Any Astronomy Buffs Here?

[DevilHorse]

With all of the chatter about the James Webb Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope has been getting much less publicity.

The impact of the Hubble on optical astronomy has been HUGE.

I thought that the Hubble was running out of Liquid Helium (for its detectors) and was in a decaying orbit with a short future lifespan.

Then I saw this:
https://interestingengineering.com/i...xtend-lifetime
I understand that NASA put out an RFI and received 8 proposals to lift the Hubble to a higher orbit (and I presume refresh its' liquid helium supply).

Good news.

Larry
DevilHorse

[DevilHorse]

For Orion constellation fans.. what's with Betelgeuse?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662918180774240257

I need more space in my house.

Larry
DevilHorse

[Phredd3]

After dutifully letting your 14-year-old self chuckle at the headline, this horribly-presented article has some interesting bits in it. They reference a better-written short article in Scientific American which is easier to read. It is about the seventh planet, to give you an idea of what you're in for.

[budwom]

After dutifully letting your 14-year-old self chuckle at the headline, this horribly-presented article has some interesting bits in it. They reference a better-written short article in Scientific American which is easier to read. It is about the seventh planet, to give you an idea of what you're in for.

is it the butt of some jokes or something?

[MartyClark]

is it the butt of some jokes or something?

Stop with the wise cracks

[DevilHorse]

Well, this is most interesting:
https://www.space.com/gravitational-...-1st-detection

Various forces in our experience are looking more and more alike. Of course gravity appears to be only attractive.

Larry
DevilHorse

[OldPhiKap]

Well, this is most interesting:
https://www.space.com/gravitational-...-1st-detection

Various forces in our experience are looking more and more alike. Of course gravity appears to be only attractive.

Larry
DevilHorse

IMG_0959.jpg

[DevilHorse]

IMG_0959.jpg

Very Attractive!

Larry
DevilHorse

[OldPhiKap]

Very Attractive!

Larry
DevilHorse

Especially the low hum.

I’m still trying to grasp what this means in lay terms. Conceptually, I can hear “it is a ripple in space-time” or that it confirms part of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, but have trouble understanding the practical effect.

Really appreciate all your info on this thread, I find it fascinating even if my grasp of it is fairly rudimentary.

[DevilHorse]

Especially the low hum.

I’m still trying to grasp what this means in lay terms. Conceptually, I can hear “it is a ripple in space-time” or that it confirms part of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, but have trouble understanding the practical effect.

Really appreciate all your info on this thread, I find it fascinating even if my grasp of it is fairly rudimentary.

Glad to share what I know (and research what I don't know).

Allow me to take a whack at addressing your interesting issue. I promise to give you some details (that you may or may not know now) and to put some things in lay terms. This will be a bit of a Tour de Force <pun intended>:

Let me start at a much higher level theme of physics than just gravity..

There are reasons for scientists to have assumed that there were/are gravitational waves. Since Maxwell (not cornbred) in the 1800s, there has been an effort to "unify" all of the known forces. There are 'fake' pseudo-forces, like centrifugal and centripetal (which I will not address), and 'real' forces like Gravity, Magnetism, Electrostatic, Nuclear (Strong and Weak). As we dive down into how to combine/unify these forces, the first was James Maxwell combined Magnetism with the Electrostatic force [Maxwell's Equations - which borrowed some from other scientists] (you've heard of light being an electromagnetic thing, right?! - that's from Maxwell). In the early 1900s, one school of scientists saw the Electrostatic force as being invoked through particle exchange (we know these now as photons). Guess who identified the photon as a thing? (answer at the end). For Magnetism, Paul Dirac hypothesized that if there were electric postitive and negative charges, then there 'might' also be positive and negative magnetic charges, but no new particles for magnetism have ever been (conclusively) found (i.e., there is still no such thing as a magnetic monopole). They thought they found a magnetic monopole in the lab of William Fairbank (who started at Duke, but did this experiment in California) but the result could not be repeated; William's twin brother Henry was on my dissertation committee, but I digress. Maxwell was before Einstein. Maxwell actually found the speed limit of our known universe as being the square root of the reciprocal square root of the electrical permitivity (e0 in Coulomb's equation) times the magnetic permeability (u0 in Faraday's equation). e0 and u0 are well known values. The speed limit of our known universe it seems is C, or what is known as the speed of light in a vacuum. Why it is called the Speed of Light and not the Speed of Magnetism is just happenstance of light/electromagnetic waves, being the first to be worked with. C is the speed limit of everything, not just light. But I digress again.

When the strong nuclear force was examined, pi mesons (pions) were found to be exchanged in these interactions. The way the Nuclear Forces work is by having the Protons/Neutrons both being attracted to the Pions. To put it into hoops terms (this is DBR after all) imagine if 2 basketball players are both holding the same basketball at the same time (jump ball); these basketball players are 'linked' together. Think of it as the basketball force with the basketball as the particle being exchanged/held.

It became a theme of those who studied forces that you needed a particle to be exchanged in any force. So the hypothetical particle Graviton was named (but not seen) as the agent of Gravity.

Thanks to Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory, an equivalence can be made between all of these particles with corresponding wave disturbances (an aspect of the Wave/Particle duality and the Uncertainty Principle). Without going into details, this means that there are waves that are equivalent to particles in the quantum realm. So the equivalent of a Graviton are gravity waves; this opened up a different way to detect stuff. Einstein's General (not Special) Relativity suggests that mass interactions can generate gravity waves.

So ripples are somewhat equivalent to particles of the gravitational force. Gravity is infinite (you can't escape it), which means you and I are affected by the gravity of things like distant quasars. So something (in this case waves and perhaps particles) are what link those of us on earth to the furthest of masses in our universe. A 'wave' in the gravitational field is the gravity quanta. Detecting it is much harder because detectors are built to look for particular things, which is what LIGO did several years ago. This new discovery is finding something with a lot less energy, but still the same 'disruption' (Graviton or wave) in the gravitational field.

I hope this was a useful foray into land of quantum and particle physics will elucidates some of your curiosity.

Questions?

Answer, Einstein hypothesized that there were quanta/particles (of light) that caused Brownian motion and the Photoelectric effect (for which he won his only Nobel Prize) in one of his 3 great papers in 1905. Although originally referred to as 'quanta' the electromagnetic quanta were named as photons in 1926.

More than you ever wanted to know..

Larry
DevilHorse

[CameronBornAndBred]

I hope this was a useful foray into land of quantum and particle physics will elucidates some of your curiosity.

Questions?

Answer, Einstein hypothesized that there were quanta/particles (of light) that caused Brownian motion and the Photoelectric effect (for which he won his only Nobel Prize) in one of his 3 great papers in 1905. Although originally referred to as 'quanta' the electromagnetic quanta were named as photons in 1926.

More than you ever wanted to know..

Larry
DevilHorse

Excellent information, thanks!. My only question is when in the future will they be utilized in torpedos.

[OldPhiKap]

Thanks DevilHorse!!!!! Fantastic post.

[DevilHorse]

Excellent information, thanks!. My only question is when in the future will they be utilized in torpedos.

They already do, but there isn't much impact/impulse.. they are a bit light.

Larry
DevilHorse

[CameronBornAndBred]

They already do, but there isn't much impact/impulse.. they are a bit light.

Larry
DevilHorse

Damn, already gave you sporks for the educational post, but would double you up for this.

[DevilHorse]

Damn, already gave you sporks for the educational post, but would double you up for this.

I much appreciate my 11th spork.

BTW, the wavey equivalent of a spork is .. sporketti.

Larry
DevilHorse

[OldPhiKap]

“the String Theory of Sporkz”

[DevilHorse]

“the String Theory of Sporkz”

I'll wave my right to stay silent.

Larry
Cohen

[DevilHorse]

EUCLID is planned to be launched from Cape Canaveral on July 1, 2023:
https://scitechdaily.com/euclids-fin...pand_article=1

The plan is to map the skies precisely to try to learn something about Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

It looks like it will be using a SpaceX Falcon 9 craft to get up to space.

Larry
DevilHorse

[DevilHorse]

I remember watching the move "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun" years ago.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064519/
Very interesting concept of a movie if you are into anti-matter (and who isn't..?).

Well, it seems that a pair of exoplanets, with the same orbit, have been identified:
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/two-...idence-4226029
It might be that one of the planets is actually derbris/rocks.

Interesting find.

Larry
DevilHorse

[CameronBornAndBred]

It turns out that if a future asteroid posing a threat to Earth is detected, slamming a small object into it is a really bad idea. The thought is that we affect it's path, which would happen. The problem is that a swarm of Earth bound missiles will be created.

A storm of boulders “as deadly as Hiroshima” was accidentally unleashed by Nasa during tests to change the trajectory of an asteroid, scientists have found.
...
Now astronomers have found that although the impact succeeded in knocking Dimorphos slightly off course, it also dislodged 37 boulders, which are currently zipping through space at 13,000mph.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/nasa-aste...160735199.html