Space: The Final Frontier

[Bluewolf]

1 hour ago, nudge said:

 

Because Lunar Overshoes... 

 

Or... 

[nudge+]

3 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Or... 

Flat Earth TV  

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Sceptic

A third person would have had to be there with a camera to take photographs of astronauts arriving on the moon and blasting off again. They must think we're stupid!

Believer: Footage of Neil Armstrong’s small step was shot by a camera mounted on the outside of the Eagle lander. Pictures of Armstrong’s first step taken from the surface of the moon are actually Buzz Aldrin descending the ladder, snapped by Armstrong. Remote cameras left on the moon could easily record the departure of lunar modules

Photograph: Nasa

Sceptic:

There was no exhaust flame spurting from beneath the lunar module when it blasted off from the moon. It's clearly a model being pulled up on a wire 

Believer: The Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo into space burnt liquid oxygen and kerosene, creating a dramatically fiery plume. The lunar lander, on the other hand, was propelled by a mixture of nitrogen tetroxide and Aerozine 50, which doesn't. Its exhaust gases were transparent

Photograph: Nasa

Sceptic:

Space is full of stars, as any 10-year-old will tell you, so why do they not appear in photographs taken on the moon?

Believer: The astronauts were taking pictures of brightly lit, shiny white objects. Under those conditions, photographers shoot with a fast exposure time and small aperture. That makes it impossible to capture faint objects in a dark background, such as stars

Photograph: Nasa

 

ttps://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2009/jun/29/apollo-11-moon-landing-hoax

 

 

 

Edited April 7, 2019 by CaaC - John

[CaaC (John)+]

1 hour ago, Bluewolf said:

 

Does make you wonder if it was all fake... 

 

58 minutes ago, nudge said:

 

Because Lunar Overshoes... 

 

And...

 

Quote

Sceptic:

Boots would only have left their imprint on the lunar surface in moist material. Try leaving your footprint on a dry sandy beach

Believer: Particles of moon dust have a different size and shape from sand and don't need moisture to hold a compressed shape. Many powders on Earth can behave in the same way. Try walking in spilt talcum powder

Photograph: Nasa

https://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2009/jun/29/apollo-11-moon-landing-hoax

 

 

[nudge+]

Joe's just taking the piss anyway...  

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

A planet fragment orbiting a dying star offers a glimpse at Earth’s grim future

Nicolas Rivero

© Provided by Atlantic Media, Inc. Debris ring around a white dwarf star

Like Oedipus, Macbeth, or a minor character in a Final Destination movie, our planet faces a grim, inescapable fate. And now we have a chance to see what that might look like.

In about five billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen to feed the nuclear reactions burning at its core and become a red giant. Our star’s atmosphere will push out into the solar system, swallowing up Mercury, Venus, and finally Earth before it stops its cataclysmic expansion just short of Mars, according to astronomers.

© 2017 NASA UNSPECIFIED: In this NASA digital illustration handout released on February 22, 2017, the TRAPPIST-1 system is shown containing a total of seven planets, all around the size of Earth. Three of them -- TRAPPIST-1e, f and g -- dwell in their star's so-called 'habitable zone.' The habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, is a band around every star (shown here in green) where astronomers have calculated that temperatures are just right -- not too hot, not too cold -- for liquid water to pool on the surface of an Earth-like world. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based TRAPPIST telescope, for which it was named after. While TRAPPIST-1b, c and d are too close to be in the system's likely habitable zone, and TRAPPIST-1h is too far away, the planets' discoverers say more optimistic scenarios could allow any or all of the planets to harbor liquid water. In particular, the strikingly small orbits of these worlds make it likely that most, if not all of them, perpetually show the same face to their star, the way our moon always shows the same face to the Earth. This would result in an extreme range of temperatures from the day to night sides, allowing for situations not factored into the traditional habitable zone definition. The illustrations shown for the various planets depict a range of possible scenarios of what they could look like. (Photo digital Illustration by NASA/NASA via Getty Images)

Eventually, the sun will collapse into a small, dense point of light: a white dwarf. For several billion years, it will cast a smoldering glow over the spot where life as we know it used to exist.

Astronomers from the UK’s University of Warwick have announced they found evidence of an Earth-like planet that met a similar fate. What remains of the planet orbits a white dwarf 410 lightyears from Earth, spinning perilously close to its spent host star.

A closer relationship, in the end

Although the distant star used to be twice the mass of our sun, it has now collapsed into a dense ember roughly the size of Earth. The planetary fragment circles the white dwarf so closely that its orbit would have fit inside the star before it collapsed.

“The white dwarf’s gravity is so strong—about 100,000 times that of the Earth’s—that a typical asteroid will be ripped apart by gravitational forces if it passes too close,” lead author Christopher Manser said in a statement.

The researchers theorize that the object they’ve found is no typical asteroid. It’s an iron-rich hunk of heavy metal that used to make up the core of a larger, rocky planet like our own. Sometime after the star collapsed, a disturbance may have nudged the planet into a tight orbit around the white dwarf, where intense gravitational forces stripped away its outer layers until only its sturdy iron core remained.

We’ll always have Mars

© Time Life Pictures Mars Global Surveyor image of Mars which suggests possible presence of water on planet. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/US Geological Survey/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The findings paint a grisly portrait for the future of our planet. “The general consensus is that 5-6 billion years from now, our Solar System will be a white dwarf in place of the Sun, orbited by Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the outer planets, as well as asteroids and comets,” Manser said.

If our species survives to see the sun die, Earth won’t float through space as a graveyard or monument to humanity’s past. Every possible trace that we have been here will be incinerated or gravitationally shredded—unless billions of years from now we find some way to bury a sign about 3,200 miles (5,100 km) below the surface in our planet’s inner core.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/a-planet-fragment-orbiting-a-dying-star-offers-a-glimpse-at-earths-grim-future/ar-BBVKpo6?li=AAnZ9Ug&ocid=mailsignout

 

 

[nudge+]

Looking forward to tomorrow. The Event Horizon Telescope team is expected to reveal the first image of a black hole; and the second flight of the Falcon Heavy is scheduled for the evening. Then on Thursday the Israeli Beresheet is expected to land on the Moon. Quite a week we're having!

[nudge+]

Six simultaneous press conferences around the world will broadcast the first "groundbreaking" results from the Event Horizon Telescope in less than one hour - a project that was designed to take the first ever image of a black hole. Broadcast starts at 15:00 CEST!

European press conference:

 

Japanese press conference:

 

US press conference: https://www.youtube.com/c/VideosatNSF/live

Taiwanese press conference: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPk594oZYMU4Eak7By5wHyQ

[nudge+]

WE HAVE THE FIRST EVER REAL IMAGE OF A BLACK HOLE!!!!!

 

[CaaC (John)+]

42 minutes ago, nudge said:

WE HAVE THE FIRST EVER REAL IMAGE OF A BLACK HOLE!!!!!

Just logged on to post that and thought "I bet a pound to a penny Inger has beaten me to it" I was right 

 

Brilliant piece of space news that and now we know that there are Black Holes out there    

[CaaC (John)+]

[nudge+]

The final result is extremely similar to the images generated by theoretical physicists' supercomputer simulations, indicating that our theories (in this case our understanding of the physics of a black hole) are correct. Makes you really admire Einstein's mind for being so far ahead of its time to be able to come up with theories that are being proven with a photograph taken a century later...

They closed the European press conference by quoting Stephen Hawking... It's a pity he didn't live long enough to witness this today  

 

[Azeem]

Its orangish not black 

[nudge+]

16 minutes ago, Azeem said:

Its orangish not black 

The orange-ish ring we can see in the image is actually the light bent by the intense gravity around the black hole and circling it at tremendous speed. The black center is the shadow of the event horizon. We obviously can't see the actual black hole because it is - well - completely black as the gravity is so strong not even light can escape it.  

For more mind-fuck: This is how it looked like 53.5 million years ago.

[Cicero]

There is only one man to call

[Azeem]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

The orange-ish ring we can see in the image is actually the light bent by the intense gravity around the black hole and circling it at tremendous speed. The black center is the shadow of the event horizon. We obviously can't see the actual black hole because it is - well - completely black as the gravity is so strong not even light can escape it.  

For more mind-fuck: This is how it looked like 53.5 million years ago.

I thought i made the first meme on the first black hole picture 

[CaaC (John)+]

1 hour ago, Cicero said:

There is only one man to call

This should really be in @Bluewolf 's Science Fiction thread but seeing you mentioned it... 

 

Quote

SCIENCE FICTION

Neil deGrasse Tyson Breaks Down ‘Interstellar’: Black Holes, Time Dilations, and Massive Waves

https://www.thedailybeast.com/neil-degrasse-tyson-breaks-down-interstellar-black-holes-time-dilations-and-massive-waves

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Astronomy Picture of the Day

2019 April 11 

 

First Horizon-Scale Image of a Black Hole 
Image Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

 

Explanation: What does a black hole look like? To find out, radio telescopes from around the Earth coordinated observations of black holes with the largest known event horizons on the sky. Alone, black holes are just black, but these monster attractors are known to be surrounded by glowing gas. The first image was released yesterday and resolved the area around the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 on a scale below that expected for its event horizon. Pictured, the dark central region is not the event horizon, but rather the black hole's shadow -- the central region of emitting gas darkened by the central black hole's gravity. The size and shape of the shadow is determined by bright gas near the event horizon, by strong gravitational lensing deflections, and by the black hole's spin. In resolving this black hole's shadow, the Event Horizon Telescope (ETH) bolstered evidence that Einstein's gravity works even in extreme regions, and gave clear evidence that M87 has a central spinning black hole of about 6 billion solar masses. The EHT is not done -- future observations will be geared toward even higher resolution, better tracking of variability, and exploring the immediate vicinity of the black hole in the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

 

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Edited April 25, 2019 by CaaC - John

[nudge+]

Interesting size comparison of the M87 black hole and the solar system by XKCD. Gives a better impression of how massive it is  

[nudge+]

Live broadcast of the Beresheet lunar landing will start in about 4 hours (9:45pm Israel time). Landing process will start at 10:05pm. Landing expected to happen at 10:25pm. 

 

[nudge+]

Failure! They didn't make it. First problems with IMU and lost telemetry, then main engine failure and lost communication with the spacecraft. 

Last picture before crashing into the Moon:

[CaaC (John)+]

 

[nudge+]

It was pizza night yesterday on the ISS!

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

SpaceIL plans second private Moon lander despite crash

Jon Fingas

SpaceIL's first attempt at a private Moon landing didn't go according to plan. However, that isn't deterring the team from giving it another shot. Founder Morris Khan has announced that the team will build another Beresheet lander and "complete the mission."

The task force behind the new lander will start its work "first thing" on April 14th, he said.

As you might guess, there aren't many more details at this stage.

Will it be a functionally identical model that addresses glitches (particularly the communications failure and premature engine cutoff), or will it be a substantial redesign? Nonetheless, it's good news for both Israel's spacefaring goals and hopes that privately-funded lunar flights will become a practical reality.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/spaceil-plans-second-private-moon-lander-despite-crash/ar-BBVV1x1?ocid=chromentp

 

 

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

Quote

Trolls hijacked a scientist’s image to attack Katie Bouman. They picked the wrong astrophysicist.

Tim Elfrink

As the world stared in wonder this week at the first image of a black hole, a new star was born here on Earth: Katherine Bouman, a 29-year-old postdoctoral researcher who developed an algorithm that was key to capturing the stunning visual.

On the ugliest corners of the Internet, however, this sudden fame for a young woman in a male-dominated field couldn’t stand. A corrective was quickly found in Andrew Chael, another member of the Event Horizon Telescope team, who, not coincidentally, is white and male.

On Reddit and Twitter, memes quickly went viral contrasting Bouman with Chael, who — per the viral images — was actually responsible for “850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm!” 

The implication was clear: Bouman, pushed by an agenda-driven media, was getting all the attention. But Chael had done all the real work.

That’s completely wrong, Chael said in a viral Thursday night Twitter thread of his own. Not only are the claims in the meme flat-out incorrect, but Chael — as an openly gay man — is also part of an underrepresented demographic in his field.

“While I appreciate the congratulations on a result that I worked hard on for years, if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life,” he tweeted.

It’s not clear exactly when or where the backlash against Bouman started, but Chael first caught wind of it from friends who alerted him to a Reddit post. One post on the r/pics subreddit attracted hundreds of comments and thousands of “upvotes” before it was taken down, with many criticizing Bouman at his expense, said Chael, a 28-year-old graduate student in Harvard’s physics department. As one typical commenter complained: “Katie has been plastered everywhere as being responsible for the code but if this dude did pretty much all the work, seems kind of crappy he doesn’t get recognized.”

Related: Meet Katie Bouman, the woman who was crucial to creating the first-ever image of a black hole

 © Facebook    Meet Katie Bouman, the woman behind the first-ever black hole image

That’s completely wrong, Chael said in a viral Thursday night Twitter thread of his own. Not only are the claims in the meme flat-out incorrect, but Chael — as an openly gay man — is also part of an underrepresented demographic in his field.

“While I appreciate the congratulations on a result that I worked hard on for years, if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life,” he tweeted.

It’s not clear exactly when or where the backlash against Bouman started, but Chael first caught wind of it from friends who alerted him to a Reddit post. One post on the r/pics subreddit attracted hundreds of comments and thousands of “upvotes” before it was taken down, with many criticizing Bouman at his expense, said Chael, a 28-year-old graduate student in Harvard’s physics department. As one typical commenter complained: “Katie has been plastered everywhere as being responsible for the code but if this dude did pretty much all the work, seems kind of crappy he doesn’t get recognized.”

“It was clearly started by people who were upset that a woman had become the face of this story and decided, ‘I’m going to find someone who reflects my narrative instead,’” Chael said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Identical memes quickly spread across Twitter, where one typical response was, “Andrew Chael did 90% of the work. Where’s his credit?”

But those claims are flat-out wrong, Chael said. He certainly didn’t write “850,000 lines of code,” a false number likely pulled from GitHub, a Web-based coding service. And while he was the primary author of one piece of software that worked on imaging the black hole, the team used multiple different approaches to avoid bias. His work was important, but Bouman’s was also vital as she helped stitch together all the teams, Chael said.

“Katie was a huge part of our collaboration at every step,” Chael said.

In truth, singling out anyone scientist in a massive, cross-disciplinary group effort like the Event Horizon Telescope’s project is bound to create misapprehensions. Many who shared an equally viral image of Bouman clutching her hands in joy at the sight of the black hole came away wrongly believing she was the sole person responsible for the discovery, an idea the postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has tried to correct.

“No one algorithm or person made this image,” Bouman wrote on Facebook, “it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.”

But those who sought to diminish Bouman’s work — especially while boosting Chael in her place — were making an absurd argument, the astrophysicist said. The New Mexico native is on the Outlist of LGBTQ scientists in the astronomy and astrophysics fields and advises gay undergraduates at Harvard.

“Yes, that was ironic that they chose me,” he said.

Despite having to speak out against the backlash, Chael said he’s also been heartened to see Bouman’s work held up as an inspiration and hopes it leads to more women in astrophysics and astronomy departments.

“I don’t want to downplay the fact that it’s a very male-dominated community, especially radio astronomy,” Chael said. “There are less women there than even in other fields of astronomy, which we have to work hard to change."

He added, “Katie and several other women scientists on our team are just incredible leaders in this effort, and I’m hoping this can be a chance for all of us to talk about doing better.” 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/trolls-hijacked-a-scientists-image-to-attack-katie-bouman-they-picked-the-wrong-astrophysicist/ar-BBVSAMZ?li=BBoPU0R

 

 

 

Edited April 14, 2019 by CaaC - John