The Thread about the Universe, Astronomy, and Similar Cool Stuff

[LA Ute]

I am not trained in astronomy but I do love to think about the solar system, the universe, and other such things. So I am starting a thread on all that -- because I can, by golly!

Here's today's entry, from the NBC News Cosmic Log:

Will our universe end in a 'big slurp'? Higgs-like particle suggests it might

“It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable. At some point, billions of years from now, it’s all going to be wiped out.”

He said the parameters for our universe, including the Higgs mass value as well as the mass of another subatomic particle known as the top quark, suggest that we’re just at the edge of stability, in a “metastable” state. Physicists have been contemplating such a possibility for more than 30 years. Back in 1982, physicists Michael Turner and Frank Wilczek wrote in Nature that “without warning, a bubble of true vacuum could nucleate somewhere in the universe and move outwards at the speed of light, and before we realized what swept by us our protons would decay away.”

Lykken put it slightly differently: “The universe wants to be in a different state, so eventually to realize that, a little bubble of what you might think of as an alternate universe will appear somewhere, and it will spread out and destroy us.”


That alternate universe would be “much more boring,” Lykken said. Which led him to ask a philosophical question: “Why do we live in a universe that’s just on the edge of stability?” He wondered whether a universe has to be near the danger zone to produce galaxies, stars, planets … and life.


Even Hill found it interesting that the parameters of particle physics put our universe right along the critical line. “That’s something new, which we didn’t know before, and which leads some of us to that there’s something else coming,” Hill said.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I'm in the middle of a twelve-lecture series on the Hubble Space Telescope by a Northwestern astrophysics prof and it's been fascinating. The most recent lecture was on supernovae, and the details are mindboggling. Betelgeuse, the brightest star in the Orion constellation, is expected to blow up imminently (in astronomical terms at least, although that could be anytime in the next 150,000 years). When it does, the resulting supernova will be ten times brighter than the moon and we'll be able to read outside at night.

Since I'm only 60, I figure I've got a great shot at seeing this. Can't wait.

[LA Ute]

This is the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from Earth. I am told this was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The galaxy is officially called M104, has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

In other words, if you traveled at the speed of light for 50,000 years, you could cross this galaxy from one end to the other. Of course, that would be after the 28 million light years it took you to get to the edge of the galaxy.

This photo is the skin on my iPhone.

[GarthUte]

This is the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from Earth. I am told this was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The galaxy is officially called M104, has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

In other words, if you traveled at the speed of light for 50,000 years, you could cross this galaxy from one end to the other. Of course, that would be after the 28 million light years it took you to get to the edge of the galaxy.

This photo is the skin on my iPhone.

I like to make the numbers seem even bigger by reminding folks that one light year is about 6 trillion miles.

[GarthUte]

LA, those are some incredible photos, which makes me wonder if the Hubble telescope is the most impressive piece of technology that has come around in my lifetime. I can't think of anything else as impressive.

[GarthUte]

The very, very dim galaxy in this photo is called UDFj-39546284 and is the most distant galaxy ever seen. According to the folks at NASA, the light from that galaxy traveled for 13.2 billion years before it reached Hubble. (The estimated age of the universe is 13.7 billion years.) It's a small galaxy, approximately 1/100th the size of the Milky Way.

[LA Ute]

This is fun to contemplate:

There is a lot of ice frozen into the Martian crust. The heat of an enormous impact would melt a huge amount of it. If, as some believe, there are microbes living deep under the Martian surface, such a burst of warm, wet conditions over a substantial chunk of the planet would give them a brief chance to thrive at and close to the surface before the planet refroze. It’s not obvious how to observe such exciting developments, but there are surely already people at NASA and elsewhere giving thought to the matter. And they will have time. Parts of the surface and subsurface in the impact region, if there is an impact, will stay warm for decades.

[FMCoug]

LA, those are some incredible photos, which makes me wonder if the Hubble telescope is the most impressive piece of technology that has come around in my lifetime. I can't think of anything else as impressive.

I tend to agree. It's pretty incredible what they have done and the images they get. The coolest part is the in place repair to the mirrors they do.

All this makes me want to weep for the state of our space program right now.

[GarthUte]

I tend to agree. It's pretty incredible what they have done and the images they get. The coolest part is the in place repair to the mirrors they do.

All this makes me want to weep for the state of our space program right now.

Agreed about the state of our space program right now. The US has definitely lost it's superiority in that area.

[hardcoreUTE]

LA, those are some incredible photos, which makes me wonder if the Hubble telescope is the most impressive piece of technology that has come around in my lifetime. I can't think of anything else as impressive.

Absolutely stunning images from Hubble. The fact it was almost the most impressive blunder of all time is equally impressive.

The only things I can think of that are as impressive as the Hubble Telescope would be the Kepler Telescope, out there finding all these new planetary bodies and trying to find the ones in the habitable zones (http://kepler.nasa.gov/), the Large Hadron Collider which has lead to the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, and the 2 Voyger missions which both are now outside our solar system (http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/)

I'll be sad when we stop getting images from Hubble.

[LA Ute]

Early galaxy formed stars at blistering pace

Scientists discover the earliest known starburst galaxy, which made stars more than 1,000 times faster than our Milky Way. They are surprised that a galaxy that early could make stars so rapidly.

Peering deep into the universe, scientists have discovered the earliest known starburst galaxy — a revved-up stellar factory popping out stars thousands of times faster than the Milky Way.

The find, described in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature, could help alter scientists' understanding of the early evolution of galaxies and larger structures in the universe.

The galaxy, named HFLS 3, existed about 880 million years after the big bang, when the universe was about 6% of its current age, astronomers say. And it's churning out stars with sun-sized mass at the incredible rate of roughly 2,900 per year.

A typical starburst galaxy may produce the equivalent of hundreds of suns per year, scientists said. The Milky Way, by comparison, creates about two suns annually....

[LA Ute]

Maybe not everyone is so excited about a comet hitting Mars.

[LA Ute]

After Ten Years on Mars, Here Are the Most Beautiful Photos Taken by the Rovers

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smiths...#ixzz2qXSbVoF7

[PaloAltoCougar]

This is the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from Earth. I am told this was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The galaxy is officially called M104, has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

In other words, if you traveled at the speed of light for 50,000 years, you could cross this galaxy from one end to the other. Of course, that would be after the 28 million light years it took you to get to the edge of the galaxy.

This photo is the skin on my iPhone.

Coincidentally, the lecture I watched this evening was about galaxies generally and the Sombrero in particular, with a lengthy discussion of that photo. One interesting tidbit is that the Sombrero, which at 28-29 million light years away from ours, is very close relative to the entire universe. And yet if Earth were equidistant between the two galaxies, the night sky would always be pitch black, as stars or galaxies would be visible only with the aid of a telescope. Facts like these, along with the idea that there are many billions of galaxies (and that's all we're aware of), makes recall Moses' conclusion after he was given a tour of the universe, "Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

[OrangeUte]

Coincidentally, the lecture I watched this evening was about galaxies generally and the Sombrero in particular, with a lengthy discussion of that photo. One interesting tidbit is that the Sombrero, which at 28-29 million light years away from ours, is very close relative to the entire universe. And yet if Earth were equidistant between the two galaxies, the night sky would always be pitch black, as stars or galaxies would be visible only with the aid of a telescope. Facts like these, along with the idea that there are many billions of galaxies (and that's all we're aware of), makes recall Moses' conclusion after he was given a tour of the universe, "Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed."

PAC - is this a podcast? It sounds fascinating!

[PaloAltoCougar]

PAC - is this a podcast? It sounds fascinating!

It's a two-DVD series (Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the Universe) from The Great Courses. It was a special offer ($9.95), and it's certainly worth every penny. But now I get near-daily emails suggesting other courses. I may get really smart.

[SavaUte]

It's a two-DVD series (Experiencing Hubble: Understanding the Greatest Images of the Universe) from The Great Courses. It was a special offer ($9.95), and it's certainly worth every penny. But now I get near-daily emails suggesting other courses. I may get really smart.

You interested in making your money back after you finish them?

On a side note, are there any astro-photographers here? I'm just getting started in that. I'll try to dig up some milky way photos I took in the Uintas last summer

[LA Ute]

"Gold rush" in space? A look at asteroids' potential for wealth, destruction

"Private capitalists are saying, 'If NASA won't fund this thing, why not private enterprise?' If they get a piece of the action, that's going to be on the table as well, whether or not entrepreneurs can see a gold rush in outer space.

"But right now, they don't have enough money to launch the mining endeavors. "Everyone is passing the tin cup right now asking for funds," Kaku said.


"So right now, many have their eye on the skies, including former Congressman Bart Gordon, a lobbyist for Planetary Resources -- one of the companies that eventually wants to mine asteroids for rare metals. Gordon says there are lots of asteroids trained on Earth: 'There are about 10,000 near-Earth asteroids that we're monitoring,' he said, 'And we assume there about a million more that we're not monitoring.'"

[chrisrenrut]

This is the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from Earth. I am told this was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The galaxy is officially called M104, has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

In other words, if you traveled at the speed of light for 50,000 years, you could cross this galaxy from one end to the other. Of course, that would be after the 28 million light years it took you to get to the edge of the galaxy.

This photo is the skin on my iPhone.

I have to keep reminding myself that the Hubble is capturing images of what these galaxies and formations looked like millions of years ago. The supernova PAC referred to actually happened thousands or millions or years ago, we are just waiting for the light particles of the event to reach the earth.

[LA Ute]

Will NASA Announce Plans to Snag an Asteroid and Fly It to Earth?

When the Obama administration’s 2014 federal budget gets released in early April, it might include a curious item: a $100 million request for NASA to conduct a mission to capture an asteroid and bring it back to Earth.

This idea comes from an article published March 28 in Aviation Week and Space Technology, which reports on the space industry. The plan would identify a small asteroid, grab it with a robotic spacecraft, and tug it to the vicinity of our planet, perhaps somewhere near the moon. Such a mission was the subject of a two-day meeting of scientists and engineers at Caltech organized by the Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2011....

[LA Ute]

here are more Hubble photos:



This is the Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon).



From 114 million light years away, these are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation. Merging galaxies - now there is a concept!



Astronomers call this a 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here, where new stars are being born. Another heavy concept!

[IdahoUteTroutHead]

I still think there are men on the moon......

[Hadrian]

If anyone is interested: every Wednesday night at the U they have "star parties" that are free and open to the public. They basically open up the telescopes and point them at stars, planets, galaxies, and the moon. Salt Lake City is doesn't exactly offer optimum light conditions, but it's still worth a visit.

I don't think they do it during the winter though.

[concerned]

If anyone is interested: every Wednesday night at the U they have "star parties" that are free and open to the public. They basically open up the telescopes and point them at stars, planets, galaxies, and the moon. Salt Lake City is doesn't exactly offer optimum light conditions, but it's still worth a visit.

I don't think they do it during the winter though.

You remind me that there used to be an observatory on the corner of University St./Virginia St. and 1st south when I was a kid. It was around the corner from my grandmother's house on Butler Ave. Or am I hallucinating?

[Hadrian]

You remind me that there used to be an observatory on the corner of University St./Virginia St. and 1st south when I was a kid. It was around the corner from my grandmother's house on Butler Ave. Or am I hallucinating?

I don't know about any former observatory directly on the corner of University and 1st, but the physics building with the current observatory is very near to it. The physics building is probably close to a hundred years old, so it might be the same building you're thinking of.

[LA Ute]

Moon's water may have come from Earth-bound meteorites

The source of the moon's internal water may be meteorites that bombarded ancient Earth, not comets, as had been theorized, say researchers who studied lunar rocks from two Apollo missions....

[LA Ute]

The Paradoxes That Threaten To Tear Modern Cosmology Apart

Some simple observations about the universe seem to contradict basic physics. Solving these paradoxes could change the way we think about the cosmos

[U-Ute]

http://htwins.net/scale2/

I don't know what's freakier, the size of the universe, or the size of the Japanese Spider Crab.

eek.jpg

[LA Ute]

The Hunt for Alien Megastructures

Vast structures, constructed on astronomical scales by advanced civilisations, is what the field of astroengineering is all about. This, admittedly, sounds audacious – and for the human race right now, it is. For us, astroengineering is still very much the realm of thought experiments, theoretical calculations, and science fiction. So it may be surprising to know that certain astronomers have made some quite serious attempts to look for astroengineered artifacts around other stars. With telescopes becoming ever more sensitive, and images being taken of exoplanets, the idea is starting to captivate imaginations once more.

[DanielLaRusso]

Here's an interactive map and the 100,000 stars nearest to our own.