~~~ Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 A little fun fact for Friday, P&B. Imagine our Sun as being the size of a grain of sand. On that scale, the solar system would be the size of your hand. Now. Keep that scale in mind. Taking that further out, the grain of sand sun in the hand sized solar system, what size do you think the Milky Way galaxy is? Size of an aeroplane? Size of a medium sized town? Nope. If the sun was a grain of sand held in your solar syatem hand, at that scale, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of North. Fucking. America!!! A 2D USA or 3D or 4D. Be very specific. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 A 2D USA or 3D or 4D. Be very specific. My guess is 11.5D. The point 5 is Livingston, Nebraska. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Nebraska has a Livingston. Poor fuckers. To be honest it was a random guess. The truth is more frightening: Livingston, Alabama Livingston, California Livingston, Georgia Livingston, Illinois Livingston, Kentucky Livingston, Louisiana Livingston, Montana Livingston, New Jersey Livingston, New York Livingston Manor, New York Livingston, South Carolina Livingston, Staten Island Livingston, Tennessee Livingston, Texas Livingston, West Virginia Livingston, Wisconsin Livingston County, Illinois Livingston County, Kentucky Livingston County, Michigan Livingston County, Missouri Livingston County, New York Livingston Parish, Louisiana 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WFAANW Posted April 11, 2014 Share Posted April 11, 2014 Americans seem very imaginative when it comes to place names. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BossHogg Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 A little fun fact for Friday, P&B.Imagine our Sun as being the size of a grain of sand. On that scale, the solar system would be the size of your hand.Now.Keep that scale in mind.Taking that further out, the grain of sand sun in the hand sized solar system, what size do you think the Milky Way galaxy is?Size of an aeroplane? Size of a medium sized town?Nope. If the sun was a grain of sand held in your solar syatem hand, at that scale, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of North. Fucking. America!!! so its bit bigger then? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djchapsticks Posted April 17, 2014 Share Posted April 17, 2014 A major discovery made today in the form of a planet which is closer in dimensions to Earth than any other previously found. Kepler 186f, is 500 light years away, is 10% larger than earth, appears rocky and is right in the 'goldilocks zone', meaning it could potentially support life. Pretty exciting stuff. http://voices.suntimes.com/news/breaking-news/nasa-finds-habitable-planet-but-dont-pack-just-yet/#.U1Ap59yPbsI 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludo*1 Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 djchapsticks, on 17 Apr 2014 - 23:24, said: A major discovery made today in the form of a planet which is closer in dimensions to Earth than any other previously found. Kepler 186f, is 500 light years away, is 10% larger than earth, appears rocky and is right in the 'goldilocks zone', meaning it could potentially support life. Pretty exciting stuff. http://voices.suntimes.com/news/breaking-news/nasa-finds-habitable-planet-but-dont-pack-just-yet/#.U1Ap59yPbsI It'll only be exciting when we've got a big enough telescope to actually see the thing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Romeo Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 (edited) and is right in the 'goldilocks zone', So...it got beds that are comfortable and just the right size, good news indeed. Edited April 18, 2014 by Romeo 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the jambo-rocker Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Daft question of the day. When a Star implodes or explodes, has there ever been evidence of a gas giant from a solar system to survive and just float around in space without any gravitational pull of a sun to remain attached to? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernLights Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 Daft question of the day. When a Star implodes or explodes, has there ever been evidence of a gas giant from a solar system to survive and just float around in space without any gravitational pull of a sun to remain attached to? Candidate rouge planets have been found and some believe that the number of rouge planets could outnumber the stars in the Milky Way. Although they can't tell yet if these rouge planets started off orbiting a star or not yet. http://www.universetoday.com/93749/nomad-planets-could-outnumber-stars-100000-to-1/ 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranaldo Bairn Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 (edited) Can't be bothered finding a link just now, but I'm more interested in the latest possible discovery from cern of a new particle, called Z4430 or similar, which appears to be constructed of FOUR quarks. Keen readers will know that matter has up to now been categorised as lepton (fundamental), meson (one quark and one antiquark), or baryon (three quarks). This discovery could in theory be even more important than the Higgs boson imo. Modified because Joey Barton is not a fundamental component of matter. Edited April 18, 2014 by Ranaldo Bairn 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jacksgranda Posted April 18, 2014 Share Posted April 18, 2014 So...it got beds that are comfortable and just the right size, good news indeed. And porridge. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Confidemus Posted April 18, 2014 Author Share Posted April 18, 2014 Can't be bothered finding a link just now, but I'm more interested in the latest possible discovery from cern of a new particle, called Z4430 or similar, which appears to be constructed of FOUR quarks. Keen readers will know that matter has up to now been categorised as lepton (fundamental), meson (one quark and one antiquark), or baryon (three quarks). This discovery could in theory be even more important than the Higgs boson imo. Modified because Joey Barton is not a fundamental component of matter. http://www.sci-news.com/physics/science-z4430-cern-exotic-hadrons-01843.html 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernLights Posted April 27, 2014 Share Posted April 27, 2014 (edited) The Cosmoquest hangoutathon is under way, it started at 4pm yesterday and is running until 4am tomorrow. They do all kinds of public engagement such as citizen science projects. Pamela Gay is one of the people behind it and is a host, I'm sure those who listen to the excellent AstronomyCast podcast will know who she is. There is less money in the US budget these days for things like this so they need to look at other sources of funding to let them their work. I've made a small donation to help them out http://cosmoquest.org/x/hangoutathon-36-36-fundraiser/ Edited April 27, 2014 by NorthernLights 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorthernLights Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 (edited) Do you want to help recover a 30 year old satellite? Our plan is simple: we intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission - a mission it began in 1978. ISEE-3 was rechristened as the International Comet Explorer (ICE). If we are successful it may also still be able to chase yet another comet. Working in collaboration with NASA we have assembled a team of engineers, programmers, and scientists - and have a large radio telescope fully capable of contacting ISEE-3. If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing. NASA has told us officially that there is no funding available to support an ISEE-3 effort - nor is this work a formal priority for the agency right now. But NASA does feel that the data that ISEE-3 could generate would have real value and that a crowd funded effort such as ours has real value as an education and public outreach activity. Time is short. And this project is not without significant risks. We need your financial help. ISEE-3 must be contacted in the next month or so and it must complete its orbit change maneuvers no later than mid-June 2014. There is excitement ahead as well: part of the maneuvers will include a flyby of the Moon at an altitude of less than 50 km. Our team members at Morehead State University, working with AMSAT-DL in Germany, have already detected the carrier signals from both of ISEE-3's transmitters. When the time comes, we will be using the large dish at Morehead State University to contact the spacecraft and give it commands. In order to interact with the spacecraft we will need to locate the original commands and then develop a software recreation of the original hardware that was used to communicate with the spacecraft. These are our two greatest challenges. The funding we seek will be used for things we have not already obtained from volunteers. We need to initiate a crash course effort to use 'software radio' to recreate virtual versions all of the original communications hardware that no longer physically exists. We also need to cover overhead involved in operating a large dish antenna, locating and analyzing old documentation, and possibly some travel. This activity will be led by the same team that has successfully accomplished the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) SkyCorp and SpaceRef Interactive. Education and public outreach will be coordinated by the newly-formed non-profit organization Space College Foundation. Our trajectory efforts will be coordinated by trajectory maestro Robert Farquhar and his team at KinetX. We are also working in collaboration with the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, and the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) at NASA Ames Research Center. http://www.rockethub.com/42228 Edited May 8, 2014 by NorthernLights 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seymour Skinner Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 By the way, the term "goldilocks zone" only applies to life forms similar to the ones you find on earth. There could be things out there that have adapted to living in any condition imaginable. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Confidemus Posted May 16, 2014 Author Share Posted May 16, 2014 A fun universe fact is in order, I feel. The crust of a neutron star, which is about a mile thick, is 10 billion times stronger than steel. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranaldo Bairn Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 And its gravitational field is so strong you can see partway round the back of it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boghead ranter Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 Bit like a birds arse that I once knew. you just knew her arse? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djchapsticks Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 A fun universe fact is in order, I feel. The crust of a neutron star, which is about a mile thick, is 10 billion times stronger than steel. And if you filled a matchbox with Neutron Star material, it would weigh 5 billion tonnes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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