Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote:That camera is way cool. but imagine how out of date it is compared to what we have now. It took then 22 months to make it and another 9 1/2 years to Pluto. So basically thats a 2005 tech camera. So strange to consider it that way.

Yuri Milner was joined at The Royal Society today by Stephen Hawking, Martin Rees, Frank Drake, Geoff Marcy, Pete Worden and Ann Druyan to announce the unprecedented $100 million global Breakthrough Initiatives to reinvigorate the search for life in the universe.

The first of two initiatives announced today, Breakthrough Listen, will be the most powerful, comprehensive and intensive scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth. The second, Breakthrough Message, will fund an international competition to generate messages representing humanity and planet Earth, which might one day be sent to other civilizations.
Breakthrough Listen

• Biggest scientific search ever undertaken for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth.
• Significant access to two of the world’s most powerful telescopes – 100 Meter Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, USA (“Green Bank Telescope”) and 64-metre diameter Parkes Telescope in New South Wales, Australia (“Parkes Telescope”).
• 50 times more sensitive than previous programs dedicated to SETI research.
• Will cover 10 times more of the sky than previous programs.
• Will scan at least 5 times more of the radio spectrum – and 100 times faster.
• In tandem with a radio search, Automated Planet Finder Telescope at Lick Observatory in California, USA (“Lick Telescope”) will undertake world’s deepest and broadest search for optical laser transmissions.
• Initiative will span 10 years.
• Financial commitment is $100,000,000.

July 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, a feat so breathtaking in its scope and ambition that it captured the collective imaginations of audiences around the world. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, we use the power of real objects to tell stories like this one – stories of the vision, intellect, and courage of men and women who have overcome challenges and pushed boundaries to take the next giant leap for humankind.

For the Smithsonian’s first-ever Kickstarter campaign, we are proud to announce plans to conserve, digitize, and display Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit in time for this milestone anniversary. We want to preserve Armstrong’s spacesuit – and the story it tells of its incredible journey – down to the particles of lunar dust that cling to its surface.

Smoove_B wrote:So many different threads this can go in, but I think I'll share it here -- a Kickstarter has been launched by the Smithsonian for Neil Armstrong’s Spacesuit:

July 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, a feat so breathtaking in its scope and ambition that it captured the collective imaginations of audiences around the world. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, we use the power of real objects to tell stories like this one – stories of the vision, intellect, and courage of men and women who have overcome challenges and pushed boundaries to take the next giant leap for humankind.

For the Smithsonian’s first-ever Kickstarter campaign, we are proud to announce plans to conserve, digitize, and display Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 spacesuit in time for this milestone anniversary. We want to preserve Armstrong’s spacesuit – and the story it tells of its incredible journey – down to the particles of lunar dust that cling to its surface.

While I think it's great way to raise awareness and a good PR move, it's a bit sad that we're now crowd-funding something that should probably be done at the Federal government level. At the risk of nosediving into R&P, I'll just leave it there. As a bonus, some of your KS pledge is tax deductible!

Pledge $10,000

....

$9,981 (your total pledge minus the fair market value of the reward) is deductible from your pledge for federal income tax purposes. Please retain this document for your records.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Pledge $10,000

....

$9,981 (your total pledge minus the fair market value of the reward) is deductible from your pledge for federal income tax purposes. Please retain this document for your records.

$19 of fair market value? I think they're being dangerously generous with the deduction there.

Isgrimnur wrote:Agreed. Part of that is a membership to the National Air and Space Society. Minimum level there is $35.

stessier wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Pledge $10,000

....

$9,981 (your total pledge minus the fair market value of the reward) is deductible from your pledge for federal income tax purposes. Please retain this document for your records.

$19 of fair market value? I think they're being dangerously generous with the deduction there.

The only thing with any market value is the membership. Everything else is just tours and recognition.

Smoove_B wrote:Fair points.

It just seems like maybe we shouldn't be raising money via Kickstarter to help preserve one of the greatest achievements of mankind?

wonderpug wrote:Ok, explain it to me like I'm 5.

Why is this image such a big deal, and why haven't we been able to take a photo like it since 1972? With our million bajillion satellites in orbit, why can't we take pictures of the earth any day we feel like it?

NASA said Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own.

Though NASA says it can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet found.

"Today, Earth is a little less lonely," Kepler researcher Jon Jenkins said.

The planet, Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on the surface of a planet.

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:First Earth-sized planet within the habitable zone has been found.

NASA said Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own.

Though NASA says it can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet found.

"Today, Earth is a little less lonely," Kepler researcher Jon Jenkins said.

The planet, Kepler-452b, is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. It's about 60% bigger than Earth, NASA says, and is located in its star's habitable zone -- the region where life-sustaining liquid water is possible on the surface of a planet.

As reported in Hacked, the details of the new study are being presented this week by Martin Tajmar, a professor and chair for Space Systems at the Dresden University of Technology, and co-author G. Fiedler, at the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Propulsion and Energy Forum in Orlando. A copy of the study, which has yet to undergo peer review, has been made available prior to the conference: “Direct Thrust Measurements of an EMDrive and Evaluation of Possible Side-Effects.”
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While the latest results surrounding the EmDrive are certainly interesting, there are many reasons to remain skeptical.

“The microwave cavity thruster as set-up by Tajmar continues to violate momentum conservation and thus does not work as advertised,” says Eric W. Davis, a Senior Research Physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin. “Why he doesn’t simply capitulate to that very obvious well-known issue in this particular application of electromagnetic physics is unknown to me. Maybe he is playing the role of the ‘supportive skeptic’ that wants to test this incredible outlandish EM propulsion claim for himself to see what it does.”

Davis says the German researchers have fallen into an experimental pitfall by claiming to have identified all “obvious” sources of systematic artifacts that could produce the tens of micro-Newton thrust signals that they measured. He accuses them of playing “word games” through their claims that there are other possible sources of systematic artifacts that remain untested, while at the same time insisting that they measured the same level of thrust reported in previous separate experiments by Sawyer, NASA’s Harold White (at Eagleworks), and a team of Chinese scientists.

Davis noticed some problems in the experiment as well.

“I noted in [the study’s] conclusion paragraphs that [Tajmar’s] apparatus was producing hundreds of micro-Newtons of thrust when it got very hot and that his measuring instrumentation is not very accurate when the apparatus becomes hot,” Davis told io9. “He also stated that he was still recording thrust signals even after the electrical power was turned off which is a huge key clue that his thrust measurements are all systematic artifact false positive thrust signals.”
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NASA aerospace engineer Marc Millis tells io9 something similar. The experiment, Millis explains, seemed to show thrust lingering even after the power was off, which would be indicative of a thermal effect.

What’s more, when looking at previous EMDrive experiments, Davis noticed that the alleged thrust was generated slowly, and not instantaneously, when the electrical power was switched on.
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CalTech physicist Sean Carroll, who we’ve spoken to previously about the feasibility of an EMDrive, echoes Davis’ sentiments.

“My insight is that the EMDrive is complete crap and a waste of time,” Carroll tells io9. “Right there in the abstract this paper says, ‘Our test campaign can not confirm or refute the claims of the EMDrive’, so I’m not sure what the news is. I’m going to spend my time thinking about ideas that don’t violate conservation of momentum.”

A planet 100 light-years away resembles an infant version of Jupiter, astronomers say. The new world, known as 51 Eridani b, is only 20 million years old - a toddler by astronomical standards. The alien world could yield clues to the formation of our Solar System, which has an unusual lay-out. The find was made by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), which looks for faint, young planets orbiting bright, relatively nearby stars.
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The new gas giant is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter. Until now, the gas giant planets that have been directly detected have been much larger - five to 13 times Jupiter's mass. It orbits a little further from its parent star than Saturn does from the Sun and has a temperature of 430C (800F), hot enough to melt lead, but still rather cold compared with other alien gas giants, which reach temperatures above 540C (1,000F).

The Gemini Planet Imager is installed on the 8m Gemini South Telescope in Chile. It began science operations in 2014. Other scientific instruments designed to detect exoplanets do so indirectly, by, for example, detecting the dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of its parent sun. GPI instead searches for light from the planet itself - referred to as direct imaging. The astronomers use adaptive optics to sharpen the image of a star, and then block out the starlight. Any remaining incoming light is then analysed, with the brightest spots indicating a possible planet.

stessier wrote:

wonderpug wrote:Ok, explain it to me like I'm 5.

Why is this image such a big deal, and why haven't we been able to take a photo like it since 1972? With our million bajillion satellites in orbit, why can't we take pictures of the earth any day we feel like it?

We can take pictures of earth, but none of the satellites are out far enough to get the whole thing in frame at once. That one is out beyond the moon. For reference, GPS satellites are only at 12,550 miles.

Edit: Out beyond the moon means about 932,000 miles.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story stated that it has not been possible to capture images of the entire sunlit side of Earth since Apollo 17 astronauts captured the iconic Blue Marble photograph in 1972. In fact, other satellites—including Galileo, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and geostationary weather satellites including GOES—have captured full-disc views of Earth since then.

The Cassini mission to Saturn has returned its final close-up images of the gas giant's Dione moon. The probe passed within 500km of the pockmarked surface on Monday - its fifth such encounter in the spacecraft's 11-year tour of the ringed planet.

Cassini is now engaged in a series of observational "lasts". And in 2017 it will put itself on a destructive dive into Saturn's atmosphere.

"I am moved, as I know everyone else is, looking at these exquisite images of Dione's surface and crescent, and knowing that they are the last we will see of this far-off world for a very long time to come," said Carolyn Porco, who leads the imaging team on the mission. "Right down to the last, Cassini has faithfully delivered another extraordinary set of riches. How lucky we have been."

The closest ever approach to Dione was in 2011, when the US, European and Italian space agency mission swept just 100km above the moon. Dione has a diameter of 1,122km. It has an icy exterior and a rocky interior. Cassini has detected a wispy oxygen atmosphere at the world, and has also seen signs that it may still be active, with what appear to be regions on its surface that have been altered by internal processes.

Next year, Cassini will begin a series of manoeuvres to put itself in orbits that take it high above, and through, Saturn's rings. Then, in 2017, once the probe's fuel has all but run out, ground controllers will command the spacecraft to plunge into the planet's atmosphere, where it will be destroyed. As Cassini hurtles towards Saturn, it will become incredibly hot, will melt and ultimately will be crushed by huge pressures. The mission is being disposed of in this way to be sure there is no possibility that debris from Cassini can one day land on Enceladus and Titan. These moons have been talked of as candidates for extraterrestrial life, and scientists would not want them contaminated by any Earth microbes that might still be on the probe - however unlikely that might be.