Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 27, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 27, 2019 21 minutes ago, CaaC - John said: NASA now aims to return astronauts to the moon within 5 years That might be a bit too ambitious; it's 4 years ahead of their original schedule and for me that also sounds suspiciously like a stunt before the elections... Not sure they are going to pull it off even if they manage to get large additional funding needed. SLS is not going to be ready, the only way I could see this happening is if they went full-commercial but that is probably not feasible. This will be interesting to follow for sure... It's funny though how the US politicians suddenly became so restless once they finally found out that their "adversaries" are way ahead of them 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 27, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 27, 2019 8 minutes ago, CaaC - John said: Good read and I loved this bit, and the photo, it sent a shiver down my spine. "According to the calculations, Jupiter’s migration went on for around 700 000 years, in a period approximately 2-3 million years after the celestial body started its life as an ice asteroid far from the sun. The journey inwards in the solar system followed a spiralling course in which Jupiter continued to circle around the sun, albeit in an increasingly tight path. The reason behind the actual migration relates to gravitational forces from the surrounding gases in the solar system". You might really enjoy this article then: https://interestingengineering.com/why-didnt-jupiter-become-a-hot-jupiter It goes much deeper into detail of why Jupiter is where it is now and how our whole solar system is the way it is as a result. Very interesting and really makes you think! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 27, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 27, 2019 3 minutes ago, nudge said: You might really enjoy this article then: https://interestingengineering.com/why-didnt-jupiter-become-a-hot-jupiter Bookmarked that and will read it later. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 29, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 29, 2019 Quote Russian space pioneer Valery Bykovsky dies aged 84 Valery Bykovsky, who was the 11th person to venture into space and who held the unbroken record for the longest solo spaceflight, has died aged 84. Bykovsky first flew aboard a Vostok 5 spacecraft in June 1963 and would go on to take part in two more USSR missions. His record-setting solo flight saw him spend five days in space aboard the Vostok 5, orbiting the Earth 82 times. Bykovsky was among the first group of USSR cosmonauts alongside Yuri Gagarin, the first person to travel to space. His death on 27 March was confirmed by Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos, but no cause of death was given. He leaves Alexey Leonov, the first spacewalker, and Boris Volynov as the last surviving members of that pioneering first group. "Bykovsky belonged to the first generation of Soviet cosmonauts, who wrote many bright pages in the glorious history of Russian manned cosmonautics," officials at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City said in a statement. Valery Fyodorovich Bykovsky was born on the 2 August 1934 in Pavlovsky Posad, near Moscow. As a boy, he moved around due to his father's job at the Ministry of Railways, spending seven years of his youth in Iran. In November 1955, he graduated from the Kachinsk Military Aviation Academy with top marks in flying and combat training. He started serving as a pilot the following year. The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team, a history of the pioneering group, quotes Bykovsky's father as saying: "He (Valery) has always been courageous and exciting, and dangerous professions attracted him." After his successful selection as a cosmonaut, Bykovsky was launched into orbit aboard the Vostok 5 mission, which lasted from 14-19 June 1963. The spacecraft entered a lower-than-expected orbit. And while the craft was in good technical shape, it become apparent a few days into the mission that it was losing altitude faster than expected. To prevent an uncontrolled re-entry, Soviet officials decided to curtail the flight and bring Bykovsky back to Earth. Although it has long since been surpassed in duration by missions carrying more than one crew member, it remains the longest flight by a single person. Bykovsky's mission overlapped with that of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. At one point, the two Vostok spacecraft were said to have come within 5km (3 mi) of one other. Tereshkova is now the last person alive to have flown in a Vostok ("east" in Russian), the first generation of Soviet-crewed spacecraft. Bykovsky would have commanded the second flight of the USSR's Soyuz spacecraft, the general design still in use today. But the first flight, Soyuz 1, crashed into the ground at high speed in April 1967 after its parachutes failed, killing its sole occupant, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. The same parachute fault was picked up in the Soyuz 2 craft, causing the flight to be cancelled. Bykovsky trained for the Soviet Union's programme to land on the Moon, which was also cancelled after American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down in the Sea of Tranquility in July 1969. In September 1976, he made his second spaceflight on the Soyuz 22 mission. Bykovsky and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Aksyonov spent a week in orbit photographing the surface of the Earth with a specially-built camera. The cosmonaut's third and final orbital flight would come on Soyuz 31, which docked in orbit with the Salyut 6 space station on 28 August 1978. Bykovsky and Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space, spent six days on Salyut 6, visiting the orbiting outpost's two resident crew members Vladimir Kovalyonok and Aleksandr Ivanchenkov. Their tasks were to deliver supplies to the crew and carry out scientific experiments aboard the station. Over his career, Bykovsky spent a total of nearly 21 days in space. He left the cosmonaut corps in 1982 and later worked in several roles at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City near Moscow. Bykovsky was married to Valentina Mikhailovna Sukhova, with whom he had two sons. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47741793 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 30, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 30, 2019 (edited) @nudge@Bluewolf "SPACE (BURGER) THE FINAL FRONTIER" Quote Space burger crashes at football club's training ground © Sky News Screen Grab The burger was attached to a polystyrene box with a GoPro camera inside. Pic: YouTube/Killem A groundsman at Colchester United's training ground had an out-of-this-world experience when he discovered a space burger had landed on the pitch. The frozen meaty treat was attached to a polystyrene box with a GoPro and sent up to space by Tom Stanniland, better known by his YouTube name Kill'em, who called the League Two club to explain. He said: "I sent a burger into space using a weather balloon. It had gone about 24 miles up and the weather balloon popped. It's come back down, travelled over 100 miles and landed right here." weren't quite sure what to think, but we were delighted to reunite Tom with his meal and the rest of his equipment. "We've seen plenty of things happen in football over the years, but this has to be one of the most unusual - but it's certainly helped spread the name of Colchester United!" © Sky News Screen Grab Mr Stanniland said the burger "did not taste very nice." Pic: YouTube/Killem Mr. Stanniland claimed he would eat the burger once it had safely returned to terra firma - wherever that may be. He was able to determine its location thanks to a tracker he had installed in the box. After contacting the club to confirm its whereabouts, Mr. Stanniland travelled down from his home in Sheffield to retrieve it. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/space-burger-crashes-at-football-clubs-training-ground/ar-BBVpBn1 Edited March 30, 2019 by CaaC - John 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 30, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 30, 2019 Wtf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 30, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 30, 2019 5 minutes ago, nudge said: Wtf Looking at him eating that burger has made me hungry yet I have just eaten a plateful of Tagaleti Bolognese. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 30, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 30, 2019 2 minutes ago, CaaC - John said: Looking at him eating that burger has made me hungry yet I have just eaten a plateful of Tagaleti Bolognese. I don't know, a frozen burger that just fell out of the sky doesn't sound very appealing to me 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluewolf 7,161 Posted March 30, 2019 Share Posted March 30, 2019 14 minutes ago, nudge said: I don't know, a frozen burger that just fell out of the sky doesn't sound very appealing to me I bet it was a McDonalds as well which isn't even fresh on the day from the counter let alone after bumming around space for a while... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 30, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 30, 2019 8 minutes ago, Bluewolf said: I bet it was a McDonalds as well which isn't even fresh on the day from the counter let alone after bumming around space for a while... You're right - it was a Big Mac 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 31, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 31, 2019 Burgers in Space and now it's washing machines!! Quote Final frontier: Russia develops washing machine for space © Provided by AFPRelaxNews Will astronauts soon be able to wash clothes in space? The days of astronauts packing enough clean clothes to last a whole mission could soon be over as Russia said Friday it is developing a washing machine for space. The RKK Energiya space corporation that builds spacecraft dropped a brief mention of the innovation in a video posted on YouTube. "By the way, for future lunar expeditions and other interplanetary crafts, RKK Energiya has started developing a special space washing machine," the voiceover says, without giving further details. With water at a premium, currently astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) for stints of some six months cannot wash their clothes in any way and simply put on new outfits when their clothes get dirty. © Getty Representational image Astronauts usually wear the same outfit for three to four days and then throw them away with other rubbish. In 2017, a Russian space industry journal published a paper by RKK Energiya researchers with a description and diagrams of a washing machine that could be used on the ISS. It said that for three crew members, up to 660 kilogrammes (1,450 lbs) of clothes have to be ferried to the ISS over a year. For a two-year flight to Mars with six crew members this could increase to three tonnes, the authors warned. Having onboard "equipment for hygienic treatment (washing) could significantly lessen the stocks of personal hygiene products and items of clothing," the report said. Researchers proposed using not water, which would be wasteful and require extra storage, but carbon dioxide that is produced by humans' breathing and can be turned into a liquid under pressure. Last year, the Moscow Institute of Chemical Machine-Building said that it was going to develop a shower and sauna for astronauts as well as facilities for them to wash hands and clothes. NASA has also wrestled with the problem, funding research into methods of washing clothes without water and anti-microbial clothing that could be worn longer. The announcement of the washing machine project comes as NASA this week cancelledthe first ever two-women spacewalk from the ISS because there was only one spacesuit on board of the right size. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/final-frontier-russia-develops-washing-machine-for-space/ar-BBVr68k?ocid=chromentp 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted March 31, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted March 31, 2019 7 hours ago, CaaC - John said: The days of astronauts packing enough clean clothes to last a whole mission could soon be over as Russia said Friday it is developing a washing machine for space. This is actually very interesting; a washing machine would make astronaut lives on board more comfortable and it would also solve the problem of having to use so much cargo space for fresh clothes; especially in the future missions farther out. It remains to be seen if they manage to actually develop a working one. NASA tried to do something similar years ago but it seems that project was abandoned at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 31, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 31, 2019 1 hour ago, nudge said: This is actually very interesting; a washing machine would make astronaut lives on board more comfortable and it would also solve the problem of having to use so much cargo space for fresh clothes; especially in the future missions farther out. It remains to be seen if they manage to actually develop a working one. NASA tried to do something similar years ago but it seems that project was abandoned at some point. Technology if you can call it that about space travel and living conditions and what not is progressing in leaps and bounds nowadays so you never know, I can picture when we are not here and departed into the wild blue yonder in say a 100/200 years time mankind might be living on the Moon, Mars and beyond and time travel from mother earth won't take years to get from A to B and back again...that's if we have not blown ourselves to kingdom come with a nuclear war though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted March 31, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted March 31, 2019 Quote Scientists discover new Saturn-like planet 60 TIMES bigger than Earth Talia Shadwell © Gabriel Perez Diaz, Instituto de Astrof’sica de Canarias/NASA caption: A "hot Saturn" passes in front of its host star in this illustration https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1516/symphony-of-stars-the-science-of-stellar-sound-waves/ Astronomers have discovered a new "hot Saturn" planet a whopping 60 times the size of Earth. The planet discovered by NASA's new TESS mission had special significance for scientists. It is the first planet that has been identified by the mission in which a distant planet's "starquakes" could be measured - allowing scientists to learn even more about its character. The distant planet has reportedly been described as a "hot Saturn" in a recently-accepted scientific paper because the planet is about the same size as the ringed giant. It is also very close to its host star, completing an orbit in just 14 days, which makes it very hot, Science Daily reports. The planet has been dubbed TOI 197.01 - Toi is short for "TESS Object of Interest". Video: A New Saturn-Sized Planet Has Been Discovered (GeoBeats) View Video >>>>https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/scientists-discover-new-saturn-like-planet-60-times-bigger-than-earth/ar-BBVpjiE?li=AAnZ9Ug Judging by its oscillations - or "starquakes" - it is believed to be about 5 billion years old and a little heavier than our own Sun. The scientists also reportedly believe it is a gas planet about 60 times the mass of Earth, making it roughly the size of our relatively closer neighbour Saturn. Science Daily reports that the experts' teamwork with NASA enabled the TESS mission to discover the first planet for which its host star's starquakes can be measured. Details of the "hot Saturn" will be published in the Astronomical Journal, and will feature the work of a team of 141 astronomers. TESS, the "Trasiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite", launched from Florida's Cape Canaveral station on April 18 2018. The spacecraft's incredible mission, led by Massachusetts Institute of Techology physicists, is to find "exoplanets" - planets beyond our own Solar System. According to Science Daily, its four camera take nearly month-long looks at 26 vertical strips of the sky. Over two years it will scan the southern hemisphere, then the northern hemisphere - eventually scanning 85 per cent of the sjy. Astronomers using high-tech computer technology before sorting through the images looking for tiny dips in stars' light caused by an orbiting planet passing in front of it. Nasa's Kepler Mission, which paved the way for TESS, scanned the skies in a similar fashion, Science Daily reports. TESS' mission is to find bright, nearby stars allowing astronomers to learn more about the planets from other space and ground observation points. They have a huge workload ahead of them. © Reuters TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is shown in this photo obtained by Reuters on March 28, 2018. NASA plans to send TESS into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set for blastoff sometime between April 16 and June on a two-year mission. NASA/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. According to reports in an earlier discovery, the TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortium identified a target list of sun-like oscillating stars similar to Earth's own future sun, and drew up a list of 25,000 stars. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/scientists-discover-new-saturn-like-planet-60-times-bigger-than-earth/ar-BBVpjiE?li=AAnZ9Ug 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted April 2, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted April 2, 2019 Quote Taking the temperature of black holes Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have developed a new formula to quickly calculate the temperature of a black hole. They say it is simple and powerful, and offers fundamental insights into space and time. The formula owes its origin to observations made on the Union Canal near Edinburgh 185 years ago. The idea that black holes have temperatures at all came as something of a surprise to researchers. They have so much mass and exert a gravitational pull so strong that nothing - not even heat or light - was expected to escape. However, Professor Stephen Hawking changed that. In 1974, at the age of just 32, he proposed the concept of what is now called Hawking radiation. He predicted black holes would emit thermal radiation and gradually evaporate. This is still at the frontiers of theory, with different schools of thought on the exact process.much radiation a black hole gives out. Contradictory answers Accuracy has proved elusive. Complex calculations have produced contradictory answers. At Heriot-Watt, Dr Fabio Biancalana and his colleagues have come up with their new formula to quickly and precisely calculate the Hawking radiation temperature from any kind of black hole. Dr Biancalala says they tested it against all published types of black holes - whether static, rotating, charged or even more exotic - and it always produced the exact Hawking temperature. The key is the mathematical discipline of topology. It deals with the properties of space - and not just outer space. Topology treats things according to the fundamental properties they possess, even if they are bent, crushed, folded or otherwise deformed. Tearing, cutting, gluing or poking holes would be cheating. One celebrated example is a coffee mug and a doughnut. In topological terms, they are the same. That's because each is a lump of stuff with a single hole in it. In theory you could even squish the mug into the shape of a doughnut if you fancied (provided you didn't mind how it tasted). New formula "We discovered that only the topology of black holes matters when it comes to determining Hawking radiation," says Dr Biancalana. "Not the size, not the electric charge, the spacetime in which they are embedded, or how they spin around their axis. "Black holes can be physically very different, but if they have the same topology they will emit the same amount of Hawking radiation." In effect the new formula counts the holes of a black hole and the spacetime that surrounds it (yes, even black holes have holes in them). This information is enough to determine the temperature. Dr Biancalana calls it a "magic formula". "For years scientists have been theorising about four dimensions and whether space has more dimensions we are still ignorant of, and now we know only two dimensions really matter in the description of all these astronomical monsters." Which leads us to the banks of the Union Canal, not too far from the Heriot-Watt campus on the outskirts of Edinburgh. 'Something fundamental' It was there that the Scottish engineer John Scott Russell first described what he called a "wave of translation" - a solitary wave that kept its shape while travelling at a constant speed. He hoped his work would lead to a better canal barge. These days - now called solitons - these waves are important in laser physics and fibre optics. The Heriot-Watt team realised that, as solitons and black holes shared identical mathematical properties, Hawking radiation would follow the same rules. Dr Biancalana says it takes us a step closer to understanding how the universe works. "This must mean something fundamental about space and time," he says. "Now we just need to find out what." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-47773553 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted April 3, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted April 3, 2019 Quote Most images of black holes are illustrations. Here’s what our telescopes actually capture. Brian Resnick © NASA/ESA/STScI Finally, next week, we may get to see one up close for the first time. Impossibly dense, deep, and powerful, black holes reveal the limits of physics. Nothing can escape one, not even light. Even though black holes excite the imagination like few other concepts in science, the truth is that no astronomer has actually seen one. We’ve “heard” them, so to speak, as scientists have recorded the gravitational waves (literal ripples in spacetime) emanating from black holes that collided with one another billions of years ago. Video: Jet from supermassive black hole seen ricocheting in space ( Amaze Lab )>>https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/most-images-of-black-holes-are-illustrations-heres-what-our-telescopes-actually-capture/ar-BBVylbo But any photo you’ve seen of a dark mass warping spacetime … well, that’s just an illustration. Like this one: This soon may change. On April 10, a collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope is set to announce the results of an effort to capture an image of the supermassive blackhole at the center of our galaxy. The National Science Foundation is describing the results as “groundbreaking.” And if an image is produced, it will be a remarkable accomplishment. Because as massive black holes are, they’re actually incredibly hard to see up close. © NASA/Goddard Why no astronomer has ever seen a black hole with a telescope Black holes are born when massive stars collapse in on themselves and create a region of gravity so intense that not even light can escape its grasp. Astronomers also speculate that some black holes may have been formed in the early chaotic universe after the Big Bang. The biggest problem with trying to see a black hole is that even the supermassive ones (with masses millions of times heavier than our sun) are relatively tiny. “The largest one in the sky [is] the black hole in the center of the Milky Way,” Dimitrios Psaltis, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona, explained in an email. “And taking a picture of it would be equivalent to taking a picture of a DVD on the surface of the moon.” What’s more, because of their strong gravity, black holes tend to be surrounded by other bright matter that makes it hard to see the object itself. That’s why when hunting for black holes, astronomers don’t usually try for direct observation. Instead, they look for evidence of the effects of a black hole’s gravity and radiation. “We typically measure the orbits of stars and gas that seem to circle around very dark ‘spots’ in the sky and measure how much mass is there in that dark spot,” Psaltis says. “If we know of no other astrophysical object that can be so massive and so dark as what we just measured, we consider this as very strong evidence that a black hole lies there.” We do have indirect images of black holes, however Some of the best indirect images of black holes come from the Chandra X-ray Observatory. “The friction and the high velocities of material forming out of a black hole naturally produces X-rays,” Peter Edmonds, a NASA astrophysicist and communications specialist working with Chandra, said. And Chandra is a space telescope specially designed to see those X-rays. For example, the Chandra observatory documented these X-ray “burps” emanating from the merger of two galaxies around 26 million light-years away. The astrophysicists suspect that these burps came from a massive black hole: © X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Texas/E.Schlegel et al; Optical: NASA/STScI Similarly, the fuchsia blobs on this image are regions of intense X-ray radiation, thought to be black holes that formed when two galaxies (the blue and pink rings) collided: © X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI Here are X-rays and sound waves emanating from the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster — more indirect evidence of a black hole: © NASA/CXC/IoA/A.Fabian et al. © NASA/CXC/Amherst College/D.Haggard et al And here’s a zoomed-out image of that X-ray flare. © A zoomed-out view of the X-ray flare from the center of the Milky Way. There may even be as many of 20,000 smaller black holes surrounding the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Recently, a team of researchers found evidence of a dozen black holes within three light years of the galactic center. In the following x-ray image, they’re marked in blue. Black holes only release X-ray radiation when they consume matter (like from a neighboring star). But these gorging black holes are actually quite rare. More often, black holes remain undetectable. But the fact that scientists were able to find these dozen “bright” black holes suggests there are tens-of-thousands more in this region. We can see black holes spew massive jets of matter into the universe This composite image (combining data from Hubble and a radio telescope) shows jets of energy and matter being thrown out of the center of the Hercules A galaxy. These jets shoot out at nearly the speed of light, demonstrating the awesome destructive power of black holes. © NASA/Hubble This next image shows massive jets that are thought to be propelling away from the black hole at the center of Centaurus A, a galaxy 13 million light-years away. The jets are longer than the galaxy itself. © ESO/WFI (visible); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (microwave); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray) You’re looking at 20 years of data on the stars that live near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A* (spoken aloud it’s “Sagittarius A-star”). And yes, stars — some many times more massive than our sun — are orbiting it. Here’s another look at the same phenomenon. This video includes 16 years of observations from the European Southern Observatory, or ESO. This isn’t an animation — it’s real images of stars sped up by a factor of 32 million. Watch them dance around a mysterious blank center. Star S2, which is marked in the fist video with a yellow line, is around 15 times as massive as our sun. That’s big. But it’s nothing compared with the black hole, which is estimated to be some 4 million times more massive than our sun. The gravity it produces whips S2’s orbit to around 11 million miles per hour, which is about 200 times the speed the Earth orbits around the sun. S2 completes one orbit in around 16 Earth years. Recently, astronomers witnessed S2 passing by Sagittarius A* at a speed greater than 15.5 million miles per hour. That’s more than 4,300 miles every second, or nearly 3 percent of the speed of light. (The observation, once again, proved that Einstein’s theory of gravity is correct.) We haven’t directly observed this black hole, but scientists suspect it’s there. “These orbits, and a simple application of Kepler’s Laws, provide the best evidence yet for a supermassive black hole, which has a mass of 4 million times the mass of the Sun,” explains UCLA’s Galactic Center Group, which produced the animation. Recently, scientists got their best bit of evidence yet that Sagittarius A* is indeed a supermassive black hole. Around the time Star S2 was making its close pass of the black hole, ESO astronomers witnessed brief, powerful flares of gas coming out of something called the accretion disc. This is the region surrounding the black hole where matter is torn to shreds by the intense gravity but has not fallen inside the black hole. Further calculations revealed these flares were moving at about 30 percent of the speed of light, orbiting the black hole once every 45 minutes (with a single orbit covering some 150 million miles). Nothing but a supermassive black hole could explain such violent, powerful motion. The observations, the ESO reports, “exactly matches theoretical predictions for hot spots orbiting close to a black hole of four million solar masses.” Furthermore, astronomers suspect, that the flare was located very close to the edge of the black hole — the event horizon — beyond which no light can escape. Here, see a computer simulation of how the gases orbit the black hole. We can’t see a black hole yet. But we can “hear” them collide. When two black holes collide, they unleash a massive wave of gravitation. Just as sound waves disturb the air to make noise, gravitational waves disturb the fabric of spacetime to push and pull matter as if it existed in a funhouse mirror. If a large gravitational wave passed through you, you’d see one of your arms grow longer than the other. If you were wearing a watch on each wrist, you’d see them tick out of sync. When two black holes collide, they unleash a massive wave of gravitation. But by the time they reach Earth 1.4 billion years later, those waves have become very faint (like how the ripples from a stone dropped in a pond mellow out the further you get from the stone). But in the past few years, scientists have been able to listen in on these ripples with LIGO and VIRGO, huge, global experiments that can detect these tiny ripples in spacetime. Because the waves LIGO detect have a frequency that’s comparable to the range of frequencies we can hear, scientists can pump up the volume and translate them into sound. (Yes, this isn’t exactly what it sounds like, but rather an audio representation of the data. And, yes, the event would have made no noise in the vacuum of space.) Soon we may see an actual black hole © Hotaka Shiokawa / Event Horizon Telescope Because the black hole in the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, is so relatively small, and surrounded by so much occluding material, it’s going to take a huge telescope to see it. According to Nature, it would take a telescope 1,000 times more powerful than Hubble to get enough resolution to see it. An international effort called the Event Horizon Telescope is an attempt to solve this problem. Conventional optical telescopes use bigger and bigger mirrors to see objects smaller and farther away in the universe. The Event Horizon Telescope is doing something similar: It’s creating a virtual telescope the size of the entire Earth. In April 2017, the Event Horizon team connected radio telescopes at multiple locations across the world — as far-flung as Hawaii and the South Pole — and instructing them all to look toward Sagittarius A* for a few days. The network is the result of an international collaboration of 14 research institutions across the world. Together, these eight telescopes have the power to “count the stitches on a baseball from 8,000 miles away,” as MIT explains. The array generated such a huge amount of data that it was more efficient to fly the data from each of the telescopes to a centralized location than it would be to transfer it over the internet. For years, the scientists have been stitching all that data together. The hope is that the final image will show the event horizon, the boundary beyond which no light can escape. That event horizon will likely be surrounded by an accretion disc, a bright, incredibly energetic ring of matter that swirls around the black hole. It could look something like this. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/most-images-of-black-holes-are-illustrations-heres-what-our-telescopes-actually-capture/ar-BBVylbo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted April 3, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted April 3, 2019 8 hours ago, CaaC - John said: On April 10, a collaboration called the Event Horizon Telescope is set to announce the results of an effort to capture an image of the supermassive blackhole at the center of our galaxy. The National Science Foundation is describing the results as “groundbreaking.” And if an image is produced, it will be a remarkable accomplishment. Because as massive black holes are, they’re actually incredibly hard to see up close. Been looking forward to it for quite a while now; actually thought they were unsuccessful and just quietly abandoned the project. Good to hear that they actually manage to capture something and it's apparently "groundbreaking" I'm eager to see it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted April 3, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted April 3, 2019 (edited) 44 minutes ago, nudge said: Been looking forward to it for quite a while now; actually thought they were unsuccessful and just quietly abandoned the project. Good to hear that they actually manage to capture something and it's apparently "groundbreaking" I'm eager to see it! Same here, black holes in space have always fascinated me and at first when I was a young lad I thought it was a wild imagination to do with space especially in films, but not now. Edited April 3, 2019 by CaaC - John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted April 4, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted April 4, 2019 Progress cargo ship launch on Soyuz to the ISS is live; T-10 minutes as of now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted April 4, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted April 4, 2019 Quote JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. It will complete a unique tour of the Jupiter system that will include in-depth studies of three potentially ocean-bearing satellites, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. The Jupiter tour includes several flybys of each planet-sized world, and it ends with orbit insertion around Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. JUICE will carry the most powerful scientific payload ever flown to the outer Solar System. It consists of 10 state-of-the-art instruments plus one science experiment that uses the spacecraft telecommunication system with ground-based radio telescopes. JUICE's instruments will enable scientists to compare each of these icy satellites and to investigate the potential for such bodies to harbour habitable environments such as subsurface oceans. They will also carry out observations of Jupiter, its atmosphere, magnetosphere, satellites and rings. The launch of JUICE is currently planned for 2022. After a 7.5-year cruise toward Jupiter, which includes gravitational assists from Earth, Venus and Mars, the spacecraft will enter orbit around the giant planet in 2029. https://sci.esa.int/juice/61286-review-board-gives-juice-the-all-clear/ Exciting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted April 4, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted April 4, 2019 The fastest rendezvous and docking with the ISS mission is successful! Also this is proper rocket porn: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted April 5, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted April 5, 2019 (edited) Quote Hayabusa-2: Japanese probe likely to have 'bombed' an asteroid The Japanese Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is thought to have detonated an explosive charge on the asteroid it is exploring. Its mission is to create an artificial crater on the asteroid Ryugu. If this is successful, it will later return to gather samples of the asteroid, which could help scientists understand how earth was formed in the early solar system. According to Kyodo News, the experiment's success will only be confirmed in late April. The explosive device, called the Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI), was deployed by the Hayabusa-2 on Friday. The SCI is a 14kg conical container attached to the Hayabusa-2 and packed with plastic explosive. It was intended to punch a 10m-wide hole in the asteroid upon impact. The SCI on Friday successfully separated from the Hayabusa-2 at an altitude of 500m above the surface of Ryugu. In the meantime, the Hayabusa-2 manoeuvred itself to hide away on the other side of the asteroid, shielding the spacecraft from any flying debris. If the detonation is successful, images of the moment it happened should be captured by a small camera called DCAM3, which was deployed by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa). The camera is meant to observe the explosion from a distance of about 1km and capture images of the projectile explosion back to its "mothership". However, it is unclear how long it would take for these images to be transmitted back to Earth. If all goes to plan, Hayabusa-2 will in a few weeks return to the crater to collect pristine samples of the asteroid that have not been exposed to the harsh environment of space. These samples are expected to reveal vital data to help explain how planets were formed in the early period of the solar system. Yuichi Tsuda, the mission's project manager, had earlier explained: "We expect the impact accuracy [of the SCI] to be something like a 200m radius, it's very large... we expect to have a hole somewhere in that very big region. "We will try to find that artificial crater two weeks later, by descending to a lower altitude and making extensive observations." A video of the SCI being tested on Earth can be seen below: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47818460 vv Ryugu belongs to a particularly primitive type of space rock known as a C-type asteroid. It's a relic left over from the early days of our Solar System. But bombardment with cosmic radiation over the aeons is thought to alter the surfaces of these planetary building blocks. So, scientists want to get at a fresh sample that hasn't been changed by this process. Speaking at last month's 50th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), project scientist Sei-ichiro Watanabe said the experiment would also "provide us with information of the strength of the surface layer of Ryugu". This could help shed light on how the asteroid developed its characteristic "spinning top" shape. Scientific results suggest Ryugu was formed from loose debris that was blasted off a bigger asteroid and which then came back together to form a secondary object. At the LPSC meeting, held in The Woodlands in Texas, Yuichi Tsuda told me how the team decided where on Ryugu to generate the artificial crater. "There are two things: the first priority is to make a hole where we can easily identify a crater... so, easy observation, not too hard, not too bumpy," he said. "Second, somewhere that's as feasible as possible in terms of landing... if those two don't meet together, we go with the first priority." Scientists may command Hayabusa-2 to descend into the crater at a later date to collect a pristine sample of rock. But they will only do so if there is no risk of the spacecraft colliding with a boulder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47818460 5 Edited April 5, 2019 by CaaC - John 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber CaaC (John)+ 5,360 Posted April 5, 2019 Author Subscriber Share Posted April 5, 2019 Quote A newfound tiny planet may be a glimpse of Earth's ultimate fate Catherine Zuckerman In 1995, a cosmic question was answered when a ground-based telescope picked up on a faint, wobbly signal coming from hundreds of light-years away. The telescope had detected the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star, a breakthrough discovery proving that, yes, there are planets beyond our solar system—and hinting at the potential for many more. Astrophysicists have since confirmed nearly 4,000 exoplanets orbiting stars across the Milky Way galaxy. Like our sun, these stars are typically in the so-called main sequence phase of their lives, a period that lasts billions of years and during which the stars burn healthy, hot, and bright. But now, a group of researchers has zeroed in on a planetary body closely orbiting a white dwarf—a burned-out star that is on death’s door. Described this week in the journal Science, the findings are among the first of their kind, and they offer a glimpse at what Earth’s fate could be when our sun begins to die. A planetary fragment orbits a white dwarf star in an illustration of the newfound system. Led by University of Warwick astrophysicist Christopher Manser, the team discovered the rocky object using a method called spectroscopy, which involves collecting and analyzing the different wavelengths of light coming from the gas disk surrounding the white dwarf. This is the first time this method has been used to identify a planetary body orbiting a white dwarf. Using the Gran Telescopio Canarias in La Palma, Spain, the team observed the "color of light emitted by calcium in the disc, and we collected a spectrum every two to three minutes,” Manser says in an email. This technique allowed the team to detect subtle color changes in the disk as it moved closer and further away from Earth. This kind of color shift is called a Doppler wobble, similar to the audible Doppler effect that makes a police siren seem to change pitch as the car races by. "For our detection, this change in color was used to identify the presence of a planetesimal orbiting in the disc on a period of two hours," Manser says. The team categorizes the object as a planetesimal, because of its relatively small size. Planetary reconstruction A big part of the reason scientists study exoplanets is to learn more about the evolution of our own solar system. If this planetesimal was once Earth-like, as Manser believes, the outcome is bleak. As the planetesimal’s star began running out of fuel and expanding—as most sun-like stars do when they reach the ends of their lives—the intense gravity would have ripped apart any closely orbiting planets, reducing them to their rocky cores and generating disks of debris. Manser suspects Earth will face a similar fate. “When the sun will eventually run out of fuel and expand in about five billion years, it’s going to engulf Mercury, Venus, and most likely Earth,” he says. “But Mars and the other bodies like Jupiter, Saturn, the asteroid belt, and so on, they should survive the entire process, although they’ll be on a slightly larger orbit, because some will lose mass and the sun will eventually be a white dwarf.” However, there may be a bright side, says astrophysics professor Lisa Kaltnegger, who is also the director at Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute and was not involved with Manser's research. If planetesimals orbiting white dwarfs were to collide, she says, they could eventually coalesce to form new, stable planets. Her studies of this possibility suggest these reconstructed worlds could even be habitable. “After the white dwarf cools down further, we have shown that such a planet could maintain balmy conditions for billions of years,” she writes in an email. For instance, while the dramatic conditions of this new planet's birth would likely deprive it of surface water at first, the life-giving liquid could be re-delivered by impacts with water-carrying comets, so that "instead of a hot dry zombie planet, you could get a planet where life could potentially start all over again," she says. “This paper puts the first puzzle piece in place to determine how planets could form around young white dwarfs from planetesimals.” For now, Manser hopes to apply the spectroscopy method to other star systems where gas disks are present. They may contain more planetesimals that will help fill in our understanding of planetary life cycles, he says, “and we want to hunt for those next.” https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/newfound-tiny-planet-may-be-a-glimpse-of-earths-ultimate-fate/ar-BBVEjqY?ocid=chromentp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluewolf 7,161 Posted April 7, 2019 Share Posted April 7, 2019 Does make you wonder if it was all fake... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subscriber nudge+ 15,328 Posted April 7, 2019 Subscriber Share Posted April 7, 2019 8 minutes ago, Bluewolf said: Does make you wonder if it was all fake... Because Lunar Overshoes... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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