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Astronomical News

Today's Guardian contains a well-written article promoting the idea of establishing a Moon-base.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/12/life-on-moon-chris-hadfield#comments

Sadly, a lot of the comments are of the typical Guardianista variety arguing that it would be wrong to create extraterrestrial colonies before we've sorted out all the problems on Earth.

With that Luddite attitude, humankind would never have left Olduvai Gorge or invented the wheel.

Surely, the best way to preserve our environment on Earth is to expand our horizons from this finite chunk of rock, with its rapidly dwindling natural resources, to the potentially virtually infinite space out there?
 
Today's Guardian contains a well-written article promoting the idea of establishing a Moon-base.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/12/life-on-moon-chris-hadfield#comments

Sadly, a lot of the comments are of the typical Guardianista variety arguing that it would be wrong to create extraterrestrial colonies before we've sorted out all the problems on Earth.

With that Luddite attitude, humankind would never have left Olduvai Gorge or invented the wheel.

Surely, the best way to preserve our environment on Earth is to expand our horizons from this finite chunk of rock, with its rapidly dwindling natural resources, to the potentially virtually infinite space out there?

We can't leave all of our eggs in the one basket. Forward to Mars and the asteroid Belt.
 
With that Luddite attitude, humankind would never have left Olduvai Gorge or invented the wheel.

As a great man once said,

"This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."


I'd reckon the main advantages of going off-world would be the advances in science and engineering that would result. Just maybe, some of those advances could be used to make things a little better on this planet. Water purification, efficient power generation and GM crops that can survive harsh environments spring to mind - this planet is going to be desperately in need of all three in the not-too-distant future.
 
Today's Guardian contains a well-written article promoting the idea of establishing a Moon-base.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/12/life-on-moon-chris-hadfield#comments

Sadly, a lot of the comments are of the typical Guardianista variety arguing that it would be wrong to create extraterrestrial colonies before we've sorted out all the problems on Earth.

With that Luddite attitude, humankind would never have left Olduvai Gorge or invented the wheel.

Surely, the best way to preserve our environment on Earth is to expand our horizons from this finite chunk of rock, with its rapidly dwindling natural resources, to the potentially virtually infinite space out there?

That's sweet to believe that humanity's problems will be solved one day.
 
Space is "full of dirty toxic grease"

It looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules.

Prof Tim Schmidt, a chemist at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and co-author of the study, said that the windscreen of a future spaceship travelling through interstellar space might be expected to get a sticky coating.

“Amongst other stuff it’ll run into is interstellar dust, which is partly grease, partly soot and partly silicates like sand,” he said, adding that the grease is swept away within our own solar system by the solar wind.

The study provides the most precise estimate yet of the amount of “space grease” in the Milky Way, by recreating the carbon-based compounds in the laboratory. The Australian-Turkish team discovered more than expected: 10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.

I'm not sure how many olympic-sized swimming pools this equates to.
 
Successful Second Deep Space Maneuver for OSIRIS-REx Confirmed

Illustration of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft during a burn of its main engine.
Credits: University of Arizona

New tracking data confirms that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft successfully completed its second Deep Space Maneuver (DSM-2) on June 28. The thruster burn put the spacecraft on course for a series of asteroid approach maneuvers to be executed this fall that will culminate with the spacecraft’s scheduled arrival at asteroid Bennu on Dec. 3.

more at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/osiris-rex-executes-second-deep-space-maneuver

Looks a bit like a winged sun disk, dunnit. From that angle.
winged3.jpg


Any juice in the rumour this mission is an earth-killing asteroid deflector?
 
Neutrino which struck Antarctica traced to galaxy 3.7 billion light years away

A mysterious, ghostly particle that slammed into Earth and lit up sensors buried deep beneath the south pole has been traced back to a distant galaxy that harbours an enormous spinning black hole.

Astronomers detected the high-energy neutrino, when it tore into the southern Indian Ocean near the coast of Antarctica and carried on until it struck an atomic nucleus in the Antarctic ice, sending more particles flying.

The event, which took place on 22 September 2017, was captured by the IceCube experiment, a cubic kilometre of clear ice kitted out with sensors to detect such intergalactic incidents. Within a second of the particle being spotted, IceCube issued an automatic alert, prompting an international race to find the neutrino’s origin.

Most galaxies are thought to have spinning supermassive black holes at their centres. But some of these black holes appear to pull in material at ferocious rates, a process that simultaneously sends streams of highly energetic particles out into space. Such galaxies are called blazars, although the term only applies when one of these streams is directed straight at Earth.

The blazar that appears to have sent the neutrino our way lies 3.7bn light years from Earth, just off the left shoulder of the constellation of Orion. While a single detection is not strong evidence, the IceCube scientists went back through their records and found a flurry of neutrinos coming from the same spot over 150 days in 2014 and 2015. Details are published in two separate papers in the journal Science.

Neutrinos are extraordinary particles. So light that they were once thought to be massless, they stream continuously out from the sun in vast quantities. Most of the time they pass through objects in their path: about 100bn pass unnoticed through the area of a fingertip every second. Collisions with other particles such as that detected in Antarctica happen very rarely.
 
This is it! Build the Spaceport (like the Queen promised in her speech) build the rocket, blast off for Mars and make a decent cup of tea from martian water. Come on Britain, it’s what we do best!*

*The tea bit anyway.
The water may be brine or heavy water.
 
New radio telescope picks up mysterious signal from space

A new radio telescope in Canada is doing its job picking up mysterious signals from deep space known as "fast radio bursts" (FRBs).

Kv_IMG_0995_colour_adjusted.jpeg


The CHIME radio telescope

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) in British Columbia detected the first-ever FRB at frequencies below 700 MHz on July 25, a signal named FRB 180725A.

As you might guess, FRBs are milliseconds-long bursts of radio emissions that come from some unknown source across the universe. They're one of the newer cosmic mysteries around, having been first detected only about a decade ago. Possible explanations include bursts from magnetars, exploding black holes, and yes, highly advanced alien civilizations.

The announcement also notes that additional FRBs have been found in the past week at frequencies as low as 400 MHz and early indications suggest they aren't coming from known sources on Earth.

So far only one FRB has been observed repeating and researchers say whatever is sending that signal across the universe is stupendously powerful.

It's early days for both the study of FRBs and this FRB in particular. CHIME and other observatories will be keeping an ear to the sky for more clues to help solve the mystery.

https://www.cnet.com/news/new-radio-telescope-picks-up-mysterious-signal-from-space/

Wikipedia page on FRBs.

maximus otter
 
I meant when they arrive. Hopefully at night, to keep the probe from burning up.
 
This has been suggested - and believed - for some time now, but it's finally been confirmed.

Water Ice Confirmed on the Surface of the Moon for the 1st Time!
It's official: There's water ice on the surface of the moon.

Researchers have confirmed the presence of the frozen stuff on the ground around the lunar north and south poles, a new study reports. That's good news for anyone eager to see humanity return to the moon for more than just a flag-planting mission.

"With enough ice sitting at the surface — within the top few millimeters — water would possibly be accessible as a resource for future expeditions to explore and even stay on the moon, and potentially easier to access than the water detected beneath the moon's surface," NASA officials wrote in a statement Monday (Aug. 20). ...

FULL STORY: https://www.space.com/41554-water-ice-moon-surface-confirmed.html
 
An interactive 360 degree look inside the space shuttle Discovery

 
Dwarf planet 'The Goblin' discovery redefining solar system

The newly discovered icy world, estimated to be just 300km across, is in an extremely elongated orbit. At its closest, it gets about two and a half times as far from the sun as Pluto. Then it heads off to the outermost fringes of the solar system, to almost 60 times further out than Pluto, taking an astounding 40,000 years to loop once around the sun. For 99% of its orbit, it would be too faint to see.

Astronomers made the discovery while hunting for a hypothetical massive planet, known as Planet Nine, that is suspected to be in orbit far beyond Pluto in a mysterious region known as the Oort Cloud. Planet Nine has not yet been seen directly, but The Goblin appears to be under the gravitational influence of a giant unseen object, adding to astronomers’ certainty that it is out there.

The object is the third minor planet to have been found in the outer solar system, following the discoveries of Sedna and, recently, another object called 2012 VP113. And this region, which once appeared to be cold, dark and empty now appears to be a rich collection of exotic and extreme objects.

“We are only just now uncovering what the very outer solar system might look like and what might be out there,” said Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC and a member of the team. “We believe there are thousands of dwarf planets in the distant solar system. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now.”

The discovery was made using the Japanese Subaru 8-metre telescope located on the dormant Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii. The telescope is the only one in the world to be able to produce deep images capable of probing the outer reaches of the solar system, while also having a wide enough field of view to be able to image enough sky to discover rare objects. “With other large telescopes, it is like looking through a straw and thus they are good for observing things you know are there, but not for finding new things as their field of views are too small for covering large areas of sky,” said Sheppard.
 
Bearing in mind the last post on dwarf planets. We now know that our solar system has 8 planets, 5 dwarf planets and 181 moons (9 of which orbit dwarf planets). When I was younger we were only aware of 9 planets (Pluto was then considered a main planet) and a couple of moons. The solar system itself is an incredibly amazing place with 3 moons having liquid oceans.
 
Voyager 2, still working and sending back data
NASA Voyager 2 Could Be Nearing Interstellar Space
PIA22566-16.jpg

This graphic shows the position of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes relative to the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, or the edge of the heliosphere, in 2012. Voyager 2 is still in the heliosheath, or the outermost part of the heliosphere.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption
NASA's Voyager 2 probe, currently on a journey toward interstellar space, has detected an increase in cosmic rays that originate outside our solar system. Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 is a little less than 11 billion miles (about 17.7 billion kilometers) from Earth, or more than 118 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.

Since 2007 the probe has been traveling through the outermost layer of the heliosphere -- the vast bubble around the Sun and the planets dominated by solar material and magnetic fields. Voyager scientists have been watching for the spacecraft to reach the outer boundary of the heliosphere, known as the heliopause. Once Voyager 2 exits the heliosphere, it will become the second human-made object, after Voyager 1, to enter interstellar space.

Since late August, the Cosmic Ray Subsystem instrument on Voyager 2 has measured about a 5 percent increase in the rate of cosmic rays hitting the spacecraft compared to early August. The probe's Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument has detected a similar increase in higher-energy cosmic rays.

Cosmic rays are fast-moving particles that originate outside the solar system. Some of these cosmic rays are blocked by the heliosphere, so mission planners expect that Voyager 2 will measure an increase in the rate of cosmic rays as it approaches and crosses the boundary of the heliosphere.

In May 2012, Voyager 1 experienced an increase in the rate of cosmic rays similar to what Voyager 2 is now detecting. That was about three months before Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space.

However, Voyager team members note that the increase in cosmic rays is not a definitive sign that the probe is about to cross the heliopause. Voyager 2 is in a different location in the heliosheath -- the outer region of the heliosphere -- than Voyager 1 had been, and possible differences in these locations means Voyager 2 may experience a different exit timeline than Voyager 1.
etc

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7252
 
One of the oldest stars discovered In Milky Way

7,500 light years away, it's thought to be around 13.5 billion years old, has an extreme iron deficiency & a carbon surplus, & as a result is thought to have formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang.

“We know of only a few stars (which can be counted on the fingers of a hand) of this type in the halo [of the Milky Way], where the oldest and most metal-poor stars in our galaxy are found,” said David Aguado, a research student at the IAC and lead author of the study, in a press release.

Based on their spectroscopic follow-up, the team determined J0815+4729 has roughly a million times less calcium and iron than the Sun. This is important because only the earliest generations of stars have such low metallicities. Older stars, on the other hand, are formed out of the accumulated material from previous generations of stars, which produce lots of metals during their final death throes.

Although J0815+4729 is extremely deficient in calcium and iron, the researchers’ were surprised to find that the star has a comparatively large abundance of carbon, nearly 15 percent more than the Sun. Though it may seem counter-intuitive, previous research suggests that low-mass, extremely metal-poor stars likely develop an overabundance of carbon by accreting it from the first generation of low-metallicity supernovae, which lived very short lives.


“Theory predicts that these stars could form just after — and using material from — the first supernovae, whose progenitors were the first massive stars in the Galaxy, around 300 million years after the Big Bang," said Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at IAC and co-author of the study.
 
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