The Space Thread

[Bjornebye]

2 hours ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

God must have been tripping his/her tits off when he/she came up with the whole idea the universe pre the big bang.  

Nah that was just some really strong skunk 

[Rico1304]

On the plan to get to the moon in 5 years. 

 

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-white-house-wants-nasa-to-put-boots-on-the-moon-by-2024-that-seems-unlikely

[Bjornebye]

First sign of life outside Earth is a fart

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/mars-methane-detection-confirmed-spacecraft-martian-red-planet-latest-a8849546.html

 

 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Great so now there's trump on mars too.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

First sign of life outside Earth is a fart

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/mars-methane-detection-confirmed-spacecraft-martian-red-planet-latest-a8849546.html

 

 

[KMD7]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/10/black-hole-picture-captured-for-first-time-in-space-breakthrough

 

Black hole picture captured for first time in space ‘breakthrough’

Black holes

Black hole picture captured for first time in space ‘breakthrough’

A network of eight radio telescopes around the world helped to record the image

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent

@hannahdev

Wed 10 Apr 2019 14.00 BST Last modified on Wed 10 Apr 2019 15.00 BST

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email

Shares

25,934

26k

 

The image of a black hole captured by the Event Horizon Telescope. Photograph: EHT Collaboration

Astronomers have captured the first image of a black hole, heralding a revolution in our understanding of the universe’s most enigmatic objects.

The picture shows a halo of dust and gas, tracing the outline of a colossal black hole, at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy, 55m light years from Earth.

The black hole itself – a cosmic trapdoor from which neither light nor matter can escape – is unseeable. But the latest observations take astronomers right to its threshold for the first time, illuminating the event horizon beyond which all known physical laws break down.

Quick guide

What are black holes?

Show Hide

Black holes were first predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which reimagined gravity as the warping of space and time by matter and energy. 

The equations predicted that, beyond a certain threshold, when too much matter or energy is concentrated in one place, space and time collapse, leaving behind a sinkhole through which light and matter can enter but not escape. 

At first these were thought to be mathematical oddities, rather than real astronomical objects, but in the past century overwhelming evidence has confirmed that black holes are out there.

The edge of the black hole is defined by its so-called event horizon. This is the point at which escaping would require something to travel at faster than the speed of light – which as far as we know nothing does – so it is the point of no return.

Black holes are surrounded by an accretion disk of dust and gas, orbiting at close to the speed of light. A lot of this material is destined for oblivion, although some of it is ejected as powerful jets of radiation.

Was this helpful?

The breakthrough image was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes spanning locations from Antarctica to Spain and Chile, in an effort involving more than 200 scientists.

Sheperd Doeleman, EHT director and Harvard University senior research fellow said: “Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe. We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have taken a picture of a black hole.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Scientists announce the first image captured of a black hole – watch live

The image gives the first direct glimpse of a black hole’s accretion disc, a fuzzy doughnut-shaped ring of gas and dust that steadily “feeds” the monster within.

Sign up for Lab Notes - the Guardian's weekly science update

Read more

 

The EHT picks up radiation emitted by particles within the disc that are heated to billions of degrees as they swirl around the black hole at close to the speed of light, before vanishing down the plughole.

The halo’s crescent-like appearance in the image is because the particles in the side of the disc rotating towards Earth are flung towards us faster and so appear brighter. The dark shadow within marks the edge of the event horizon, the point of no return, beyond which no light or matter can travel fast enough to escape the inexorable gravitational pull of the black hole.

Black holes were first predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity – although Einstein himself was sceptical that they actually existed. Since then, astronomers have accumulated overwhelming evidence that these cosmic sinkholes are out there, including recent detection of gravitational waves that ripple across the cosmos when pairs of them collide.

But black holes are so small, dark and distant that observing them directly requires a telescope with a resolution equivalent to being able to see a bagel on the moon. This was once thought to be an insurmountable challenge.

 

The EHT achieved the necessary firepower by combining data from eight of the world’s leading radio observatories, including the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (Alma) in Chile and the South Pole Telescope, creating an effective telescope the size of the Earth.

When observations were launched in 2017, the EHT had two primary targets. First was Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, which has a mass of about 4m suns. The second target, which yielded the image, was a supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87, into which the equivalent of 6bn suns of light and matter has disappeared.

The success of the project hinged on clear skies on several continents simultaneously and exquisite coordination between the eight far-flung teams. Observations at the different sites were coordinated using atomic clocks, called hydrogen masers, accurate to within one second every 100 million years. And, on one night in 2017, everything came together. “We got super lucky, the weather was perfect,” said Ziri Younsi, a member of the EHT collaboration who is based at University College London. .

The sheer volume of data generated was also unprecedented – in one night the EHT generated as much data as the Large Hadron Collider does in a year. This meant waiting for months for the South Pole data, which could only be shipped out at the end of Antarctic winter.

The observations are already giving scientists new insights into the weird environment close to black holes, where gravity is so fierce that reality as we know it is distorted beyond recognition.

Black holes and soft hair: why Stephen Hawking's final work is important

Read more

At the event horizon, light is bent in a perfect loop around the black hole, meaning if you stood there you would be able to see the back of your own head. The observations also provide one of the most stringent tests to date of Einstein’s theory of general relativity: this predicts a rounded shape of the black hole’s halo, in line with what EHT has observed.

Scientists are also hoping to understand more about the origin of jets of radiation that are blasted out from the poles of some black holes at close to the speed of light, creating brilliant beacons that can be picked out across the cosmos.

However, the observations do not yet reveal anything about the black hole’s inscrutable interior.

 

“The black hole is not the event horizon, it’s something inside. It could be something just inside the event horizon, an exotic object hovering just beneath the surface, or it could be a singularity at the centre … or a ring,” said Younsi. “It doesn’t yet give us an explanation of what’s going on inside.”

Heino Falcke, chair of the EHT science council, who is based at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said: “The big question for me is whether we’ll ever be able to transcend that limit. The answer may be maybe not. That’s frustrating but we’ll have to accept it"

[Bjornebye]

Saw my first black hole after Mr Smiths in Warrington in 2000 

[moof]

Pretty cool

[Paulie Dangerously]

Seen my daughter do better drawings 

[Guest Pistonbroke]

https://www.livescience.com/65684-mystery-moon-blob-is-massive.html

 

Earth's moon is hiding an enormous secret on its storied dark side. Deep below the moon's South Pole-Aitken basin (the largest preserved impact crater anywhere in the solar system), researchers have detected a gargantuan "anomaly" of heavy metal lodged in the mantle that is apparently altering the moon's gravitational field.

According to a study of the mysterious blob, published April 5 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the anomaly may be the heavy leftovers of the asteroid that crashed into the far side of the moon and created the giant South Pole-Aitken crater some 4 billion years ago. However, all that researchers can say for sure at this point is that the blob is big — likely weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 quadrillion US tons (2.18 quintillion kilograms).

"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground," lead study author Peter James, assistant professor of planetary geophysics at Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences, said in a statement. "That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected." [10 Interesting Places in the Solar System We'd Like to Visit]

James and his colleagues discovered the blob while comparing maps of lunar topography with data collected by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission — a 2011 experiment wherein two satellites orbited the moon in tandem, mapping the precise strength of its gravitational pull at various locations.

The GRAIL readings revealed something very heavy tugging down the bottom of the South Pole-Aitken crater by more than half a mile.Whatever it was, the offending anomaly was buried hundreds of miles below the moon's surface.

In the new study, the researchers ran impact simulations to show that this underground debris could, theoretically, be the remnants of a heavy iron-nickel asteroid that got stuck part way to the lunar core.

"We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle until the present day," James said.

Measuring about 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide, the South Pole-Aitken crater is already one of the moon's largest mysteries. Not only is it the biggest impact crater in the solar system, but its towering rim and deep basin also contain the moon's highest and lowest elevations.

Researchers aren't totally sure what the vast bowl of dusty rock is made of, but think it could include some chunks of lunar mantle amidst the upper layers of crust and dust. China's Chang'E-4 lander, which reached the far side of the moon earlier this year, recently began analyzing soil near the crater, giving scientists their first peek at what the moon's innards might be made of. As a moon-walker might say, that's one small step toward understanding the blob.

[Bjornebye]

24 minutes ago, Pistonbroke said:

https://www.livescience.com/65684-mystery-moon-blob-is-massive.html

 

Earth's moon is hiding an enormous secret on its storied dark side. Deep below the moon's South Pole-Aitken basin (the largest preserved impact crater anywhere in the solar system), researchers have detected a gargantuan "anomaly" of heavy metal lodged in the mantle that is apparently altering the moon's gravitational field.

According to a study of the mysterious blob, published April 5 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the anomaly may be the heavy leftovers of the asteroid that crashed into the far side of the moon and created the giant South Pole-Aitken crater some 4 billion years ago. However, all that researchers can say for sure at this point is that the blob is big — likely weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 quadrillion US tons (2.18 quintillion kilograms).

"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground," lead study author Peter James, assistant professor of planetary geophysics at Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences, said in a statement. "That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected." [10 Interesting Places in the Solar System We'd Like to Visit]

James and his colleagues discovered the blob while comparing maps of lunar topography with data collected by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission — a 2011 experiment wherein two satellites orbited the moon in tandem, mapping the precise strength of its gravitational pull at various locations.

The GRAIL readings revealed something very heavy tugging down the bottom of the South Pole-Aitken crater by more than half a mile.Whatever it was, the offending anomaly was buried hundreds of miles below the moon's surface.

In the new study, the researchers ran impact simulations to show that this underground debris could, theoretically, be the remnants of a heavy iron-nickel asteroid that got stuck part way to the lunar core.

"We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle until the present day," James said.

Measuring about 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide, the South Pole-Aitken crater is already one of the moon's largest mysteries. Not only is it the biggest impact crater in the solar system, but its towering rim and deep basin also contain the moon's highest and lowest elevations.

Researchers aren't totally sure what the vast bowl of dusty rock is made of, but think it could include some chunks of lunar mantle amidst the upper layers of crust and dust. China's Chang'E-4 lander, which reached the far side of the moon earlier this year, recently began analyzing soil near the crater, giving scientists their first peek at what the moon's innards might be made of. As a moon-walker might say, that's one small step toward understanding the blob.

See. I knew Lemmy didn't die. He just went to the moon to try and fuck with the tides. 

[polymerpunkah]

 

 

[Anubis]

Crashed Transformers. Nailed on.

[johnsusername]

The Planets on BBC has been excellent. Recommended. It makes you realise how insignificant we are, but at the same time completely unique. Earth just seems to have been a complete fluke. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

On 13/06/2019 at 22:59, johnsusername said:

The Planets on BBC has been excellent. Recommended. It makes you realise how insignificant we are, but at the same time completely unique. Earth just seems to have been a complete fluke. 

[moof]

 

[Dougie Do'ins]

BBC to celebrate 50 years since the first moon landings with a series of programmes across TV, Radio and online

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2019/moon-landings-50

[Dan Vito Corleone]

Do any of you fellow space fans have a telescope? 

[Rico1304]

2 minutes ago, Agt Provocateur said:

Do any of you fellow space fans have a telescope? 

Meteorwatch.org has great recommendations for decent beginner scopes.  

[Dan Vito Corleone]

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/az-goto/skywatcher-startravel-102-synscan-az-goto.html

This is the one that I had recommended to me as a starter by a professional astronomer. The boy is showing an interest in the night sky so I want to encourage it. Not for me at all, honest. 

[Rico1304]

2 minutes ago, Agt Provocateur said:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/az-goto/skywatcher-startravel-102-synscan-az-goto.html

This is the one that I had recommended to me as a starter by a professional astronomer. The boy is showing an interest in the night sky so I want to encourage it. Not for me at all, honest. 

I got a heritage Sky-Watcher 130 which isn’t as good as the one you’ve had recommended. It really is fascinating once you get the hang of it.  Although mine is convered in dust from tiles so may now be fucked. Good luck. 

[Dougie Do'ins]

1 hour ago, Agt Provocateur said:

Do any of you fellow space fans have a telescope? 

Posted this a while back.

 

My mate is seriously into all things in space and things in the sky. Seriously into it.

 

Anyway, a few years ago now I was telling him I wanted to get a telescope. He asked me why and what I wanted to look at. I said, erm you know, the planets and stuff. He was looking at me like, 'here we go again, another one'.

 

Anyway, he goes on to explain that your lucky to get 30 good viewing nights a year and then you have to take into account a few different other things. Light pollution, the position your house facesas apparently east is best for viewing but most importantly, times and dates. This mate sometimes stays up till the early hours or gets up at 3:00 am onwards in order to see certain things. 

 

I eventually spent £150 (I think) on a telescope. Sure I posted it in here. It was OK to begin with but the setting up and of the thing was a pain in the fucking arse and storing it while in it's tripod was also a pain. The novelty wore off and it ended up going back in the box and becoming a dust collector. I ended up binning it last year.

 

For anyone thinking of taking the plunge, I'd think about the above. Also unless you've got a at least some knowledge of where to even start looking, I'd consider getting a go to telescope.

[Guest Pistonbroke]

10 hours ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Posted this a while back.

 

My mate is seriously into all things in space and things in the sky. Seriously into it.

 

Anyway, a few years ago now I was telling him I wanted to get a telescope. He asked me why and what I wanted to look at. I said, erm you know, the planets and stuff. He was looking at me like, 'here we go again, another one'.

 

Anyway, he goes on to explain that your lucky to get 30 good viewing nights a year and then you have to take into account a few different other things. Light pollution, the position your house facesas apparently east is best for viewing but most importantly, times and dates. This mate sometimes stays up till the early hours or gets up at 3:00 am onwards in order to see certain things. 

 

I eventually spent £150 (I think) on a telescope. Sure I posted it in here. It was OK to begin with but the setting up and of the thing was a pain in the fucking arse and storing it while in it's tripod was also a pain. The novelty wore off and it ended up going back in the box and becoming a dust collector. I ended up binning it last year.

 

For anyone thinking of taking the plunge, I'd think about the above. Also unless you've got a at least some knowledge of where to even start looking, I'd consider getting a go to telescope.

 

Same with myself. Invested in a telescope/lenses etc about twenty years ago but in the lower-mid price range. After a couple of months you just get bored, only so many times you can look at the moon and a few of the closer planets. Had to drive out of the city to get away from light pollution so it was just a pain in the arse. Ended up giving it to my mates son. If people want to get into star gazing then they'd be better off saving up and getting a pricey one. 

[johnsusername]

[johnsusername]

12 hours ago, Dougie Do'ins said:

Fella in work was saying he didn't believe scientists had sent any probes or satellites into space to look at other planets and it was all a big lie. 

 

Then he said he believed God created everything in the universe.

 

Oh well, each to their own I guess.