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Post by jandl100 on Apr 21, 2022 5:22:30 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Apr 21, 2022 6:36:48 GMT
Wow. Amazing how non-spherical Phobos is.
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 21, 2022 7:54:05 GMT
Yes, it's a captured asteroid.
It's tiny, really, 27x22x18 km. Just a piece of space junk!
It's close to Mars, just 3,700 miles away. (Compared to 250,000 miles Earth to Moon distance)
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 21, 2022 8:02:29 GMT
... I'm just trying to get my head round the likelihood of Phobos having the right orbit and the Perseverance rover being in the right position on Mars for that eclipse to actually happen.
It seems wildly unlikely!!!
I guess Mars' moons orbit in the same plane as the planets orbit around the Sun (which I can manage to rationalise), and (probably rarely) they just line up right.
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Post by jandl100 on Apr 23, 2022 3:53:59 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Apr 23, 2022 8:06:20 GMT
Wonderful. The sheer scale of it!
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Post by jandl100 on May 4, 2022 6:45:03 GMT
The latest from the James Webb Space Telescope.
All the onboard telescopes have completed the focusing process.
It's gone better than anticipated.
The Telescope is now diffraction limited, which means it is physically impossible for it to be focused any better - the constraints on how it performs are set by the laws of physics, not by the accuracy and tolerances of the engineering.
It literally can't get better than this.
That's amazing.
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Post by MartinT on May 4, 2022 6:53:32 GMT
7K is pretty damned cold.
Bravo for such an impressively deployed and complex project!
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Post by jandl100 on May 4, 2022 8:38:21 GMT
Yup, bravo.
It's a strong vindication of NASA's approach.
OK, so it's over a decade and a half late (whoops). And just a tad overrun on costs (double whoops).
But once they launched...
The trajectory was super optimum, saving loads of fuel and substantially extending the life of the scientific mission.
The complex deployment of the telescope structure was aced.
The optics are effectively perfect and perfectly aligned.
Right first time.
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Post by jandl100 on May 5, 2022 8:06:29 GMT
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Post by Slinger on May 7, 2022 13:59:03 GMT
Sorry, Jerry. I've just realised I copied your post. I obviously got a bit carried away because it wasn't about politics.  |
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Post by MartinT on May 7, 2022 18:38:32 GMT
If that was used as a soundtrack in an SF film, people would say it's silly.
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Post by jandl100 on May 16, 2022 5:11:12 GMT
Another possible solution to the Fermi Paradox (where are the aliens?). phys.org/news/2022-05-planetary-scientists-solution-fermi-paradox.htmlThe article is quite short, unfortunately. I'll have to try and dig out the original. There's a rather neat diagram from the original paper reproduced in the article. But it basically postulates an (almost) inevitable burnout and catastrophic collapse of aspiring techno civilisations. The primary escape route being a realisation that continuing growth is not sustainable, and the concept of "progress" and growth is redefined in a more healthy way. Not a new idea, but it looks like it's been framed in an interesting way. The catastrophic ending of techno civilisations seems to be a particularly relevant and plausible one at the moment! |
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Post by MartinT on May 16, 2022 6:40:58 GMT
So we're all going the way of the Krell?
It seems quite believable. We're already at the point where we could destroy life on our planet and a simple extrapolation suggests that, sooner or later, some unhinged being will inflict that power upon us. Perhaps it'll come sooner than expected.
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Post by MartinT on May 19, 2022 9:42:34 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Jun 10, 2022 10:15:43 GMT
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Post by nicholas on Aug 14, 2022 18:50:56 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Aug 14, 2022 20:29:38 GMT
When a theory no longer fits, suggest a new theory.
This happens all the time in science.
It seems that politics is getting in the way, again?
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Post by nicholas on Aug 14, 2022 23:48:24 GMT
And God speaketh, "Let there be light"...
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Post by jandl100 on Sept 26, 2023 18:10:00 GMT
It's suggested that Dyson Spheres or other alien megastructures may, after all, be an inefficient way for an advanced civilisation to expand its living space. Instead maybe it's more likely that they would re-engineer their planetary system, by shuffling the existing planets (and maybe grabbing some free roaming ones) into a more convenient arrangement. www.sciencealert.com/forget-alien-megastructures-new-study-says-we-need-to-look-for-service-worldsIt's therefore suggested that SETI look for 'odd looking' exo planet systems, that may have been rearranged by the inhabitants. Curiously, quite a few such systems may already have been observed! |
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