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The Astronomy Thread
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Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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What prevents the two planets fucking each other up? In this case the massive jupiter planet btfoing the small cloud of dust?
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I would imagine the distance between them is decaying at a much slower rate than we've witnessed before. I'm sure we'll see a follow up that explores what's going on if this is an accurate image.
Burns
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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My money would be on the smaller "planet" being in the Lagrange point of the very massive planet, so the massive planet just pushes or pulls the small one around. A planet with 7 times the mass of Jupiter would hardly feel a mass the size of Earth's moon.
Edit: Oh, I guess I should have read the full article (it's short), since they were specifically looking at the Lagrange points of massive exoplanets, to see what they could find.
Edit: Oh, I guess I should have read the full article (it's short), since they were specifically looking at the Lagrange points of massive exoplanets, to see what they could find.
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Sanrith Descartes
Veteran of a thousand threadban wars
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It sort of looks pretty damn flat on top
Maybe an alien trackhoe made it.
Maybe an alien trackhoe made it.
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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NASA launched a new site.
beta.nasa.gov
They're also launching NASA+, a modern free on-demand service for viewing high quality video.
NASA
NASA.gov brings you the latest news, images and videos from America's space agency, pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.
beta.nasa.gov
They're also launching NASA+, a modern free on-demand service for viewing high quality video.
Oldbased
> Than U
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I love how China landed theirs in such a way we can't spy nonstop from Earth.
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Oldbased
> Than U
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If I was building a base on Mars, that would be where I'd start. Then start digging down for protection.
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Ukerric
Bearded Ape
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Wait, finally their launches on SpaceX will be broadcast in 1080p instead of 720p?NASA launched a new site.
NASA
NASA.gov brings you the latest news, images and videos from America's space agency, pioneering the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.
They're also launching NASA+, a modern free on-demand service for viewing high quality video.
Rajaah
Honorable Member
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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I have a feeling almost any "megastructure" we might find in space is gonna be long-since abandoned, given the astronomically low odds that we'd find someone super-advanced existing at the same time as us. I'm of the mind that advanced civilizations come and go regularly, with all of the menaces out there that can completely end a civilization like cataclysms, asteroids, etc. Also the fact that any civilization advanced enough to build things in space is also going to be advanced enough to easily blow itself up.
Even an abandoned megastructure would be totally fascinating to find though.
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We are still stuck on the idea that we are somehow the center, or near the center of our universe, of course we have no fucking clue. You can thank thousands of years of religion and superstition for that becoming hardcoded in all of our brains. If suddenly we had strong evidence that we were actually on the outer sphere of a much larger universe, it would throw most of our theories and calculations out the window. They can't get money if they admit "We pretty much guessing here, but our math supports our guesses for now"
Astronomy/Astrophysics is kinda like the Ancient Civilization thread, except they "post" their theories every couple of years, and frame it to be mostly fact. That's not meant as an insult to the civs thread, you guys know your on a gaming forum spitballing ideas.
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Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Im gonna go out on a limb here and say advanced life is relatively rare in the universe.
Most star systems arent fertile ground for advanced life(yeah yeah red dwarfs live for a trillion years but an Earth like world's core would cool and shutdown long before that) and planets seemingly need to roll the perfect set of conditions to be habitable and be lucky and not get fucked over with an asteroid, grb or some other space cataclysm.
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I personally think life is common in the universe, but not common per galaxy. There's billions/trillions of galaxies out there, however even with billions of stars in our galaxy, our definition of life can't develop in the increasing ionizing radiation that increases the closer you get to the core. Rather than a few dozen of stars within 10-15 LY like our neighbourhood, you have a few hundred jammed in that space, with all the radiation and fucked up gravitational pulls. That's ignoring many of the other cosmic hazards that exist. Very limited portions of our own massive galaxy that could possibly sprout life. Earth could very easily be the only place any form of life that exists in our galaxy.
I'm just talking basic life too, the odds go way down for advanced civilizations that can actually survive themselves, and venture beyond their own systems. We haven't been anywhere besides our own moon, and we been on the verge of self annihilation for quite some time. We think far to highly of ourselves IMO, I think we will exhaust our own resources on these stupid squabbles for the next 100 years or more, before we can actually get out there and start mining our system to reach the stars beyond. Elon can't save us by himself, and Ukraine needs that cash right? Needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many in our civilization.
Travelling to our nearest star in a reasonable time is way out of our ability, travelling distances between galaxies would for certain require some wildly exotic tech that we can only imagine in sci fi stories.
I don't think most people actually appreciate the actual size of our viewable universe. Comprehending the scale of just our galaxy with its billions of stars, trillions of planets/moons/asteroid fields, and various other features is one thing, now multiply that by a few trillion or more, just what from we can "see" I would consider it a sure bet there are things we haven't even discovered in our own neighbourhood of our galaxy yet. We still discovering new shit on our own planet & system.
Eh not directed at anyone, fuck Sundays, just my pissy half rant for the day.
I'm just talking basic life too, the odds go way down for advanced civilizations that can actually survive themselves, and venture beyond their own systems. We haven't been anywhere besides our own moon, and we been on the verge of self annihilation for quite some time. We think far to highly of ourselves IMO, I think we will exhaust our own resources on these stupid squabbles for the next 100 years or more, before we can actually get out there and start mining our system to reach the stars beyond. Elon can't save us by himself, and Ukraine needs that cash right? Needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many in our civilization.
Travelling to our nearest star in a reasonable time is way out of our ability, travelling distances between galaxies would for certain require some wildly exotic tech that we can only imagine in sci fi stories.
I don't think most people actually appreciate the actual size of our viewable universe. Comprehending the scale of just our galaxy with its billions of stars, trillions of planets/moons/asteroid fields, and various other features is one thing, now multiply that by a few trillion or more, just what from we can "see" I would consider it a sure bet there are things we haven't even discovered in our own neighbourhood of our galaxy yet. We still discovering new shit on our own planet & system.
Eh not directed at anyone, fuck Sundays, just my pissy half rant for the day.
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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Depends on how you define "rare". Just taking the size of the Universe that we know of now. A Google search says there are about 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe, and if each is, say, about 100 billion stars large, which seems to be the average... Well, even if you only have one advanced life form per galaxy, that's still 2 trillion advanced life forms. That's around 500 advanced life forms for every person on this planet.
We then have the issue with where can we find life. I remember just back in my High School biology classes in the mid 90s I was taught the conditions for which life could exist. Had to have sunlight, liquid water, a pressure range... Since then we've been constantly pushing back these limits. We're finding life, even relatively complex life that exists at great depths of the oceans and pressures, under glaciers frozen for tens of thousands of years, deep in dark cave systems, next to boiling underwater volcanic fissures and hot springs, in outer space (experiments on the ISS).
Then you have the Geo-centric view of what exactly life is - how you classify it. Take the numbers above. 2 trillion x 100 billion = a metric shit ton of possibilities for strange forms of life to evolve. I can't remember where I read it, but there was an interesting article recently about consciousness and how we still don't know how it forms and what it is. One new hypothesis is that it is tied to quantum fields, and therefore not just "locked" inside our brains. Now - I'm not going to argue here that it either is or isn't - who the fuck knows, but if it is something like that, it opens a whole new can of worms about what life exactly is. We could find microbes floating around the atmosphere of Jupiter and never know that they may be linked via quantum fields creating basically a planetary consciousness.
Personally I think that the likelihood of life elsewhere is growing. It seems to me that a couple of decades ago most astrophysicists and exobiologists were of the thought that we were probably the only outpost of life, but it would still be worth it to look - to new where the consensus seems to be that it's basically only a matter of time before we find some signs on Mars, Europa or Titan or someplace.
But that's just my two dukats.
Edit: C Cynical beat me to it... lol
We then have the issue with where can we find life. I remember just back in my High School biology classes in the mid 90s I was taught the conditions for which life could exist. Had to have sunlight, liquid water, a pressure range... Since then we've been constantly pushing back these limits. We're finding life, even relatively complex life that exists at great depths of the oceans and pressures, under glaciers frozen for tens of thousands of years, deep in dark cave systems, next to boiling underwater volcanic fissures and hot springs, in outer space (experiments on the ISS).
Then you have the Geo-centric view of what exactly life is - how you classify it. Take the numbers above. 2 trillion x 100 billion = a metric shit ton of possibilities for strange forms of life to evolve. I can't remember where I read it, but there was an interesting article recently about consciousness and how we still don't know how it forms and what it is. One new hypothesis is that it is tied to quantum fields, and therefore not just "locked" inside our brains. Now - I'm not going to argue here that it either is or isn't - who the fuck knows, but if it is something like that, it opens a whole new can of worms about what life exactly is. We could find microbes floating around the atmosphere of Jupiter and never know that they may be linked via quantum fields creating basically a planetary consciousness.
Personally I think that the likelihood of life elsewhere is growing. It seems to me that a couple of decades ago most astrophysicists and exobiologists were of the thought that we were probably the only outpost of life, but it would still be worth it to look - to new where the consensus seems to be that it's basically only a matter of time before we find some signs on Mars, Europa or Titan or someplace.
But that's just my two dukats.
Edit: C Cynical beat me to it... lol
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