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Knickstape1214 wrote:magnumt wrote:Knickstape1214 wrote:
Oh, I completely agree in thinking that we're not alone. Do you think that's scarier than being alone though? I think being alone in the universe is wayyyyyy scarier.
Didn't you ask the same thing? Being alone vs not not alone
--Mags
I'm confused.Forgive me, it's been a long day.
More than a trillion galaxies are lurking in the depths of space, a new census of galaxies in the observable universe has found — 10 times more galaxies than were previously thought to exist.
An international team of astronomers used deep-space images and other data from the Hubble Space Telescope to create a 3D map of the known universe, which contains about 100 to 200 billion galaxies. In particular, they relied on Hubble's Deep Field images, which revealed the most distant galaxies ever seen with a telescope.
hen, the researchers incorporated new mathematical models to calculate where other galaxies that have not yet been imaged by a telescope might exist. For the numbers to add up, the universe needs at least 10 times more galaxies than those already known to exist. But these unknown galaxies are likely either too faint or too far away to be seen with today's telescopes.
NYKMentality85 wrote:Is space finite or infinite?
A question that'll never be able to be answered.
gavran wrote:Doesn't make in infinite. We live in a physical, and infinite is a mathematical (and philosophical) term. In physics, it doesn't exist, not even in the core of a black hole.
Far beyond the eight planets of the solar system, beyond even Pluto and the diminutive dwarf planets, may lurk a major new world called “Planet Nine.” Few if any discoveries can be as sensational as finding another planet orbiting our sun, making the feat a Holy Grail for astronomers, who have managed to pull it off only a few times over the centuries. No one yet knows exactly where this ephemeral world might be—or even if it really exists at all. But in the race to find it researchers are now narrowing down its location through its influence on the rest of the solar system, roughly halving the amount of space they thought they had to search only a few months ago. The scientists detailed their latest advances in the quest last week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences and the European Planetary Science Congress in Pasadena, Calif.
In January astrophysicists Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown at the California Institute of Technology revealed evidence for a big, undiscovered ninth planet. Their computer models suggested the gravitational pull of such a world might explain the strange, tilted orbits of several bodies in the Kuiper Belt of icy objects that haunt the solar system's outer reaches. Scientists are now scrambling to be the first to spot Planet Nine using some of the biggest telescopes on Earth, such as the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.
Batygin and Brown's work narrowed down the planet’s possible mass and orbit to areas where previous observations might have missed it. Their calculations suggest that it has a mass between five to 20 times that of Earth—a figure that is key to knowing the approximate size of the object they are looking for. They also suggest that its orbit is likely tilted about 30 degrees compared to the plane of the solar system—the relatively thin, flat zone in which the eight major planets orbit. They also propose that the planet is now likely near its farthest point from the sun, in the sky's northern hemisphere, and that it likely has an elongated orbit averaging between 380 and 980 astronomical units (AU) from the sun. (One AU is the average distance between Earth and the sun.)
However, these estimates still leave a swath of sky "about 1,500 square degrees large," says astronomer Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who with astronomer Chadwick Trujillo first suggested the existence of Planet Nine in 2014. (In comparison, the full moon as seen from Earth covers about 0.2 degrees of sky.) This swath described by Sheppard corresponds to about 20 nights of observations on Subaru, "and if we get seven nights or so this year, that's three years—if it's not rainy any of those nights," Sheppard says.
So the strategy in the race is now largely a matter of reducing the search area by eliminating theoretical possibilities. In an as-yet unpublished set of about 100 new high-resolution computer simulations, Batygin says he and Brown have narrowed down Planet Nine's location to a roughly 600- to 800-square degree patch of sky. They first modeled the solar system over the course of about 4 billion years, focusing on how the gravitational pulls of the system’s largest planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Planet Nine—might have sculpted the orbits of thousands of randomly scattered Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs). "We're searching for all of the things that Planet Nine does to the solar system," Brown says.
A fuel-free engine, described as 'impossible' to create, may now be a step closer to reality, according to leaked Nasa documents.
Named the EM Drive, the engine could one day have the potential to get a human crew to Mars in just 10 weeks, without using a conventional rocket fuel or nuclear reactor.
The latest report describes a series of successful tests carried out at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Texas.
Last week, a leaked NASA paper appeared to show that scientists had successfully created a working EmDrive prototype.
The radical fuel-free engine defies the laws of physics and has long been dubbed ‘impossible,’ but if achieved, it could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks.
While many have cast doubt on the findings, experts now say there ‘may really be something there’ – but, the cause might be something entirely different than what’s been proposed.
Rather than the quantum vacuum theory which was initially cited to explain the findings, a phenomenon known as the ‘Mach effect’ could be to blame
Imagine a rocket that works without fuel. You pump energy into it and away you go, but there’s no thrust coming out the other side, no exhaust, no waste product and no consumable fuel. It’s the ultimate defiance of Isaac Newton: claiming to have an action without an equal and opposite reaction. And yet, inventor of the EMdrive, Roger Shawyer, claims to do exactly that. Not only does he say that his device works, he claims that anyone can build one and verify it for themselves. At Eagleworks laboratory, NASA scientists attempted to do exactly that, and just published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. The results? They verify that the EMdrive works as advertised.
PeoplesChamp wrote:Incredible
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/23/how-physics-falls-apart-if-the-emdrive-works/#3db88a564b0cImagine a rocket that works without fuel. You pump energy into it and away you go, but there’s no thrust coming out the other side, no exhaust, no waste product and no consumable fuel. It’s the ultimate defiance of Isaac Newton: claiming to have an action without an equal and opposite reaction. And yet, inventor of the EMdrive, Roger Shawyer, claims to do exactly that. Not only does he say that his device works, he claims that anyone can build one and verify it for themselves. At Eagleworks laboratory, NASA scientists attempted to do exactly that, and just published their findings in a peer-reviewed journal. The results? They verify that the EMdrive works as advertised.
spaceballer wrote:A lot of press lately on the EM Drive passing peer review. But they do note that there's a chance it's due to artifacts that can't be tested while on Earth, such as the role the Earth's magnetic field may play in creating spurious results with unaccounted for interactions, or other sources of error. Still, getting a peer reviewed paper passed is a big step forward.
CJackson wrote:spaceballer wrote:A lot of press lately on the EM Drive passing peer review. But they do note that there's a chance it's due to artifacts that can't be tested while on Earth, such as the role the Earth's magnetic field may play in creating spurious results with unaccounted for interactions, or other sources of error. Still, getting a peer reviewed paper passed is a big step forward.
Even if it doesn't pan out in space, anything close to a perpetual motion machine could literally save the planet from environmental devastation. That would be its greatest value unless the narrative is the only way the human race survives is to leave.
PeoplesChamp wrote:CJackson wrote:spaceballer wrote:A lot of press lately on the EM Drive passing peer review. But they do note that there's a chance it's due to artifacts that can't be tested while on Earth, such as the role the Earth's magnetic field may play in creating spurious results with unaccounted for interactions, or other sources of error. Still, getting a peer reviewed paper passed is a big step forward.
Even if it doesn't pan out in space, anything close to a perpetual motion machine could literally save the planet from environmental devastation. That would be its greatest value unless the narrative is the only way the human race survives is to leave.
That's actually what Stephen Hawking believes. He says the way we're going, mankind has between 1K - 10K years left unless we leave the planet.
