The Space Thread

Alrighty then. Thought I screwed up. Much better with paper and pen than head calculations

edited 3rd Mar '15 5:26:54 PM by Joesolo

Far from home: Wayward star cluster is both tiny and distant: "Like the lost little puppy that wanders too far from home, astronomers have found an unusually small and distant group of stars that seems oddly out of place. The cluster, made of only a handful of stars, is located far away, in the Milky Way's 'suburbs.' It is located where astronomers have never spotted such a small cluster of stars before."

Feature: Physicists gear up to catch a gravitational wave: "This patch of woodland just north of Livingston, Louisiana, population 1893, isn’t the first place you’d go looking for a breakthrough in physics. Standing on a small overpass that crosses an odd arching tunnel, Joseph Giaime, a physicist at Louisiana State University (LSU), 55 kilometers west in Baton Rouge, gestures toward an expanse of spindly loblolly pine, parts of it freshly reduced to stumps and mud. 'It’s a working forest,' he says, 'so they come in here to harvest the logs.' On a quiet late fall morning, it seems like only a logger or perhaps a hunter would ever come here.

Yet it is here that physicists may fulfill perhaps the most spectacular prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity. The tunnel runs east to west for 4 kilometers and meets a similar one running north to south in a nearby warehouselike building. The structures house the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), an ultrasensitive instrument that may soon detect ripples in space and time set off when neutron stars or black holes merge."

Planet 'reared' by four parent stars: "Growing up as a planet with more than one parent star has its challenges. Though the planets in our solar system circle just one star — our sun — other more distant planets, called exoplanets, can be reared in families with two or more stars. Researchers wanting to know more about the complex influences of multiple stars on planets have come up with two new case studies: a planet found to have three parents, and another with four."

Why isn't the universe as bright as it should be?: "A handful of new stars are born each year in the Milky Way, while many more blink on across the universe. But astronomers have observed that galaxies should be churning out millions more stars, based on the amount of interstellar gas available. This study explains why galaxies don't churn out as many stars as they should."

Galactic 'rain' explains why some galaxies are better at creating stars: "Some of the galaxies in our universe are veritable star nurseries. For example, our own Milky Way produces, on average, at least one new star every year. Others went barren years ago, now producing few if any new stars. Why that happens is a question that has dogged astronomers for years. But now, more than 20 years of research has culminated in what might be the answer to that elusive question."

Breakthrough in energy harvesting could power life on Mars: "Martian colonists could use an innovative new technique to harvest energy from carbon dioxide thanks to research pioneered at Northumbria University, Newcastle.

The technique, which has been proven for the first time by researchers at Northumbria, has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

The research proposes a new kind of engine for producing energy based on the Leidenfrost effect – a phenomenon which happens when a liquid comes into near contact with a surface much hotter than its boiling point. This effect is commonly seen in the way water appears to skitter across the surface of a hot pan, but it also applies to solid carbon dioxide, commonly known as dry ice. Blocks of dry ice are able to levitate above hot surfaces protected by a barrier of evaporated gas vapour. Northumbria's research proposes using the vapour created by this effect to power an engine. This is the first time the Leidenfrost effect has been adapted as a way of harvesting energy."

Mars: The planet that lost an ocean's worth of water: "A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean, and covered a greater portion of the planet's surface than the Atlantic Ocean does on Earth, according to new results published today. An international team of scientists used ESO's Very Large Telescope, along with instruments at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, to monitor the atmosphere of the planet and map out the properties of the water in different parts of Mars's atmosphere over a six-year period. These new maps are the first of their kind."

Hubble sees supernova split into four images by cosmic lens: "Astronomers have spotted for the first time a distant supernova split into four images. The multiple images of the exploding star are caused by the powerful gravity of a foreground elliptical galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies."

WATCH: Why females make the best astronauts

Watch the first mars mission ends up a 100% Female crew? having to haul less food, and not worry about artificial gravity as much, would make it a bit easier.

Which would be funny, considering not just the gender of the Greco-Roman deity that is the planet's namesake, but which gender that the planet's signature symbol designates.

Before you folks get too excited the article uses a quite a few maybe's. Even if true for any advantages to pay off they would have to be more then marginal and largely limited to only one gender having advantages with the other none.

NASA spacecraft becomes first to orbit a dwarf planet: "NASA's Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000) kilometers from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet's gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday."

'Habitable' planet GJ 581d previously dismissed as noise probably does exist: "A new report has dismissed claims made last year that the first super-Earth planet discovered in the habitable zone of a distant star was 'stellar activity masquerading as planets.' The researchers are confident the planet named GJ 581d, identified in 2009 orbiting the star Gliese 581, does exist, and that last year's claim was triggered by inadequate analysis of the data."

The dark side of cosmology: "It's a beautiful theory: the standard model of cosmology describes the universe using just six parameters. But it is also strange. The model predicts that dark matter and dark energy – two mysterious entities that have never been detected—make up 95% of the universe, leaving only 5% composed of the ordinary matter so essential to our existence.

In an article in this week's Science, Princeton astrophysicist David Spergel reviews how cosmologists came to be certain that we are surrounded by matter and energy that we cannot see. Observations of galaxies, supernovae, and the universe's temperature, among other things, have led researchers to conclude that the universe is mostly uniform and flat, but is expanding due to a puzzling phenomenon called dark energy. The rate of expansion is increasing over time, counteracting the attractive force of gravity. This last observation, says Spergel, implies that if you throw a ball upward you will see it start to accelerate away from you."

I wonder though if this means we can see smaller shorter people recruited for the mission in general. Quite a few of the male astronauts have not exactly been short small men. Maybe it is time to go the jockey approach. Small and light build.

I still say remote controlled robot drones. Mars would probably be a bit too far, but the moon has a radio signal turnaround of a couple seconds, if that. Have techs on Earth use them to set up a colony and/or research base before the actual people show up.

Ahh no one got the joke. No Aliens franchise fans in here it seems. :P

We'll never get space technology in a state the general public can use if we insist on optimising the astronauts instead of the tech.

Who said we need space travel for the general public? As I see it doing something like a extraterrestrial colony for the first time is no place for John or Jane Q public.

Just because we optimize the astronauts for the first mars mission doesn't mean we'll stop developing tech. It's going to take the better part of a year to get to and from Mars, plus however long they feel like staying on the surface. If even slightly less food and water can be carried, that's that much more scientific equipment that can be brought, or that much extra for a "buffer zone" of supplies.

I mean, fighter jet pilots even today are restricted by height. Some times it makes sense to optimize the people sent out.

Plus we're no where near public use of space travel anyway. That's decades away at a minimum.

edited 7th Mar '15 10:42:55 AM by Joesolo

Who knows we may start turning to genetic engineering to make people more suitable for space travel.

I wouldn't like that. Removing debilitating genetic disorders is one thing, when you start "improving" people it gets into dangerous territory.

Isn't Space Ayrans do shit basically the plot of the original Mobile Suit Gundam?

I feel like that would end poorly.

Mobile Suit is a bit more complex then that. There are also supposedly evolved humans as well and the Space Aryans are given a bit more depth and complexity.

As for genetically enhancing people not a big deal if you make the long term effort to make the majority of the human race fit the bill. Alternating genetics is just another part of engineering. People more resistant to radiation, less prone to bone loss, and have more efficient metabolisms would be something that could benefit the human race as a whole. Getting that into the human race as a whole is a really long term project though. By eliminating genetic diseases you are already taking that step by creating a species of human more healthy and resistant to certain problems then normal humans.

How would you even introduce radiation resistance?

By boosting up the DNA repair mechanisms or by reducing the activity of DNA damage responses. The latter is the easy way, but it drives the risk of cancer way up.

Shit tons of Vitamin K

Find what makes those of the human population more resistant to radiation without undue risk and begin boosting or pushing that trait. It would be a very long term project. I am thinking over a few generations worth of work.