The Space Thread

This is firmly in the "life as we know it" category. The stuff on somewhere like titan would need to be so different to us that there aren't really any reliable ways of predicting its needs.

Mysterious dance of dwarf galaxies may force a cosmic rethink

Transiting exoplanet with longest known year

Tracking Wildlife from Space

Suddenly, the sun is eerily quiet: Where did the sunspots go?

Hubble traces halo of a galaxy more accurately than ever before: An in-depth look at giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A

Black Holes May Collapse Into Their Exact Opposites: White Holes

NASA's Fermi finds a 'transformer' pulsar

Massive neutrinos and new standard cosmological model: No concordance yet

Our Galaxy's Black Hole Does NOT Have the 'Munchies'

How the CIA stole a Soviet satellite.

New approach in search for extraterrestrial intelligence: Target alien polluters

Well, it seems they can only detect those pollutants in high quantities on planets where the inhabitants may have deliberately polluted to keep warm after their star died. That's lucky, I guess.

Voyager spacecraft might not have reached interstellar space

The following question involves travel though a different dimension that is shorter than ours, conversion between units, the speed of light, space travel and delivery lorry/aeroplane driving.

I'm writing a story about a delivery space ship that travels faster than light by travelling though a alternative dimension that is somehow shorter, basically you travel a mile in dimension 'B', you return to your own dimension to find you are many, many miles away from your starting point. First I need a more technobable/ semi- scientific/ credible way to explain that.

For the next part of this question I need to figure out how long a person can be expected to pilot a craft continuously in one day before fatigue starts becoming a problem. With this info in hand I need to work out what would be a reasonable average distance between inhabited star systems. Combining the two I need to work out if a person is expected to travel to a neighbouring system inside a work day, how fast would they have to travel.

The last part of the question involves conversation of speed of light into another speed unit, but that can wait.

NASA team lays plans to observe new worlds

FAA regulations regarding fatigue, from here:

Hubble finds three surprisingly dry exoplanets: 'Hot Jupiters' had only one-tenth to one one-thousandth the amount of water predicted

New mass map of distant galaxy cluster is most precise yet

Getting better at looking at things far away. The map was neat.

We barely dodged a Carrington-sized solar storm back in mid-2012.

edited 25th Jul '14 2:51:02 AM by tclittle

There is a lizard sex satellite floating in space, and Russia no longer has it under control

...Was not something I expected to show up on my Tumblr feed. And is probably the plot of Deep Space 9.

Bright like a diamond: lasers and compressed carbon recreate Jupiter's core

I've seen a number of sci-fi novels posit that the core of a gas giant is made of diamond, but up until now I've found it surprisingly hard to find anything that goes for or against the theory. It's nice to see that discussed. "Like a diamond in the sky", indeed.

How do we terraform Venus?

Microbes top charge the atmosphere, or just chill out on airships at the habitable levels. I've read about it before so I'm just calling that now

Edit- oh space shade that's a cool idea.

edited 26th Jul '14 5:01:24 AM by joesolo

The source of the sky's X-ray glow

End dawns for Europe's space cargo delivery role

Computer model shows moon's core surrounded by liquid and it's caused by Earth's gravity

Cassini spacecraft reveals 101 geysers and more on icy Saturn moon

"Watch where you step..."