one of the wheels doesn't turn properly anymore so it drags when the rover spins, most likely that's what flipped the rock
yeah, but it's kind of cool that they're like, "no this is really cool. The underside of the rock probably hasn't been exposed for a billion years. Let's study it!"
one of the wheels doesn't turn properly anymore so it drags when the rover spins, most likely that's what flipped the rock
yeah, but it's kind of cool that they're like, "no this is really cool. The underside of the rock probably hasn't been exposed for a billion years. Let's study it!"
perverts!
+3
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
opportunity should be a symbol of humanity. broken wheel, a robotic arm that is only semi-functional, flash memory problems on occasion, but still it soldiers on, millions of miles from home.
plucky little bastard.
+3
AntimatterDevo Was RightGates of SteelRegistered Userregular
And I'm a little bit out of the loop but I don't think this should even be that controversial of a revelation.
I was part of several lectures and talks where the fact that somehow information from blackholes exists so therefore it must be escaping from the event.
Just probably going to be another case of classical mechanics being a good simplistic model but not capable of handling all the details of what we know.
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
So, Opportunity has been going for a decade on Mars, which falls under the 'freaking awesome' category of unbelievable shit that has no right happening, and there's a plethora of articles and informatives being shopped around by all the usual space-nerd news outlets.
I mean, just look at that linked APOD pic. 10 years of Martian dunes and weather events, leaching energy from a Sun whose energy is exponentially smaller than it is here on Earth. And yet, there she is, still soldiering on, doing as much science as she can a decade later. Opportunity is a testiment to the skill and technical triumph of NASA and the scientific community.
However, for all that, one of the best articles I've read this weekend was this article on Spirit, which has to be one of my favourite pieces on the rovers I've ever read.
That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
+8
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
Curiosity snagged a meteor falling.
+12
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
The way I was scrolling I just saw what you wrote, and not the picture and I thought it had literally caught a meteor. The picture is awesome, but I'm a little disapointed.
So, Opportunity has been going for a decade on Mars, which falls under the 'freaking awesome' category of unbelievable shit that has no right happening, and there's a plethora of articles and informatives being shopped around by all the usual space-nerd news outlets.
I mean, just look at that linked APOD pic. 10 years of Martian dunes and weather events, leaching energy from a Sun whose energy is exponentially smaller than it is here on Earth. And yet, there she is, still soldiering on, doing as much science as she can a decade later. Opportunity is a testiment to the skill and technical triumph of NASA and the scientific community.
However, for all that, one of the best articles I've read this weekend was this article on Spirit, which has to be one of my favourite pieces on the rovers I've ever read.
Spirit was so awesome. And of course the article linked the xkcd comic, which always makes me cry.
#pipeCocky Stride, Musky odoursPope of Chili TownRegistered Userregular
Hey science thread!
I don't know if you're interested in the shit-flinging it will probably turn into, but Bill Nye is debating a creationist and it's being streamed on youtube, starting in about half an hour
Like, we almost doubled the number of planets known about overnight. Not Kepler planets. Planets total.
McChrist, that's a whole lot of planets.
So on to interesting details:
A massive proportion of these planets are smaller than those found before. Over 650 are smaller than Neptune; 106 are not more than 1.25 times larger than the Earth. That's again a huge leap forward in finding small, Earth-like planets. Up until now, almost all exoplanets that have been discovered are in the Jupiter or super-Jupiter range; the number of smaller planets was counted in the dozens, while there were only 20 near-Earth like small planets discovered.
Overnight, the number of roughly Earth-sazed worlds increased by a factor of five.
None of those are confirmed in the habitable zone, though. However, 4 only-slightly-larger planets - roughly 1.8-2.5 times the size of Earth - are in their stars habitable zone - capable of sustaining liquid water on the surface of a planet with a surface area multitudes larger than Earth.
The whole thing is pretty exciting, at least if you're humongous space nerd. Phil Plait's done a thing you can read, or just start hitting up space-sci blogs.
That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
+8
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Other interesting things!
So last night was the occultation of Venus by the Moon. That's when the Moon passes in front of Venus as seen from Earth, but as with an eclipse, such a view is only visible from a small area of the Earth. In this case, that area was a band stretching from Asia to North Africa, which made it not greatly visible to many people who post on these forums, but Venus and the Moon were pretty close together in the sky much of the world yesterday.
Anyway, there's a lot of great pics being shared around the web of the event (no, sorry, I didn't take any as the Eastern horizon from my house is not that interesting, but I did take my 18 month old son out to the park at dawn so I could enjoy the early morning spectacle).
This follows the moon's occultation of Saturn only a few days earlier, an event much more difficult to see unless you A) had a telescope and B) live in Australia.
The Moon and Venus are not as close today as they were yesterday, but are still within the same frame of reference in the sky, which can lead into a neat trick.
You know how they sometimes talk about comets or supernovas being visible in the daylight? You ever look at Venus shining brightly in the dawn or twilight and think 'how can we not see that during the day?'.
Well, you often can see Venus in the daylight, except you don't know where to look. But with the moon so nearby, you can actually use that as a sky landmark (sky-mark?) to find Venus. It's not easy, especially as the moon is now little more than a sliver of light in the daytime sky as it approached new moon, but it's almost noon here on a clear summer day and I just went outside and picked my way from Sun, to the moon, to Venus.
At the moment the moon is about an hour in front of the Sun, which is to say, if you know where the Sun will be in an hour, that's roughly where the Moon is. And then, Venus is about a half hour in front of that - a little distant white speck in a field of clear blue sky. It's easiest if you have a look in the early morning to get a sense of how they all relate to each other... or you can just use Gogle skymap on your phone. In any case, if you've never looked up during a clear bright day (provided you actually have clear skies) and seen that you can see a star in the sky during the day... it's a kinda weird experience. If you can get a chance, if the sky is clear, give it a try. It's bit mind blowing, but you can get a sense for what it's like to look up and see a comet or supernova - or planet - in the sky during the middle of the day.
In the field of quantum physics, you could call this a droplet in the bucket.
Physicists in Germany and the United States said on Wednesday they have discovered an exotic new type of particle that they call a quantum droplet, or dropleton.
Writing in the journal Nature, they said it behaves a bit like a liquid droplet and described it as a quasiparticle — an amalgamation of smaller types of particles.
The discovery, they added, could be useful in the development of nanotechnology, including the design of optoelectronic devices. These include things like the semiconductor lasers used in Blu-ray disc players.
"Even though this happens so rapidly, it is still useful to understand that it does happen," Cundiff said by email.
The scientists foresee practical value in the discovery.
"The effects that give rise to the formation of dropletons also influence the electrons in optoelectronic devices such as laser diodes," physicist Mackillo Kira of the University of Marburg in Germany, one of the researchers, said by email.
Examples of optoelectronic devices include LED lights and semiconductor lasers used in telecommunications and Blu-ray players.
"For example, the dropletons couple particularly strongly to quantum fluctuations of light, which should be extremely useful when designing lasers capable of encoding quantum information," Kira added.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
For those of you disappointed that I wasn't posting photos the other day...
The Moon was looking particularly picturesque as it set behind the hills across the valley:
I'm not well practised at doing lunar photography; my interest is primarily in things that lie farther away, so I usually try to avoid the Moon's light pollution and haven't spent that much time working with our closest celestial neighbour, so I was pretty happy to take what is probably my best detailed shot of the moon from the front deck of my house:
These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space. This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping — a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid [1]. The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.
+1
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space. This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping — a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid [1]. The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.
19.95 a month for all the hot stellar action you can handle!
These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space. This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping — a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid [1]. The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.
19.95 a month for all the hot stellar action you can handle!
"hot young stars", "galactic disrobing", "ram pressure stripping"... I'll be in my bunk
Also, the second picture from that article is seriously cool
So, basically, it looks like someone managed to find gravitational waves in the background microwave radiation permeating the universe and that apparently is the missing evidence they've been looking for for decades.
It’s rare enough for a person to have a life’s work; to be able to see the validation of that work firsthand is understandably an overpowering experience. Linde might not call those years of waiting “faith,” but what he describes sounds somewhat like it—the persevering hope in the face of doubt and self-questioning: “What if I believe in this just because it is beautiful?” Faith, after all, is not just a religious category, and science isn’t divorced from our human capacities for aesthetic appreciation and awe.
Astronomers have announced the discovery of an amazing object in our solar system: 2012 VP113, an icy body with an orbit so big it never gets closer than 12 billion kilometers (7.4 billion miles) from the Sun! That’s 80 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. No other solar system object known stays so far from the Sun. And at its most distant, it reaches an incredible 70 billion kilometers (44 billion miles) from the Sun—and it takes well over 4,000 years to circle the Sun once.
This new object is not the most distant object orbiting the Sun we know of, nor does it get further than Sedna or a few other comets we know of. But it's closest point of approach to the Sun is the most distant, making it the most distant object in terms of staying away from the Sun. Every other object we know of gets closer at some point in its orbit.
So this is kinda exciting, in terms of a new object out there in the deep black to study, but a lot of the excitement is also to do with the implications. That there are still other deep space Oort cloud objects out there, waiting to be discovered. That we're only just now beginning to get an idea of the structure of the most distant edges of the Solar System. What discoveries are still out there, truths waiting to be found?
The Moon and Venus are not as close today as they were yesterday, but are still within the same frame of reference in the sky, which can lead into a neat trick.
You know how they sometimes talk about comets or supernovas being visible in the daylight? You ever look at Venus shining brightly in the dawn or twilight and think 'how can we not see that during the day?'.
Well, you often can see Venus in the daylight, except you don't know where to look. But with the moon so nearby, you can actually use that as a sky landmark (sky-mark?) to find Venus. It's not easy, especially as the moon is now little more than a sliver of light in the daytime sky as it approached new moon, but it's almost noon here on a clear summer day and I just went outside and picked my way from Sun, to the moon, to Venus.
Well, that's true again today, and this time I've given you more advance notice, so if you thought this was neat but didn't get an opportunity to try, or it was overcast, or they were too distant, you can try again over the next couple days.
Astronomers have announced the discovery of an amazing object in our solar system: 2012 VP113, an icy body with an orbit so big it never gets closer than 12 billion kilometers (7.4 billion miles) from the Sun! That’s 80 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun. No other solar system object known stays so far from the Sun. And at its most distant, it reaches an incredible 70 billion kilometers (44 billion miles) from the Sun—and it takes well over 4,000 years to circle the Sun once.
This new object is not the most distant object orbiting the Sun we know of, nor does it get further than Sedna or a few other comets we know of. But it's closest point of approach to the Sun is the most distant, making it the most distant object in terms of staying away from the Sun. Every other object we know of gets closer at some point in its orbit.
So this is kinda exciting, in terms of a new object out there in the deep black to study, but a lot of the excitement is also to do with the implications. That there are still other deep space Oort cloud objects out there, waiting to be discovered. That we're only just now beginning to get an idea of the structure of the most distant edges of the Solar System. What discoveries are still out there, truths waiting to be found?
From the New York Times:
For convenience, the scientists shorten the 2012 VP113 designation to VP, which in turn inspired their nickname for planetoid: Biden, after Vice President Joseph R. Biden.
Posts
perverts!
plucky little bastard.
Edit: The topic is interesting and that actual article isn't half bad but jesus christ.
I was part of several lectures and talks where the fact that somehow information from blackholes exists so therefore it must be escaping from the event.
Just probably going to be another case of classical mechanics being a good simplistic model but not capable of handling all the details of what we know.
I mean, just look at that linked APOD pic. 10 years of Martian dunes and weather events, leaching energy from a Sun whose energy is exponentially smaller than it is here on Earth. And yet, there she is, still soldiering on, doing as much science as she can a decade later. Opportunity is a testiment to the skill and technical triumph of NASA and the scientific community.
However, for all that, one of the best articles I've read this weekend was this article on Spirit, which has to be one of my favourite pieces on the rovers I've ever read.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Spirit was so awesome. And of course the article linked the xkcd comic, which always makes me cry.
I don't know if you're interested in the shit-flinging it will probably turn into, but Bill Nye is debating a creationist and it's being streamed on youtube, starting in about half an hour
Need some stuff designed or printed? I can help with that.
also I think I'd be into creationist theory more if they used the word "aliens" instead of "god"
That'll be the Intelligent Design proponents, then.
meteor vs moon
astronaut vs moon
That's a whole lot of exoplanets.
Like, we almost doubled the number of planets known about overnight. Not Kepler planets. Planets total.
McChrist, that's a whole lot of planets.
So on to interesting details:
A massive proportion of these planets are smaller than those found before. Over 650 are smaller than Neptune; 106 are not more than 1.25 times larger than the Earth. That's again a huge leap forward in finding small, Earth-like planets. Up until now, almost all exoplanets that have been discovered are in the Jupiter or super-Jupiter range; the number of smaller planets was counted in the dozens, while there were only 20 near-Earth like small planets discovered.
Overnight, the number of roughly Earth-sazed worlds increased by a factor of five.
None of those are confirmed in the habitable zone, though. However, 4 only-slightly-larger planets - roughly 1.8-2.5 times the size of Earth - are in their stars habitable zone - capable of sustaining liquid water on the surface of a planet with a surface area multitudes larger than Earth.
The whole thing is pretty exciting, at least if you're humongous space nerd. Phil Plait's done a thing you can read, or just start hitting up space-sci blogs.
So last night was the occultation of Venus by the Moon. That's when the Moon passes in front of Venus as seen from Earth, but as with an eclipse, such a view is only visible from a small area of the Earth. In this case, that area was a band stretching from Asia to North Africa, which made it not greatly visible to many people who post on these forums, but Venus and the Moon were pretty close together in the sky much of the world yesterday.
Anyway, there's a lot of great pics being shared around the web of the event (no, sorry, I didn't take any as the Eastern horizon from my house is not that interesting, but I did take my 18 month old son out to the park at dawn so I could enjoy the early morning spectacle).
This follows the moon's occultation of Saturn only a few days earlier, an event much more difficult to see unless you A) had a telescope and B) live in Australia.
Fortunately, some people did the hard work for you there, too.
The Moon and Venus are not as close today as they were yesterday, but are still within the same frame of reference in the sky, which can lead into a neat trick.
You know how they sometimes talk about comets or supernovas being visible in the daylight? You ever look at Venus shining brightly in the dawn or twilight and think 'how can we not see that during the day?'.
Well, you often can see Venus in the daylight, except you don't know where to look. But with the moon so nearby, you can actually use that as a sky landmark (sky-mark?) to find Venus. It's not easy, especially as the moon is now little more than a sliver of light in the daytime sky as it approached new moon, but it's almost noon here on a clear summer day and I just went outside and picked my way from Sun, to the moon, to Venus.
At the moment the moon is about an hour in front of the Sun, which is to say, if you know where the Sun will be in an hour, that's roughly where the Moon is. And then, Venus is about a half hour in front of that - a little distant white speck in a field of clear blue sky. It's easiest if you have a look in the early morning to get a sense of how they all relate to each other... or you can just use Gogle skymap on your phone. In any case, if you've never looked up during a clear bright day (provided you actually have clear skies) and seen that you can see a star in the sky during the day... it's a kinda weird experience. If you can get a chance, if the sky is clear, give it a try. It's bit mind blowing, but you can get a sense for what it's like to look up and see a comet or supernova - or planet - in the sky during the middle of the day.
We don't have anything powerful enough to get useful data from it, besides maybe a bit of information on the atmosphere.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/the-audacious-rescue-plan-that-might-have-saved-space-shuttle-columbia/
....man it got dusty in here for a minute....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/new-particle-called-quantum-droplet-discovered-1.2553585
The Moon was looking particularly picturesque as it set behind the hills across the valley:
I'm not well practised at doing lunar photography; my interest is primarily in things that lie farther away, so I usually try to avoid the Moon's light pollution and haven't spent that much time working with our closest celestial neighbour, so I was pretty happy to take what is probably my best detailed shot of the moon from the front deck of my house:
19.95 a month for all the hot stellar action you can handle!
fav line from the 1 pixel scroll thingy
"hot young stars", "galactic disrobing", "ram pressure stripping"... I'll be in my bunk
Also, the second picture from that article is seriously cool
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
So, basically, it looks like someone managed to find gravitational waves in the background microwave radiation permeating the universe and that apparently is the missing evidence they've been looking for for decades.
Watch the fucking video.
... we can add one more.
This new object is not the most distant object orbiting the Sun we know of, nor does it get further than Sedna or a few other comets we know of. But it's closest point of approach to the Sun is the most distant, making it the most distant object in terms of staying away from the Sun. Every other object we know of gets closer at some point in its orbit.
So this is kinda exciting, in terms of a new object out there in the deep black to study, but a lot of the excitement is also to do with the implications. That there are still other deep space Oort cloud objects out there, waiting to be discovered. That we're only just now beginning to get an idea of the structure of the most distant edges of the Solar System. What discoveries are still out there, truths waiting to be found?
Well, that's true again today, and this time I've given you more advance notice, so if you thought this was neat but didn't get an opportunity to try, or it was overcast, or they were too distant, you can try again over the next couple days.
From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/science/space/a-new-planetoid-reported-in-far-reaches-of-solar-system.html?hp&_r=1
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/tech/innovation/asteroid-rings/
It's pretty interesting. I'm always fond of the unexpected in space, and this was pretty out of the blue.
ISS stuff excluded thankfully.
One of the updates actually has a nice bit about how NASA fully intends to be doing their own launches in the near future.
They can do unmanned resupply missions now through the SpaceX Falcon and Orbital Sciences Antares lifters. Man-rated stuff is still some years out.