The Universe
 

This is a subject I have become extremely interested in since coming to South Korea for some reason. I check Nasa's website almost everyday, along with the APOD site and read as many theories about space and the universe as I can understand/have time for. I took an astronomy class in college and thought it was pretty much retarded, but also my professor had an Indian accent that was so thick the only way I passed the class was by reading the entire textbook, and all we seemed to learn about was constellations and equations. I realize these are important parts of understanding the universe, but not exactly the best pretenses to incite interest in the subject, which is really what any 100 level class should be about. But I digress...

Here you can post cool shit you find about space, the universe, and other mysteries of life. Carl Sagan has been a pretty huge influence on me thus far.

Great show on how the speed of light could very well be variable, prove most of what we know about physics is wrong, and that Einstein got it quite wrong.

He is actually not a nerd and the show is entertaining, even if some of it goes over our heads. He explains himself very well, and the accent is great.

Idiots will say "see science is wrong!" less primitive, ape-like, people will realize "science is smart enough to challenge even the most established ideas, no matter how right we think they are, and actually do the necessary academic work to test their ideas."

Cribb notes:
João Magueijo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Variable speed of light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.nubblies.net/forums/Photo...startrails.jpg

Explanation: In myth, Atlas holds up the heavens. But in this moonlit mountainscape, peaks of the Himalayan Annapurna Range appear to prop up the sky as seen from Ghandruk, Nepal. From left to right the three main peaks are Annapurna South (7,219 meters), Hiunchuli (6,441 metes), and Machapuchare (6,995 meters). Of course the mountains are moving not the stars, the Earth's rotation about its axis causing the concentric star trails recorded in the time exposure. Positioned above Annapurna South, the North Celestial Pole is easily identified as the point at the center of all the star trail arcs. The star Polaris, also known as the North Star, made the very short and bright arc closest to the North Celestial Pole.

APOD: 2009 November 28 - Annapurna Star Trails

The Physics of Space Battles - Space battle - Gizmodo

this is a really good article regarding the realism of the science fiction we've come to know and love.

Why would they report that now? That is not new news...we have known that for quite a while now.

If I thought it was common knowledge I wouldn't have posted it. You are clearly a more devoted internet scholar than I am.

I wasn't bashing you, it's a relatively vague thing to know. But on their part it doesn't make a lot of sense how they reported it; That's like re-reporting 9/11, kinda. They don't talk about dates or even say "in a recent study". They make it sound like "news" when it's really not. It took me a few read-throughs to realize that it wasn't. Anyways wasn't trying to insult your or anything.

I was doing some book learnin' today about electromagnetism, which is one of the four forces of the universe. Personally, I find electromagnetism and electricity to be one of the most fascinating things on Earth. It's ability to transfer not only power but also information is quite amazing in my opinion. Anyways, as is probably well-known (hopefully), the Earth emits a magnetic field around its atmosphere. I believe its refereed to as the magnetosphere or something like that. Basically this magnetic shield protects us from massive, radioactive ejaculates from the sun. Some suggest that Mars may have once been a lot like Earth, but without a magnetosphere the solar ejaculates tore away at its atmosphere until it was left a barren wasteland. The magnetic field surrounding the Earth will one day die out but not for a long time, so we don't have to worry about that happening just yet. What we do have to worry about is the polarity of the magnetic field changing, which will leave the magnetosphere down for several days, or longer. This happens every few thousand years I believe, and we are well overdue.

Another potential problem is that a highly concentrated mega blast of solar ejaculate (solar flares) could overwhelm the magnetic field and we would be vulnerable. Something like this happened in the 90s in northern Canada. I believe they were without power for several days. Another incident is reported happening in 1889, the biggest incident of this type ever recorded. All of the telegraph lines surged and that infrastructure was destroyed. Reports claim that northern lights could be seen as far south as Cuba during this "storm". The main concern with this disaster is not that it will burn, destroy, and kill everything in its path, but it will cause massive power surges that will cause every power transformer to explode. This would destroy the entire infrastructure, and since many of the other infrastructures such as drinking water, gasoline pumps, etc rely on electricity to work, we'd all be ass-fucked. A large power transformer takes about 6 months to build, so that's months with no power, no water, no fuel, etc. Smaller cities would take even longer. In fact it would take decades to get the entire infrastructure rebuilt. Personally, I believe the destruction of the power grid due to this catastrophe is likely preventable, and experts are working on it right now. No solution is yet in order.

so this ruins all theories of multiple universes/universes before the big bang?
I always liked the idea of a big crunch to start anew.
What a bastard.

Perseids - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/683...c53ef0133f.png

View of earth from mercury


So far, our planet-roaming spacecraft have taken tourist snapshots of Earth as seen from Mars, Saturn, and beyond Pluto’s orbit.

But this latest view from NASA’s MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) spacecraft is a jaw-dropper.

For the first time we see Earth -- in astronomical parlance -- as a fully illuminated superior planet 114 million mile outward from Mercury. Earth really looks like a double star because the moon is snuggled up next to it..



http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/6...ot01092503.jpg

Hate to be the forum dick here guys but this is an image named "The Pale Blue Dot", one of the most famous in all astronomy and taken about 20 years ago. By the Voyager spacecraft, not from MESSENGER.

If anyone on facebook is interested, myself and about 5 friends run a page called "The Universe" where we pretty frequently update with links about astronomy, physics, space, the Earth, etc. I started it up shortly after making this thread.

Welcome to Facebook

^ was a copy pasta, the text was meant to be for the first picture, I should probably put the text first.

The reason I put it there is because both the shots were taken from ~4 billion miles away, my bad.

Ah, I saw some repetition up there, I just wasn't sure. Pretty cool either way.

Guys on somethingawful are going to space.

We've made the world's largest amateur space rocket. - The Something Awful Forums

and it's going to be manned.

Note that their "project" before this was creating a god damned submarine.

These folks are pretty amazing.

I think they just sorta monitor for this sort of thing and when it happens you make sure all electronics are unplugged / turned off for 15 minutes while the EMP (basically) hits the earth and everything is ok ... could be wrong.

I saw some show on History about this telescope, along with a few others, pretty amazing shit.

I'm not impressed with anything in this thread.

Stick to reading 200 year old philosophical bullshit then Repug, come back when you've regained your sense of wonder.

I'm sure everybody has heard about this already, but here goes...

Astronomers have discovered a habitable planet 20 light years away

It's pretty insane that 20 light years away is considered incredibly close in astronomical terms, but when you actually consider just how far away that is, getting there seems insurmountable.

Especially considering that even getting close to the speed of light seems basically impossible. We need a worm-hole (and no, I'm not talking about ID's sister's vagina).

Amazing to think about.

One light year = 5.8 trillion miles. A manned NASA Shuttle can reach ~17,500 mph. That means one light year would take 331428571 hours, or ~37834 years.

The fastest spacecraft record is held by the Helios probes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia which reached ~150,000mph. One of those would take 4414 years.

Yeah, but all the pandering to public interest is what pretty much every space or research program needs. The little people like to fantasize. I was pretty annoyed at all the speculation yesterday, so I posted this on facebook:

119,333,546,000,000 miles. That's how far away the Gliese 581 star system is. That is over 119 TRILLION miles away. For some perspective, Voyager 1 is the spacecraft furthest away from Earth -- It's been traveling for about 33 years and is only about 10.549 billion miles away from the Sun. This is one of many huge obstacles we need to overcome before we can get truly excited. If you're REALLY interested, here's the 50-page scientific journal on the subject.

http://www.ucolick.org/~vogt/ms_press-1.pdf


Also reminded me of this:

http://www.nubblies.net/forums/Photo...ciencenews.gif

This is always what comes to mind whenever I think about space exploration, reliance upon our own solar system is truly what is of the utmost importance. It's cool that there are possibly inhabitable planets out there, although it means absolutely nothing for anything near our proximal generations.

Not necessarily true. If you think looking for extraterrestrial life is of importance, knowing the size of the universe and the frequency of earth-similar planets. Right now, the extent of the math is "the universe is really huge so there must be other life out there" minus "conditions have to be so specific for life to evolve on a planet, so there's no way there's life out there" equals "umm there's probably life out there, maybe?" Finding earth-similar planets can actually put some numbers on the problem.

Specifically, this problem:

So space is really large, big whoop.

Oh wow the universe is so big and I'm so small really makes you think huh? oh gee I sure am thinking a lot now yea oh wow. Oh no wait, go fuck yourselves who cares, whats for dinner?

I've heard of these before, but it really is unbelievable.

Think that was posted earlier this week in kick-ass videos.

OH MAN I JUST "MR BLONDE"-ED MR BLONDE!!!!!!

Ah, sorry dudes.

This is really big news, isn't it? Not sure how it wasn't front-page.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/sc...=1&ref=science

Kind of. Not really. This just means there's more then we thought, which sure is great, but we knew there was water on the moon for sure almost a year ago.

That article even says:

I mean, it's still exciting, but not exactly surprising.

It had a couple minute story on the CBS news last night. That makes it big news.

End of fucking story.

First spaceport runway opens in US - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Pretty sweet. I didn't realize that flights were that (relatively) cheap.

50,000 galaxies in one image

Different than but similar to the HDF and the HUDF. I can never seem to get tired of talking about how ridiculously amazing it is that every single galaxy (of which there are already hundreds of billions) has hundreds of billions of stars with potential planets with potential life with potential intelligent beings and civilizations. Looking back at their own "Hubble" thinking the same thing about us. Make sure to use your scroll-wheel and drag.

Welcome To The Future, Where The Stars Belong To Corporations

I wanna be an interstellar semi driver.

SpaceX's Dragon went into orbit today. Pretty badass. And have you guys seen the Virgin Galaxy spaceport? I know photoshop was involved but jesus it looks like something out of the newest Star Trek movie.

It's a fucking shame to see all the mom an pop owned star shops being shut down by the big corporations.

lol

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Beebs again.

Hey Blonde, fuck you. What the fuck is the deal negrepping me for a post I made back in August?! Do you know how many times I could negrep you for posts you've made in the past? I've worked hard for these measly 5000 internets, and you just shat all over them. Fuck you. It's on now.