to Earth for the next two centuries at 5.8 million kilometres away, or about 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon. That is considered a safe distance and the asteroid is not at risk of hitting the Earth.

The 2.7-kilometre-wide asteroid, 1998 QE2, was discovered 15 years ago, but no one knew about its travelling companion until the smaller rock showed up in radar images captured Wednesday evening. The satellite or moon is about 600 metres wide or about three times the width of Toronto's Rogers Centre.

The link below will take you to the article which is longer than the quote above and includes video.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/31/tech-asteroid-earth-flyby.html

 

[DareDemon]

My friend and I were just talking about how we wanted some evidence of a multiverse. I am very happy to see there are some clues coming out earlier than I expected. I hope more stuff comes out.

 

[Mike_D202]

WWWHHHAAATTT?

Astronomers Find First Evidence Of Other Universes

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421999/astronomers-find-first-evidence-of-other-universes/

 

[Destructus86]

eh, I can't get excited about this. It's total guess work. I need hard science facts before i'd believe in a multiverse (as much as I would love to!!!)

 

[Breogan]

eh, I can't get excited about this. It's total guess work. I need hard science facts before i'd believe in a multiverse (as much as I would love to!!!)

Yeah theory-wise it's not that new, and they are well cautious/conservative about this as new "evidence", nothing to get that mind-blown about.

Cosmologists should have a decent data set to play with in a couple of years or so. When they get it, these circles should either spring into clear view or disappear into noise (rather like the mysterious Mars face that appeared in pictures of the red planet taken by Viking 1 and then disappeared in the higher resolution shots from the Mars Global Surveyor).

-

The link below will take you to the article which is longer than the quote above and includes video.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/31/tech-asteroid-earth-flyby.html

Will we see a time when we actually do have to move/change the course of one of these things, curious how it's finally best pulled off. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xaW4Ol3_M1o#t=388s

I couldn't find it, but there's another vid where he talks about parking a ship next to it, and it's controlled, prolonged slight gravity pull is enough to veer it off-course.

 

[zeroapoc]

My friend and I were just talking about how we wanted some evidence of a multiverse. I am very happy to see there are some clues coming out earlier than I expected. I hope more stuff comes out.

I always wonder about the Quantum Multiverse theory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

 

[Lighthouse]

Scientists resolve a 3.5 billion-year-old mystery of life

For a laugh, look at the first comment.

 

[Breogan]

Hmm life begun from falling space Phosphorus? Name from the Greek mythology Phosphorus, Φωσφόρος meaning "light-bringer" in Latin Lucifer.

Didn't he "fall from the heavens" to Earth?

This will go over well.

 

[childeroland]

New Kind of Dark Matter Could Form 'Dark Atoms'

 

[:eek:]

NASA Unveils New Astronaut Class for Deep-Space Exploration

http://www.space.com/21585-nasa-unveils-astronauts-deep-space.html

 

[Mike_D202]

Blasphamy, I don't see a Vulcan science officer on that list.

 

[Matt Mortem]

Doesn't mean **** if NASA doesn't get proper funding.

 

[zeroapoc]

The biggest hurdle at this point is having a vehicle able to launch the astronauts back from the Martian surface.

 

[Llama_Shepherd]

Do people even say it's a return trip any more?

 

[zeroapoc]

18 months I believe.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

The biggest hurdle at this point is having a vehicle able to launch the astronauts back from the Martian surface.

Super powered Jet Pack!

 

[james-in-cali]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct

I still don't know why Robert Zubrin's plan was never funded. It almost seemed to make too much sense.

 

[Llama_Shepherd]

18 months I believe.

Yeah, but don't mission scenarios depict it as a one way trip? It's unfeasible as a round trip.

 

[Marvolo]

The biggest hurdle at this point is having a vehicle able to launch the astronauts back from the Martian surface.

No the biggest hurdle at this point is finding a way to properly shield the astronauts from the radiation. Outside of earth's magnetic the amount of radiation an astronaut would be exposed to is enough to cause serious radiation damage to cells.

Missions to the Red Planet would take several years to complete and, during that time, astronauts would face health risks from two main types of radiation: cosmic rays and energetic particles from the sun, associated with solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Both types of radiation can damage DNA and increase the risk of an astronaut developing cancer.

On missions in low-Earth orbit, which include all shuttle flights and stays on the International Space Station, astronauts are largely protected from the most harmful effects of the radiation thanks to the Earth's magnetic field, which creates a bubble around the planet that deflects much of the radiation. In interplanetary space, however, astronauts will not have this protection.

Nasa's guidelines say that astronauts should not be exposed to more than 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation in a lifetime, which is associated with a 5% increase in risk of developing a fatal cancer. According to the latest study, based on data from MSL's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), astronauts on a 360-day round trip to Mars would get a dose of 662mSv on their journey.

"In terms of accumulated dose, it's like getting a whole-body CT scan once every five or six days," said Cary Zeitlin, a principal scientist in the Space Science and Engineering Division of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who led the study.

www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/30/radiation-dose-mars-mission-safe-lifetime-limit

 

[zeroapoc]

Yeah, but don't mission scenarios depict it as a one way trip? It's unfeasible as a round trip.

If they find people that want to exile themselves from Earth forever then go for it. Personally I think we should wait until we can manage better than that.

 

[Mr.M]

Shatner narrated a great series on Mars exploration. How the mission will be conceived, to the people selected. Everything was covered in that. For radiation, they would need some kind of alert system for a major solar storm, and there would have to be some built in shelter in the craft. Even so, there is always radiation dispersed in space that people will be exposed to. Until you find a way to completely reflect this radiation, you are going to get cancer sooner than later.

 

[Destructus86]

I still think we should work on getting artifical gravity on ships and radiation protection before we bother going any farther than the moon.

 

[Mr.M]

I still think we should work on getting artifical gravity on ships and radiation protection before we bother going any farther than the moon.

I agree. You have to simulate the conditions we are acclamated too as close as possible before sending people out there. Mars needs to be planned for centuries to come. How we go about colonizing, exploring, terraforming, will take centuries of planning. You can't just one-off it, plant an American flag, and call it a day.