Astronomy & Space Exploration
- Thread starter MrMarcello
- Start date
Cassini returned some images of Saturn's giant hurricane. I'm a bit confused though, is the hexagonal storm distinct from this one?
The hexagon is at the pole (and mental).
That is just a regular hurricane (not to be conflated by the North Pole Vortex) - Saturn has loads of them, as you can see from this image:
eg. This is the Dragon Storm:
This is the lightning storm in the 'Lightning Alley':
This is the South Polar Vortex:
This is the Hexagon at the North Pole (which you were referring to):
And this is an interpretation of the Eye of the Hexagonal Vortex:
Very interesting, thanks for the responses! Very interested to see what other cool stuff we'll get to see from Cassini.That is just a regular hurricane (not to be conflated by the North Pole Vortex) - Saturn has loads of them, as you can see from this image:
eg. This is the Dragon Storm:
This is the lightning storm in the 'Lightning Alley':
This is the South Polar Vortex:
This is the Hexagon at the North Pole (which you were referring to):
And this is an interpretation of the Eye of the Hexagonal Vortex:
Should be an amazing journey providing stunning images since it will be passing between the planet and its rings before entering Saturn's atmosphere. I'm hoping we get to see a bit of its actual surface, but I'm guessing it won't even reach the inner atmosphere before the high pressure crushes it. Hopefully the camera filters will help with this.
Found this on Reddit - not sure if it's been posted before, but I thought it was pretty cool.
http://here-project.com/
OP on Reddit
http://here-project.com/
OP on Reddit
At Brian Cox and Robin Ince's show in Birmingham tonight. I'll let you know how it goes and if I understand 1/100 of it.
I'm reading Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole Wars right now. Talks about his challenge to Hawking's Black Hole work.
Great read! Susskind really has a cool way of making complex things accessible and engaging (and even a wee bit humorous) for casual readers without being dragged down by the mathematics intensive details. His interactive Susskind Lectures series on Youtube is great, too - deals with a variety of subjects, and makes a lot of interesting stuff available to the masses:
Visit SITP's YouTube channel.
http://theoreticalminimum.com/
Including some bits from his Black Hole theory:
Should check the channel out, if you haven't already.
Yeah i've seen a lot of the YouTube stuff. Some of the lectures are well above my head but he does have a simplistic way of explaining things.
Latest view of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft


Refuse to believe that Jupiter isn't painted.
And flat...
Did they really need to clarify that a mission into the sun's atmosphere would be unmanned?
Metaphasic sheilds getting a run out.
About time
About time
1 hour the live stream starts
Is this RTLS or OCISLY?
Scrubbed....
Next launch attempt is Saturday
Next launch attempt is Saturday
RTLS is way less stressful.
Looks like it's a scrub for today though
Looks like it's a scrub for today though
http://www.iflscience.com/space/hib...plain-why-we-havent-found-any-other-life-yet/
Hibernating Aliens May Explain Why We Haven't Found Any Other Life Yet
Scientists have proposed a rather interesting reason for why we haven’t found aliens yet, a problem known as the Fermi Paradox (if life is so abundant, where is everyone?). They propose intelligent aliens could be in a state of hibernation, waiting for the universe to get colder so they can be more productive.
This idea was proposed in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, with a pre-print available on arXiv. The paper was written by Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and picked up recently by Gizmodo.
Some people think that a civilization much more advanced than our own might become a digital race. That is to say, they’ll live as artificial intelligence inside computers, doing away with more limiting fleshy bodies. Experts including Elon Musk have suggested this is a logical progression in the far future.
If we are not alone in the universe (which we have no evidence for yet), one could therefore further propose that an advanced alien race might have gone down this route. But in order to make the most of their new digital bodies, they might not like the universe at the moment.
The temperature of the universe right now is 3 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero. That’s rather chilly, but that temperature will continue to drop as the universe expands. Sandberg and his colleagues argue that the temperature in the future could allow for 1030 more computational processes than are currently possible.
“We hence suggest the 'aestivation hypothesis',” the researchers write in their paper, adding that “the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilizations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras.” Aestivation is basically hibernation to avoid hotter temperatures, not cooler ones.
An advanced digital alien race might get to the point where they have fully explored a section of the universe. Finding no need to continue existence with a relatively limited processing power (processing becomes 10 times more efficient if your computer is 10 times colder), they may therefore choose to wait for a cooler age in the universe.
The authors do not necessarily think this theory is correct, not least because we have no evidence we are not alone yet. But they argue that if it turns out there is other life out there, then the theory is at least a possibility.
“[We] personally think the likeliest reason we are not seeing aliens is not that they are aestivating, but just that they do not exist or are very far away,” Sandberg wrote in a blog post. “If that hypothesis [life is rare] is not true, then aestivation is a pretty plausible answer in my personal opinion.”
What’s more, they propose a way to find aestivating aliens. If we can see unusual phenomena in the universe, such as stars failing to collapse into black holes, this might be evidence of aliens using up the energy. And if there are aliens monitoring our particular corner of the universe, then any attempts by us to travel outwards may be met with hostile resistance.
This theory will not be without its detractors. Science fiction author David Brin, for one, suggested to Gizmodo that it made little sense for a race to go into hibernation and waste processing time. The authors countered that any race would want to make the most of available energy, and thus wait for optimal conditions.
There’s no shortage of speculation these days about the Fermi Paradox, and the possibility of alien life. The fact remains though that – to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke – we are either alone or not, and both answers are equally terrifying. Maybe, if we’re not, then there just might be sleeping aliens waiting for things to get a bit cooler.
Hibernating Aliens May Explain Why We Haven't Found Any Other Life Yet
Scientists have proposed a rather interesting reason for why we haven’t found aliens yet, a problem known as the Fermi Paradox (if life is so abundant, where is everyone?). They propose intelligent aliens could be in a state of hibernation, waiting for the universe to get colder so they can be more productive.
This idea was proposed in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, with a pre-print available on arXiv. The paper was written by Anders Sandberg, Stuart Armstrong, and Milan Cirkovic of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and picked up recently by Gizmodo.
Some people think that a civilization much more advanced than our own might become a digital race. That is to say, they’ll live as artificial intelligence inside computers, doing away with more limiting fleshy bodies. Experts including Elon Musk have suggested this is a logical progression in the far future.
If we are not alone in the universe (which we have no evidence for yet), one could therefore further propose that an advanced alien race might have gone down this route. But in order to make the most of their new digital bodies, they might not like the universe at the moment.
The temperature of the universe right now is 3 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero. That’s rather chilly, but that temperature will continue to drop as the universe expands. Sandberg and his colleagues argue that the temperature in the future could allow for 1030 more computational processes than are currently possible.
“We hence suggest the 'aestivation hypothesis',” the researchers write in their paper, adding that “the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilizations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras.” Aestivation is basically hibernation to avoid hotter temperatures, not cooler ones.
An advanced digital alien race might get to the point where they have fully explored a section of the universe. Finding no need to continue existence with a relatively limited processing power (processing becomes 10 times more efficient if your computer is 10 times colder), they may therefore choose to wait for a cooler age in the universe.
The authors do not necessarily think this theory is correct, not least because we have no evidence we are not alone yet. But they argue that if it turns out there is other life out there, then the theory is at least a possibility.
“[We] personally think the likeliest reason we are not seeing aliens is not that they are aestivating, but just that they do not exist or are very far away,” Sandberg wrote in a blog post. “If that hypothesis [life is rare] is not true, then aestivation is a pretty plausible answer in my personal opinion.”
What’s more, they propose a way to find aestivating aliens. If we can see unusual phenomena in the universe, such as stars failing to collapse into black holes, this might be evidence of aliens using up the energy. And if there are aliens monitoring our particular corner of the universe, then any attempts by us to travel outwards may be met with hostile resistance.
This theory will not be without its detractors. Science fiction author David Brin, for one, suggested to Gizmodo that it made little sense for a race to go into hibernation and waste processing time. The authors countered that any race would want to make the most of available energy, and thus wait for optimal conditions.
There’s no shortage of speculation these days about the Fermi Paradox, and the possibility of alien life. The fact remains though that – to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke – we are either alone or not, and both answers are equally terrifying. Maybe, if we’re not, then there just might be sleeping aliens waiting for things to get a bit cooler.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...3e1494-49f7-11e7-987c-42ab5745db2e_story.html
Complete reuseability draws every closer.
Complete reuseability draws every closer.
... and they called themselves scientists.... maybe because the universe is so fecking big and with billions of solar systems separated by light year distances is like "let me go for a ride to that solar system in our galaxy that's 2000 LY, see you in 4000 years (using our years)"
I think the real reason, is the "many small filters". Something that isn't normally talked about.
Let's say you have 50 "filters", which only 50% of species get through...
I.e. only 50% of planets that can support life will complex proteins evolve. Of those planets, only 50% will simple cells form. Of those planets, will the cells get a cell wall. Of those planets, will the some cells start to photosynthesis. All the way up to, only 50% of potentially intelligent life will discover language. Of those, only 50% will discover writing. Of those only 50% will discover mathematics.
And so on.
It's easy to think of 50 such filters, which could stop (on average) half of the potentially species from developing further.
And if each of the 50 filters stop 50% of the species from developing, then that requires 2^50 suitable planets... which is in the order of 10^15 planets required. The milky way only has around 10^11 stars.
Many small filters I think are the issue, not these "great filters" that the media like to pick up on.
Atmosphere?
Cooler parts of the corona, according to the website. I'm guessing they'll steer clear of the dense plasma zones for obvious reasons - no experimental material can withstand even a hundredth of the emissions and average temperatures at the chromosphere-corona transition region with large scale helium ionization.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe-humanity-s-first-visit-to-a-star
New evidence that all stars are born in pairs
June 14, 2017 by Robert Sanders
June 14, 2017 by Robert Sanders
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-evidence-stars-born-pairs.html
Think i read somewhere that most stars are born in clusters which provides the best environment for binary stars to pair off together.
Thanks for the steer to this source. It's huge, great and yes amazing. In all seriousness though how can the BBC turn out such crap with the money they have, compared to this?
What do you mean? BBC documentaries?