The Astronomy Thread

I hate you, Mr. 'Realist Lawyer Man'.



GrumpyGerbil

Ukerric_sl said:

There was a paper a couple years ago that plotted the possible number of civilizations in the galaxy and the chances that we would haven't seen any signs of them nor heard any modulated radio wave. The curve drops below 50% at 7 technological advanced civilizations.

And it might be Bad News.

One of the things from the above is the Great Filter (the missed factor in Drake's Equation that basically makes it less than 7 civs instead of 100k). If the Great Filter lies in our past (life is hard to start, life is difficult to go complex, intelligence is hard, technic civ is hard) then we've passed it and glorious future may lie ahead of us. If the Great Filter is still ahead (civs don't last and die out fast), then we're doomed.

Finding a separate and distinct instance of life in our own system means the "life is hard" filter does not exists, and thus we're more likely to have the Great Filter waiting for us.

(the exoplanet bonanza has already taught us that the possible Great Filters "stars usually don't have planets" "planets that are potentially habitable are rare" are incorrect)

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The "biggest" great filter is most likely behind us, it was the long term stability for complex life to iterate long enough for intelligent life to exist. As far as we know we're the only creature that is/was capable of passing knowledge between generations well enough that we continuously improve our collective knowledge and our ability to exploit energy. We're the product of millions of years of uninterrupted primate evolution and even then we were almost wiped out entirely about 80 thousands years ago. Our hardest days are definitely behind us.

We have the skill sets now to ensure that we can endure most major catastrophes and our ability to produce and use energy is only getting better. Going forward the only real threat to us is ourselves and how well we can maintain world stability to continue our advancements. I don't think anyone sane is looking to throw us back into the dark ages, so the future looks positive. It looks even more positive if you can get the rest of the world educated enough to start contributing, the more people working towards a better humanity the faster it's going to happen.

Figure this thread may be good for it. Wife is interested in telescopes. Not very science based and doesnt know or follow the naked eye night events some of my friends like to watch. Anyone know some good resources for her to get started? I know a tiny bit but hoping for her to do her own research and make it her hobby not just another thing i do and show her.

She said she looked for a local Colorado forum and didn't see anything but I'm sure there is unless there's a major national forum with maybe a by state sub section.

Here's the scope she was looking at. I know enough to avoid cheap ones that advertise how many x it is. I'm not sure if a go to is worthwhile for her starting out. Don't want to get crap, but controlling costs good too until i know it's going to take off for her.

Amazon.com : Sky-Watcher 12 Photo

Tripamang_sl said:

The "biggest" great filter is most likely behind us, it was the long term stability for complex life to iterate long enough for intelligent life to exist. As far as we know we're the only creature that is/was capable of passing knowledge between generations well enough that we continuously improve our collective knowledge and our ability to exploit energy. We're the product of millions of years of uninterrupted primate evolution and even then we were almost wiped out entirely about 80 thousands years ago. Our hardest days are definitely behind us.

We have the skill sets now to ensure that we can endure most major catastrophesand our ability to produce and use energy is only getting better. Going forward the only real threat to us is ourselves and how well we can maintain world stability to continue our advancements. I don't think anyone sane is looking to throw us back into the dark ages, so the future looks positive. It looks even more positive if you can get the rest of the world educated enough to start contributing, the more people working towards a better humanity the faster it's going to happen.

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This is fantasy at this point and for the considerable future. Until we actually can perfect interstellar travel, there's a myriad of cosmic catastrophes we are powerless to stop and could doom us as a species if not the entire planet. Granted, the most likely extinction in the near term is self-inflicted. However, you can't simply dismiss extinction level events entirely until we have a means of stopping it or colonizing elsewhere.

I've always been skeptical of radio based SETI efforts and how it plays into the Fermi Paradox. Consider the billions of years the universe has had to create multiple intelligent species. We humans started radio based communications only ~100 years ago? Now consider future tech. In another 100 years, hell.. call it 200 years, we could move on to another means of mass communication altogether. (Completely ignoring the fact that much of the radio frequency spectrum is blocked by the earth's atmosphere.) If you think of the very short window of time for a radio communications based civilization, what are the chances we would be "listening" at the same time another civilization's broadcast (magically uninterrupted) hits our SETI based receivers? If you even consider that 100 years as a whole we have even known about radio communication, we have been listening for about 0.000000002% of theEarth'sexistence, let alone the universe's.

I saw this on imgur, tis lovelyWanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist on Vimeo

Druyan is fairly, and rightly imo, protective of the Sagan IP methinks.

OMG means Oceans Melting Greenland. GTFO

So this is from Nasa, its the timelapse of Junocam's approach to the system from the pole until the instruments were turned off for the insertion burn.

I found this article to be a compilation of some neat stats about what they did to put this probe into orbit, can't wait to see what we see next.

Welcome to Jupiter - NASA's Juno Achieves Orbit around 'King of the Planets' - Universe Today

A little PBS space time about Jupiter.

We Finally Know Whats Inside the Crab Nebula

Disappointingly...not Old Bay.