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

  1. #31
    Am I the only one who thinks this would be really cool if it happens?
    http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/201...s-in-2014?lite

  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Hadrian View Post
    Am I the only one who thinks this would be really cool if it happens?
    http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/201...s-in-2014?lite
    I want to see it happen. What a spectacular sight and memory that would be.
    “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
    André Gide

  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Jarid in Cedar View Post
    I want to see it happen. What a spectacular sight and memory that would be.
    Agreed. I wonder if any of the rovers up there would be able to capture some footage should it happen.
    "Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." - Red Smith

  4. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by GarthUte View Post
    Agreed. I wonder if any of the rovers up there would be able to capture some footage should it happen.
    It would depend on where the comet actually hits the planet. If it impacts more than a few hundred miles away, I doubt the rover could see much. However, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter might be able to take some amazing pictures.

  5. #35
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Maybe not everyone is so excited about a comet hitting Mars.


    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Hadrian View Post
    Am I the only one who thinks this would be really cool if it happens?
    http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/201...s-in-2014?lite
    I would love it so long as it did not damage the rovers up there. I would love to see a comet or asteroid or comet slam into the moon though.

  7. #37
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    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.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  8. #38
    Tonight is the best night to view a comet in the West sky just after dusk.

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...ight-show.html

    comet.jpg
    Desse jeito, não tem jeito.

  9. #39
    It is VERY hard to see with the naked eye unless you know exactly where to look, so pay attention to the location relative to the moon (about 4.5 moons to the left) if you want to see it. Binoculars will make it easier

  10. #40
    Quote Originally Posted by SavaUte View Post
    It is VERY hard to see with the naked eye unless you know exactly where to look, so pay attention to the location relative to the moon (about 4.5 moons to the left) if you want to see it. Binoculars will make it easier
    Thanks for the info about where to look.

    Dang, I really wish I had a lens for some decent astrophotography.
    "Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." - Red Smith

  11. #41
    For astrophotography, what I find to be best are wide and fast primes. I'm trying to get a hold of a guy here locally that has a 24 1.8 that would be excellent for something like this. I guess if you're doing smaller objects you'll want a bitter lens, but be sure it is fast because the bigger focal length, the shorter your exposure can be without an equitorial mount

  12. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by GarthUte View Post
    Thanks for the info about where to look.

    Dang, I really wish I had a lens for some decent astrophotography.
    Note that each night it will appear farther north than it did the night before.


  13. #43
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    "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.'"

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  14. #44
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    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....

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  15. #45
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    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....

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  16. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    That galaxy was obviously not a union shop.
    "Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." - Red Smith

  17. #47
    http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-sees-dist...181302534.html

    NASA's planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem like ideal places for some sort of life to flourish. And they are just the right size and in just the right place.One is toasty, the other nippy.
    The distant duo are the best candidates for habitable planets that astronomers have found so far, saidWilliam Borucki, the chief scientist for NASA's Kepler telescope. And it's got astronomers thinking that similar planets that are just about right for life — "Goldilocks planets" — might be common in the universe.

    The planets are slightly wider than Earth, but not too big. Kepler-62-e is a bit balmy, like a Hawaiian world and Kepler-62-f is a bit frosty, more Alaskan, Borucki said.
    The pair is 1,200 light-years away; a light-year is almost 6 trillion miles.
    "This is the first one where I'm thinking 'Huh, Kepler-62-f really might have life on it'," said study co-author David Charbonneau of Harvard. "This is a very important barrier that's been crossed. Why wouldn't it have life?"
    To make it warm enough for life the planet would need greenhouse gas trapping its star's heat because the star only gives off one-fifth the energy of our sun, but that's something that is likely to happen, Borucki said.
    Both planets are tantalizing. The dozens of researchers who co-authored the study disagree on which one is better suited to life. Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Germany likes Kepler-62-e more because it's closer to the star and is warmer. She said it is probably "like Washington in May."
    That planet is so close it may need clouds to cool off and it's more likely to be an all-water world, unlike any other in our solar system, Kaltenegger said. Astronomers cannot confirm that either planet has water, but based on other research, it's a good assumption, she said.
    The planets circle a star that is 7 billion years old — about 2.5 billion years older than our sun. Kepler spots the planets as they go between Earth and their star ever so slightly, reducing the light from the star.
    "If there's life at all on those planets, it must be very advanced" evolutionarily because the planets are so old, said Borucki.
    On a watery planet, oceans are prime spots for life, including flying fish that could evolve into birds, Borucki said. And on the rocky planet, with a heavier gravity than Earth, life might look a tad different, he said.

    “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”

    Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

  18. #48
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    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....

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  19. #49
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    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.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  20. #50
    2014 utahby5 World Cup Bracket Predictor Challenge Champion. No one who speaks German could be an evil man.

  21. #51
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Elderly suns rip their closest planets to shreds


    Old stars make rude hosts. A survey of ageing stars offers some of the first direct evidence that these cantankerous elders often rip their nearest planets to shreds.

    Planet-hunting surveys have found many sun-like stars with hot Jupiters, giant worlds that orbit their stars closer than Mercury orbits the sun. However, hot Jupiters are rarely found around older stars called subgiants, which have burned through their fuel and puffed up to several times their original size. This is widely thought to be because the puffy stars were up to twice the mass of the sun when they were younger, and that might have influenced where their planets formed.

    To help test this notion, Kevin Schlaufman and Joshua Winn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tracked the positions of 142 planet-hosting stars in our galaxy. Stars are born in clusters which disperse as they age. More massive stars burn out faster, so their elderly populations are usually found closer together....

    But the team found that subgiants with planets are more spread out, so are older than expected, meaning that the stars were probably about the mass of our sun in their youth.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  22. #52
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    A Quantum of Solace

    Timeless Questions About the Universe


    A good read if you're in the mood to ponder.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  23. #53
    Wow. As a friend on facebook said, this is a great time to be alive when things like this are out there.
    "Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection." - Red Smith

  24. #54
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    This has been around for a few days - the Cassini Spacecraft returned this photo of the Earth and Moon from more than 900 million miles away:

    20130722_annotated_earth-moon_from_saturn_1920x1080_1.jpg

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  25. #55
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  26. #56
    Quote Originally Posted by LA Ute View Post
    Stupid questions here:
    Wouldn't the heat and pressure from such an impact vaporize a lot of the water? Would other materials be transformed into a gaseous state? If so, would Mars at least transiently have an atmosphere and maybe take quite a while to cool off and return back to its current state? Like I said, pretty stupid questions.

  27. #57
    Sexy Cougar SoCalCoug's Avatar
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    There was a great article in the most recent National Geographic about the origin of the solar system. It appears to have been far more violent than previously thought. It had a great discussion about how the gravitational pulls of all of the planets led to a far less orderly solar system creation. Earth may, in fact, have had two moons in the beginning, but they collided and became the moon as we know it. Scientists think as many as 70 asteroids comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs may has struck the earth during the 2-billion year bombardment period.

  28. #58
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jrj84105 View Post
    Stupid questions here:
    Wouldn't the heat and pressure from such an impact vaporize a lot of the water? Would other materials be transformed into a gaseous state? If so, would Mars at least transiently have an atmosphere and maybe take quite a while to cool off and return back to its current state? Like I said, pretty stupid questions.
    Not stupid. It's fun to wonder about such things.

    Quote Originally Posted by SoCalCoug View Post
    There was a great article in the most recent National Geographic about the origin of the solar system. It appears to have been far more violent than previously thought. It had a great discussion about how the gravitational pulls of all of the planets led to a far less orderly solar system creation. Earth may, in fact, have had two moons in the beginning, but they collided and became the moon as we know it. Scientists think as many as 70 asteroids comparable to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs may has struck the earth during the 2-billion year bombardment period.
    That would have been one heck of a fireworks show if it could be compressed by time-lapse.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  29. #59
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    The Case for Alien Life

    Only one planet has been proven to support life: our own. But with at least 11 billion Earth-sized words in our galaxy orbiting in their stars' habitable zones, plus new evidence of strange kinds of life that thrive in extreme environments, the odds that we are not alone are improving.

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

  30. #60
    Sam the Sheepdog LA Ute's Avatar
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    We may all be Martians: New research supports theory that life started on Mars

    Professor Steven Benner will tell geochemists gathering today (Thursday 29 Aug) at the annual Goldschmidt conference that an oxidized mineral form of the element molybdenum, which may have been crucial to the origin of life, could only have been available on the surface of Mars and not on Earth. "In addition", said Professor Benner "recent studies show that these conditions, suitable for the origin of life, may still exist on Mars."


    "It's only when molybdenum becomes highly oxidized that it is able to influence how early life formed," explains Professor Benner, from The Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology in the USA. "This form of molybdenum couldn't have been available on Earth at the time life first began, because three billion years ago the surface of the Earth had very little oxygen, but Mars did. It's yet another piece of evidence which makes it more likely life came to Earth on a Martian meteorite, rather than starting on this planet."


    The research Professor Benner will present at the Goldschmidt conference tackles two of the paradoxes which make it difficult for scientists to understand how life could have started on Earth.
    Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-08-martian...-mars.html#jCp

    "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
    --Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
    --Yeats

    “True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”

    --John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell

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