The Astronomy Thread

Alex

Alex

Still a Music Elitist
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I think the amount schooling would stay the same and people would just increase the percentage of time fucking bitches and making money.
 
Tuco

Tuco

I got Tuco'd!
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came to post that, it's really good news!

Landing on comets and asteroids is a really important field of space travel, because asteroid mining is the only near-term profitable usage of outside LEO travel right now. Being able to wake up the lander and get the data from it and continue to communicate helps that effort.
 
Dandain

Dandain

Trakanon Raider
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Really exciting, especially the fact that they could potentially get to measure some aspects of the heating/release as the comet continues to get closer to the sun and the tail forms/grows. It will get something like 19,000 km closer to the Sun by August I think the article said. That's a couple months of power considering its already on, plus its exit time. They could get quite the science from this. Quite remarkable to have this thing wake back up.
 
Fury

Fury

Silver Knight of the Realm
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That's really quite exciting. Getting first hand readings and views (hopefully) as it gets closer just seems very cool.
 
Araxen

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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New Horizons Principal Investigator still considers Pluto a Planet

We now know that the Kuiper Belt is about three times the surface area of everything inside it, and it likely contains hundreds of Pluto-like objects. As Stern points out, it's ridiculous to assume that any object in the Kuiper Belt could clear its orbital zone-the third criterion for a planet-given the size of the region and its abundance of objects. "If you put Earth out in the Kuiper Belt, it couldn't clear it either," he said. "Does that mean Earth's not a planet?"
What exactly does it mean for an object to "clear its zone"? Stern says it's ambiguous: "The intended meaning is that its gravity is enough to sweep everything else where it's orbiting away. But in reality, every planet in the solar system has other small bodies next to it that it has not cleared. So, this lousy definition from non-specialists rules out everything. It rules out Jupiter, because Jupiter has Trojan asteroids. It rules out Neptune, because Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit. It's just so poorly thought-out that it's laughable."
Click to expand...
 
Big Phoenix

Big Phoenix

Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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I honestly think its because people dont like the idea of our solar system having dozens or more planets. They gotta be these unqiue and special things. Its only a matter of time until we find a system with some weird orbital characteristics. Dont think 30 years ago people would of imagined Jupiter sized planets closer to their star than Mercury.
 
Furry

Furry

WoW Office
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Speaking of new horizons... It grows closer. Close enough to see vague features on the surface of pluto. Enough to tell that it likely is more complex than just a ball of ice. Here's the most recent picture worth linking and where to find new ones as they're released for fellow science bros.

rrr_img_100261.jpg


New Horizons SOC
 
R

Running Dog_sl

shitlord
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More Philae comet stuff

- there's been no contact with the probe since Sunday, but apparently that's what was expected
- the Rosetta probe is moving closer in to improve communication
- the lander came to rest between boulders in the "south" of the comet, meaning that the amount of sunlight it receives will keep increasing through till August
- eight instruments on the probe "did science", but the drilling failed. They are waiting to see if a secondary battery is available before beginning any more studies.

Philae probe: Rosetta scientists says lander's material is 'amazingly exciting' | Science | The Guardian
 
Sentagur

Sentagur

Low and to the left
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A competing theory also proposes that all black holes are actually made of viscoelastic foam and they are incredibly comfortable to sleep on...
 
iannis

iannis

Musty Nester
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Here's a question. I remember one of the big wtf's about black holes (it's all wtf, sure, but this was an even bigger wtf) is that anything beyond the radius becomes null information, and you are allowed to do a whole lot of shit to information in the universe, but deleting it outright is not one of those things. And I remember that they were talking about how if you consider this, and accept that it may be true, the event horizon of a black hole would have to be a critically dense area of pure information itself no matter what else might lay beyond that horizon.

So maybe that's where the "near perfect hologram" comes in? Because otherwise it sounds really quite dumb. A black hole is like a giant xerox machine!

Or maybe you are allowed to just selectively delete parts of the universe. Or maybe this is a thing that I barely remember having read years ago and I'm remembering it wrong.
 
Agraza

Agraza

Registered Hutt
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I thought only Hawking claimed that black holes deleted information. Later he qualified that with "in this universe, but they then generation an equivalent amount of information in another", or...something. I kneejerked away from that theory, and most of the field seemed to be against it too.
 
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