3175375
Senior Member
Today, after the Iowa game, we visited the home of James T. Kirk - Riverside, Iowa.
Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!
- Thread starter Turboomni
- Start date
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
Very functional uniforms and interesting names in the first series. Case in point ...
SpaceX launched a Starship today, and successfully caught th booster on the first attempt to do so! Pretty spectacular to watch.
Never seen anything like this before.
in the video, these folks "caught" the booster section by the "chopsticks" on very same launch tower it took off from five minutes earlier.
ill be damned.
presumably, they will rehab/reuse it
Voyager news for any space nerds among us.
source: We've been wrong about Uranus for nearly 40 years, new analysis of Voyager 2 data reveals
Voyager 2, in 1986, did a Uranus fly-by and discovered many new things about it. There were some anomalous things though about it, namely what they called a "bizarre" magnetic field.
40 years later, the space kids think they figured it out. Billions of miles, years of space travel to get there ... at the exact time of an unusual solar wind event that affected the planet.
A few days earlier, or later, there would have been nothing to see in that regard. The effect would not have been there yet/passed by.
Again, egg-headed stuff, but the link above explains. Even if they are wrong, its still amazing what we know/dont know about space.
source: We've been wrong about Uranus for nearly 40 years, new analysis of Voyager 2 data reveals
Voyager 2, in 1986, did a Uranus fly-by and discovered many new things about it. There were some anomalous things though about it, namely what they called a "bizarre" magnetic field.
40 years later, the space kids think they figured it out. Billions of miles, years of space travel to get there ... at the exact time of an unusual solar wind event that affected the planet.
A few days earlier, or later, there would have been nothing to see in that regard. The effect would not have been there yet/passed by.
Again, egg-headed stuff, but the link above explains. Even if they are wrong, its still amazing what we know/dont know about space.
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Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
It is looking increasing likely that we've also been wrong about "dark matter". The Physics community has been assuring us for the last 3 decades at least that identification of the elusive dark matter particle is just around the corner. There have been several competing theories, the most prominent of them MOND that have predictions that better align with observations but they have been cancelled and denigrated by the established physics community. Now it seems the evidence from the J Webb telescope which apparently has been ignored by the science press for the last 2 years may be putting the final nail in the coffin of dark matter.
i like sabine hossenfelder. read this one... twice. still soaking it in, but if one likes the stuff, without all the blowhard, egg-head scientists' math, this is a good one.
i disagree with her that theres no such thing as "free will" ... but i aint nearly smart enough to understand her beef with the concept.
anyway, MOND and not some invisible stuff we cant find but know its there. a revision of Newton ... that would be something.
Einstein did it to Newton with relativity, the Copenhagen "mafia" did it to Einstein with quantum physics. Not that Einstein or Newton were wrong ... just some new ideas came up.
That's called progress. Smart prople being born every day.
MOND is fascinating. I had to listen to my smart, little Sabine a couple times, but still dont quite get what she's saying.
This helped me a bit: James Webb Space Telescope Finds Stunning Evidence for Alternate Theory of Gravity
We'll see if they (theoretical physicists) design experiments to confirm it --- in whats left of my lifetime I hope.
Jimbo potentially changing human history, let alone scientific explanation on how all this stuff, including us, got here.
i disagree with her that theres no such thing as "free will" ... but i aint nearly smart enough to understand her beef with the concept.
anyway, MOND and not some invisible stuff we cant find but know its there. a revision of Newton ... that would be something.
Einstein did it to Newton with relativity, the Copenhagen "mafia" did it to Einstein with quantum physics. Not that Einstein or Newton were wrong ... just some new ideas came up.
That's called progress. Smart prople being born every day.
MOND is fascinating. I had to listen to my smart, little Sabine a couple times, but still dont quite get what she's saying.
This helped me a bit: James Webb Space Telescope Finds Stunning Evidence for Alternate Theory of Gravity
We'll see if they (theoretical physicists) design experiments to confirm it --- in whats left of my lifetime I hope.
Jimbo potentially changing human history, let alone scientific explanation on how all this stuff, including us, got here.
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Alleged (seems true) SpaceX can build a Raptor rocket engine every 24 hours.
Like most everything outta this company, a lotta talk about a person.
The parts about the guy is less interesting to me than the incredible achievements of brilliant technical people who dreamed this up and are executing it everyday.
Seems like the future --- if society wants to continue -- of commercial/exploratory rocketry.
12 minutes if you have time.
MSN
Like most everything outta this company, a lotta talk about a person.
The parts about the guy is less interesting to me than the incredible achievements of brilliant technical people who dreamed this up and are executing it everyday.
Seems like the future --- if society wants to continue -- of commercial/exploratory rocketry.
12 minutes if you have time.
MSN
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Sorry. Nerd Alert.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-116
Webb coming on three years out at L2. It has performed brilliantly. The "Wow, look at that" - visuals that dazzle - seem to be less regular now.
But, one risks bring lulled into complacency. The remarkable stuff is happening everyday. Jimbo can see almost to the beginning of the Universe.
Trouble is ya gotta be on the nerdy end of the spectrum, I think, to slog though the details. Here's one of the latest Webb visuals:
Cool colors and smudges. Heck is this?? Veg out at the link. Basically, this is a gravitationally-lensed photo nearly 13 billion years ago. Of a really small "patch of sky".
Recall gravitational lensing is light waves "bent" around something massive (so massive its warping space-time) between the observer (Webb) and a " thing". The thing in this case is a 600 million year old "baby galaxy".
Yes. It's "behind" something massive, so the thing is "further" away from us, therefore "older" than the massive thing that is bending its light.
But wait..there's more. The space kids can "untangle" (estimate what is really there vs. what is duplicated) in lensed images.
Below, is the "thing". The right side "inset (white box)".
The so called "Firefly Sparkle Galaxy". A "string" of 10 different star-forming regions, in a gravitational dance (spinning, merging) with themselves and two "companions" (themselves ancient galaxies too), that after a few billion years may look like our Milky Way does today. A spiral galaxy, 100,000 light years in diameter.
We see Firefly Sparkle when the Universe was less than 1% of it's current estimated age. Again, the link will be much clearer I am sure.
It's way more fascinating and scientifically deep than my "Dick & Jane" summary in this post. And there's trillions of light dots/smudges" yet to analyze.. on top of the thousands we just got started on that we already imaged the past couple years with Jimbo.
It is a great to time to be alive and able to do this .. IMHO that is. Big questions. Stunning answers. Remarkable machines.
"How" did all this stuff get here is coming into better view. Some of their guesses may/will yet be prove wrong. Other parts are strictly mind- blowing .. even now.
"Why" are we here? Dunno if "science/math" can ever answer that one ... depends on what one believes I guess.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-116
Webb coming on three years out at L2. It has performed brilliantly. The "Wow, look at that" - visuals that dazzle - seem to be less regular now.
But, one risks bring lulled into complacency. The remarkable stuff is happening everyday. Jimbo can see almost to the beginning of the Universe.
Trouble is ya gotta be on the nerdy end of the spectrum, I think, to slog though the details. Here's one of the latest Webb visuals:
Cool colors and smudges. Heck is this?? Veg out at the link. Basically, this is a gravitationally-lensed photo nearly 13 billion years ago. Of a really small "patch of sky".
Recall gravitational lensing is light waves "bent" around something massive (so massive its warping space-time) between the observer (Webb) and a " thing". The thing in this case is a 600 million year old "baby galaxy".
Yes. It's "behind" something massive, so the thing is "further" away from us, therefore "older" than the massive thing that is bending its light.
But wait..there's more. The space kids can "untangle" (estimate what is really there vs. what is duplicated) in lensed images.
Below, is the "thing". The right side "inset (white box)".
The so called "Firefly Sparkle Galaxy". A "string" of 10 different star-forming regions, in a gravitational dance (spinning, merging) with themselves and two "companions" (themselves ancient galaxies too), that after a few billion years may look like our Milky Way does today. A spiral galaxy, 100,000 light years in diameter.
We see Firefly Sparkle when the Universe was less than 1% of it's current estimated age. Again, the link will be much clearer I am sure.
It's way more fascinating and scientifically deep than my "Dick & Jane" summary in this post. And there's trillions of light dots/smudges" yet to analyze.. on top of the thousands we just got started on that we already imaged the past couple years with Jimbo.
It is a great to time to be alive and able to do this .. IMHO that is. Big questions. Stunning answers. Remarkable machines.
"How" did all this stuff get here is coming into better view. Some of their guesses may/will yet be prove wrong. Other parts are strictly mind- blowing .. even now.
"Why" are we here? Dunno if "science/math" can ever answer that one ... depends on what one believes I guess.
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A new, fastest-man-made thing ever. Took the gravity of the biggest thing in our solar system to do it.
Lotta sources to nerd out. Here's one from NASA: Parker Solar Probe - NASA Science
The nearest star to Earth -- that is not he sun -- is four years away at the speed of light. Light speed is 670 Million miles PER HOUR, or 186,000 miles PER SECOND.
In a way, we know more about other stars than we do about our life-giving neighbor.
Our Sun is "only" 93 million miles away, 8 minutes at light speed. So, distance-wise, its well within our technology to get there, but we haven't been able to build anything that could get close to it.
Suns (in phase of life/size of ours) are basically BIG, HOT, nuclear fusion reactors. Really hostile places to try to send any spacecraft WE can make. We sent stuff there before, but never got this close.
Seems we got our technical act together a few years back with Parker. A fantastic machine.
We sent the Parker solar probe to the sun. Launched in 2018, it went into orbit around the sun in 2021. Flawless mission -- except it will take a little bit of time until we can communicate with Parker to see IF it survived its closest encounter.
Couple days ago, in its closest orbital approach since it got there three years ago, it flew through the sun's "atmosphere", which itself is about 1,700 degrees F°, at ~4 million miles from its surface (sun's diameter is about 900,000 miles, surface temp is 10,000 degrees F°).
With a gravity assist from the sun, Parker reached 430,000 mph (i.e., thats like New York to Tokyo in less than a minute) on its orbital approach.
Elaborate thermal/EM management on Parker was designed into it .. but until communication comes back (it flew around the sun) on Earth side, we can't talk to it -- let alone access its scientific findings from this - its closest encounter.
We shall soon see. Wont be long.
Lotta sources to nerd out. Here's one from NASA: Parker Solar Probe - NASA Science
The nearest star to Earth -- that is not he sun -- is four years away at the speed of light. Light speed is 670 Million miles PER HOUR, or 186,000 miles PER SECOND.
In a way, we know more about other stars than we do about our life-giving neighbor.
Our Sun is "only" 93 million miles away, 8 minutes at light speed. So, distance-wise, its well within our technology to get there, but we haven't been able to build anything that could get close to it.
Suns (in phase of life/size of ours) are basically BIG, HOT, nuclear fusion reactors. Really hostile places to try to send any spacecraft WE can make. We sent stuff there before, but never got this close.
Seems we got our technical act together a few years back with Parker. A fantastic machine.
We sent the Parker solar probe to the sun. Launched in 2018, it went into orbit around the sun in 2021. Flawless mission -- except it will take a little bit of time until we can communicate with Parker to see IF it survived its closest encounter.
Couple days ago, in its closest orbital approach since it got there three years ago, it flew through the sun's "atmosphere", which itself is about 1,700 degrees F°, at ~4 million miles from its surface (sun's diameter is about 900,000 miles, surface temp is 10,000 degrees F°).
With a gravity assist from the sun, Parker reached 430,000 mph (i.e., thats like New York to Tokyo in less than a minute) on its orbital approach.
Elaborate thermal/EM management on Parker was designed into it .. but until communication comes back (it flew around the sun) on Earth side, we can't talk to it -- let alone access its scientific findings from this - its closest encounter.
We shall soon see. Wont be long.
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As to the original subject of this thread the following quote from BBC - Astronomy may be of interest:
"Reaching the outer planets with a spacecraft is difficult because these worlds are so far away, billions of miles, and would take decades to reach. However, using the gravitational pull of a well-placed planet, such as Jupiter, to slingshot a spacecraft outwards can reduce the travel time dramatically, something no spacecraft has done better than Nasa's Voyager vehicles.
In 1966, a Nasa scientist called Gary Flandro calculated that there would be an alignment of the four outermost planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – in 1977 that would enable all four to be visited within a span of just 12 years, compared to 30 years if they were not aligned. This fortuitous alignment, which occurs only once every 175 years, led to Nasa launching the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977 on a "Grand Tour" of the outer Solar System.
Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, eschewing Uranus and Neptune because scientists wanted to fly past Titan, Saturn's fascinating moon, and could not do so without ruining the slingshot effect.
But Voyager 2 used the alignment to visit all four planets, becoming the only spacecraft in history to visit Uranus and Neptune, in 1986 and 1989 respectively.
"That worked out fantastic," says Fran Bagenal, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the US and a member of the Voyager science team. "If Voyager 2 had left in 1980, it would have taken until 2010 to get to Neptune. I don't think it would have won support. Who's going to fund such a thing?""
"Reaching the outer planets with a spacecraft is difficult because these worlds are so far away, billions of miles, and would take decades to reach. However, using the gravitational pull of a well-placed planet, such as Jupiter, to slingshot a spacecraft outwards can reduce the travel time dramatically, something no spacecraft has done better than Nasa's Voyager vehicles.
In 1966, a Nasa scientist called Gary Flandro calculated that there would be an alignment of the four outermost planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – in 1977 that would enable all four to be visited within a span of just 12 years, compared to 30 years if they were not aligned. This fortuitous alignment, which occurs only once every 175 years, led to Nasa launching the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft in 1977 on a "Grand Tour" of the outer Solar System.
Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980, eschewing Uranus and Neptune because scientists wanted to fly past Titan, Saturn's fascinating moon, and could not do so without ruining the slingshot effect.
But Voyager 2 used the alignment to visit all four planets, becoming the only spacecraft in history to visit Uranus and Neptune, in 1986 and 1989 respectively.
"That worked out fantastic," says Fran Bagenal, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder in the US and a member of the Voyager science team. "If Voyager 2 had left in 1980, it would have taken until 2010 to get to Neptune. I don't think it would have won support. Who's going to fund such a thing?""
