Astronomy and Cosmology

  • Thread starter Dotini
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Hey guys. What is a decent telescope buy for a newcomer?

Since I received some binoculars, I think its pretty cool to look at the moon, but other then that its hard to see anything else (the stars, other planets)

About a week ago with my binoculars I could see Jupiter and two of its moons . but it was just 1 dot with 2 tiny dots next to it. I would love to buy a telescope and watch the stars a bit closer.

On amazon I see there are many decent ones for about 100 dollars, but which one is best to get for about 100 bucks? What are the main things I should look for in buying one?
 
For beginning stargazers it may be advisable to start with something like a 2"-3" refractor, and if you get hooked, work up to something like an 8" reflector. One maker's product will be roughly equal to another's. Be sure to purchase as large, strong, and sturdy a tripod as you can. Good tripods are not cheap. Recall that terrestrial telescopes will have additional optics to make the image appear "right side up", but will slightly compromise the optics in so doing. If you were to get involved with a club or with experienced skywatchers, you will have the inside track on acquiring higher quality used equipment at the best prices, as well as insight into the most interesting watching on the best nights at the best places.

Respectfully,
Dotini
 
This fast-paced and cheeky little video combines the most radical and heretical controversies in astronomy and cosmology today.

http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/cosmology/the-electric-universe.html

Naturally I cannot vouch for all of it, but anyone interested in the topics should be aware that new observations and theories coming out of today's scientists and research organizations may signal a new paradigm.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini
 
There are some good guides on the web about buying your first telescope, and here's a handy guide from the online store where I bought my telescope...

http://www.telescopesandbinoculars.co.uk/acatalog/WhichtelescopeforMe.html

$100 won't get you much, and much like anything else, you get what you pay for... that said, I think that there are plenty of really cheap telescopes out there that are simply not worth buying...

$200-300 will buy you a decent 6" reflector, which will let you see the planets clearly, but on a smaller budget than that, don't expect to be too impressed by the results... My 6" reflector is pretty basic, but it is decent quality, and it is fully upgradable. I don't get to use it much, but atleast it can do what I expected it to.

Of course, you can always upgrade a cheaper telescope as and when you feel like it, but make sure you don't start with a telescope that is too limited to begin with.
 
People have been carefully watching the Sun, moon and planets for millennia. Here's an article which describes the latest research by archeoastronomers on the most ancient of observatories. Some go back over 10,000 years. Most or all of these sites are thought to be combined with a temple which figured into the social or religious practices of the various civilizations or outposts.

http://www.examiner.com/freethought-in-national/world-s-oldest-observatory-found

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini
 
Magnetic fields, created by electric currents, confine plasma within bubbles and form a series of such bubbles in a line. Bubbles can separate within the line, as here in a lab experiment, or in space as stellar birth, gravity having nothing to do with it.

http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3446


- At Imperial College, Lebedev sent a high-powered pulse of energy into an aluminum disk. In just a few billion[th]s of a second, the aluminum began to evaporate, creating a cloud of plasma very similar to the plasma cloud surrounding a young star, says Frank. Where the energy flowed into the center of the disk, the aluminum evaporated completely, creating a hole through which a magnetic field, generated in the process, could penetrate.
- The field initially pushed aside the plasma, forming a "bubble with a jet inside," says Frank, who carried out the astrophysical analysis of the experiment. As the field penetrated further and the bubble/jet system grew, the magnetic fields began to warp and twist. Almost immediately, a new magnetic bubble formed beneath the first bubble, and the process repeated itself, creating a series of broken bubbles in the plasma.
- The resulting cloud of plasma, pinched in by the magnetic fields, so closely resembled what astrophysicists observe in real stellar jets that Frank believes the same physics underlies both. Frank says other aspects of the experiment, such as the way in which the jets radiatively cool the plasma in the same way jets radiatively cool their parent stars, make the series of experiments an important tool for studying stellar jets.
- "We can see these beautiful jets in space, but we have no way to see what the magnetic fields look like," says Frank. "I can't go out and stick probes in a star, but here we can get some idea."
... Along with researchers from Rice University and the University of California at San Diego, Frank and Lebedev will re-conduct the initial experiment and carry out new ones on Sandia National Laboratories' Z-Machine—an X-ray generator 10 times more powerful than the MAGPIE facility.
... "The DOE grant allows us to deepen and extend an unusual international collaboration of plasma physicists, astronomers, and computational scientists. The grant is for five years...."
 
After a 10 year long pain-staking process, J.K Webb, an astronomer from NSW, Australia, says we should rewrite the laws of physics!

http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2010-October/007983.html


-Webb first raised physicists' hackles about a decade ago, when he
found some strange results after using the Keck telescope in Hawaii. He
had been looking at quasars, which are extremely bright galaxies in the
far reaches of the cosmos. As the quasar light passed through clouds of
magnesium and iron atoms on its 12-billion-year journey to Earth, some
of the light had been absorbed by the metal atoms.
-Oddly, though, Webb's analysis said the atoms had taken up the wrong
kind of light. The wavelengths of light absorbed by magnesium and iron
can be predicted using the equations of quantum electrodynamics, but
the ones Webb recorded were different. Twelve billion years ago, it
seems, iron and magnesium absorbed photons of different energies than
the ones they absorb today.
-Webb did have an explanation, though. The observations fitted perfectly
if he changed one of the fundamental constants of nature, known as the
fine-structure constant, or alpha. This is a central pillar in quantum
electrodynamics and dictates, among many other things, which photons
certain atoms will absorb.
-Today's value of alpha is approximately 1/137. But Webb's work showed
that, billions of years ago, it must have been around one part in a
million smaller.
 
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http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/epoxi/epoxi-1-20101104.html

Here's big news on the revolutionary NASA Hartley 2 comet photos. Notice the brightly illuminated jets erupting from the shadowed region on the comet? This proves that the comet is self-illuminated - glowing- and not dependent on reflected light from the Sun. That the comet begins to glow when it enters the Sun's magnetosphere indicates electrical plasma discharge at work. Its electric charge is very different from that of our solar system. If you got too close to it, you would receive a substantial, probably fatal shock, I'd bet.

Respectfully,
Dotini
 
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By my reckoning, this announcement is just under an hour away... any idea what we might expect to be listening to? If it involves Chandra, I reckon it must be something pretty massive (I mean literally massive, anyway...)
 
Touring Mars
By my reckoning, this announcement is just under an hour away... any idea what we might expect to be listening to? If it involves Chandra, I reckon it must be something pretty massive (I mean literally massive, anyway...)
Click to expand...

TM, I regret to say I'm aware of some rumors which are very ugly. So ugly, I hesitate to repeat them here, if only so as not to (hopefully) look silly about an hour from now!!
 
They are reporting the discovery of a 'nearby' young black hole - the important factor being that they know exactly when it was 'born', i.e. the exact moment of the supernova that gave rise to it is known, so it is the first time they can precisely age a black hole... apparently it is only 31 years old. Nice knowing that one is older than a black hole :crazy:
 
just watched the documentary on M-theory.

Which links all string theories through the use of an 11th, thats right 11 dimensions.

I have no idea what ay of it is about other than they are trying to find a unifying equation to link Einstein's theory of relativity and Quantum MEchanics.

Can anyone here describe the 11 dimensions and what this M-theory is actually good for?
 
lucag120
just watched the documentary on M-theory.

Which links all string theories through the use of an 11th, thats right 11 dimensions.

I have no idea what ay of it is about other than they are trying to find a unifying equation to link Einstein's theory of relativity and Quantum MEchanics.

Can anyone here describe the 11 dimensions and what this M-theory is actually good for?
Click to expand...

No one can actually describe the extra dimensions. The extra dimensions are required only by mathematical theory to allow gravity to be unified in simplified equations with the other forces (electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces). These extra dimensions are never observed, so the theorists are forced into the uncomfortable position of saying they are "rolled up", and no longer exist to be observed. It is faintly ridiculous, but that's the best us humans are able to do at the moment. But don't worry, silly ideas will eventually be replaced by sounder ones!
 
I want someday to understand, not just analyze, to truly, intuitevely understand the E=mc^2 equation.
I believe I have made a step closer to that with my analysis of the equation I shall share with you.

Unit of Energy(E): Joule --> Newton*m --> (kg*m/s^2)*m --> (kg*m^2)/s^2

Unit of mass(m) --> kg

Constant speed of light(c) in the void --> 300,000,000 m/s

c^2 --> 90,000,000,000,000,000 m^2/s^2

Suppose we have a 1kg object. Its energy thus would be

E = 1kg*90,000,000,000,000,000 m^2/s^2
Substituting the Energy units in the left hand side we have:

(kg*m^2)/s^2 = 1kg*90,000,000,000,000,000 m^2/s^2
or
(kg*m^2)/s^2 = 9*10^16(kg*m^2)/s^2

Do you see how elegantly it proves the connection of E and mass, the units are the same. The thing of notice here is that the number 9*10^16 is the slope of the equation, or the rate of change. Well if the simplest of equation y=x goes like a diagonal in the xy axis you can imagine how this draws. It goes almost parallel to the yy' axis. This means a minute difference in m(eg. 1kg) will increment the E value by c^2!

Let's reflect here a bit.
One kg is the weight that we measure at sea level. The force the earth excerts on a 1kg object is 9.8 N.
Energy, as we saw, can be written as N*m. If the 1kg object falls 1m its energy becomes 9.8 Joules. What if the object falls 1km? Then its energy becomes 9800 Joules. You see where this is going. Mass has billions of billions of times more energy than what it manifests naturally as the gravity force. Ironically it is this force that forms the univerce into spheres, solar system, galaxies and galaxy flees.
The unleashed force of mass comes out in the suns, supernovas and human-made atomic reactors and bombs.
You can think of mass as balanced force. There is tremendous force there but there is balance; it it takes a very abrupt and violent turbulence of that balance to cause the balance of opposing and attracting forces to dangerously fall into one field and have an explosion of energy.

Feed for thought. Can gravity be the small amount of attracting interactions in mass that acts as a relief valve? So instead of having loud particle and light explosions, we have this quiet "sea" of gravity which is what is "exploded". Gravity is by far the weaker from the natural interactions.

And my personal instict here will probably look indulgent by I do believe Gravity is a force and not a curvature of spacetime. Because I believe time does not exist, what exists is a rhythm. A rhythm of delivery of force, the respective quantum physics of time. There may very well be a quanta of rhythm.
Maybe we were wrong all this time (and I am right). Maybe time is a product of rhythm. And speed of light be the absolute limit of rhythm in which force can be transmitted. It may be that our math are wrong (defining rhythm in respect to time instead of opposite) and on paper we can travel in time.

My question boils down to this. Is there any scientific proof that time is not an axiom? That rhythm is not more primal?


Dotini
The extra dimensions are required only by mathematical theory to allow gravity to be unified in simplified equations with the other forces (electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces).
Click to expand...

Bingo! That's what I'm talking about. I say we should look our math people.

I'm a bit creative here but I'll say the speed of light limit can be compared to to a free fall to the center of a planet. As you approach the center you are past the point you reached terminal velocity and gradually decelerate. Then in the center you come to a dead stop (after a few oscillations that is).
In the case of light, because it is massless, theoretically there is no speed limit for it but we know there is and it is c. This is because the marginal acceleration needed for light to surpass c is infinity... and we can't afford that.
Now listen, the marginal deceleration of acceleration is like that object free falling inside a planet. It becomes zero at speed c.
Clocks tick at different rates in different speeds because their marginal acceleration is different which is no different than saying they have different rhythms. No one is ahead or behind in time. The forces inside them have different rates of transmission, they have different rhythms.
 
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I am sorry, but your post makes no sense whatsoever.

I will clarify what gravity is for you:

Gravity is, in Einstein's theory of general relativity; theory explains gravitation as distortion of the structure of spacetime by matter, affecting the inertial motion of other matter.

It is all difficult to describe in a forum.
 
I question the existence of spacetime. The time component of it. Where is the proof of time? What we do have is measures of periodic events, the orbit of the electron, the half-life of carbon etc.

Can it be that spacetime is the modern ether? Our math can be right but our explanations fancy and not to the point. If mass has different speeds, with the limit of c, so can forces. This is the rhythm that I propose as a replacement of time.
 
Interesting ideas. What I find questionable is his postulate about the exact same universe repeating always and his hard deterministic view of everyone living their lifes an indefinite amount of times. He ingnores the Heisenberg law?

One other thing that leads me to question spacetime is the history of discoveries of science. If you look back in retrospect, science has found things always being more complicated than the assumptions before. Aristotle believed in 4 fundamental elements and Newton in 2 forces. Now we have tens of fundamental(?) particles and 4 forces. And we understand physics much better.
The concept of spacetime is suspicious just because of that, it neglects the order of events. It tries to converge space with time into one body.
 
AlexGTV
The concept of spacetime is suspicious...
Click to expand...

Hi AlexGTV,

I'm still looking into it, but ran across this which I thought might interest you.
http://www.electronspin.org/24.htm

...and this,http://compenetration.wordpress.com/2008/07/31/electric-universe-or-was-tesla-right-again/

and this:
The Electric Universe takes a simplifying leap by unifying the nuclear forces, magnetism and gravity as manifestations of a near instantaneous electrostatic force. Instead of being "spooked" by the concept of action-at-a-distance, like most physicists this century, the Electric Universe accepts it as an observational fact. Anyone who has tried to force two like poles of magnets together has demonstrated action-at-a-distance. "Electromagnetic" radiation is then simply the result of an oscillating electrostatic force.

At the level of the atom, the Electric Universe model takes a lead from the work of Ralph Sansbury, an independent New York researcher. Foremost is the simple recognition of the basic electrical nature of matter and the primacy of the electrostatic force** in matter interactions. It also rests upon the simple assumption that the proton, neutron and electron are composed of smaller charged particles, orbiting each other in a classical sense in stable, resonant orbits. That is, the energy exchanged between those sub-particles in elastic deformation during each orbit sums to zero. Being charged, the sub-particles interact via the electrostatic force. A simple calculation shows that the sub-particles that form an electron must travel at a speed far in excess of the speed of light - some 2.5 million light-years per second, or from here to the far side of the Andromeda galaxy in one second! So the electrostatic force must act at a speed which is almost infinite on our scale for the electron to be stable. It is the stable orbital resonances of these sub-particles, both within and between particles that give rise to the phenomena of protons, neutrons, electrons and atoms. Other denizens of the particle "zoo" are merely transient resonant states of the same charged sub-particles. The so-called "creation" of matter from energetic photons is an illusion in which pre-existing matter is reorganized into new resonant states that give the impression that a particle has suddenly materialized. Antimatter is a misnomer since it too is formed from the same sub-particles as "normal" matter except that the total charge is mirrored. Matter cannot be created or annihilated.
 
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http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2010/arch10/101123eject.htm

There is a very interesting photo here of a galaxy ejecting a quasar. It shows that quasars are small new stars. Conventionally, quasars are very distant and super-massive objects. But this is wrong, obviously, and the whole idea of an expanding universe due to distant receding quasars is therefore also very wrong. This is an important post to consider quite carefully.
 
Voyager 1 exits the heliosheath towards interstellar space

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-solar-voyager-spacecraft.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.

Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 10.8 billion miles from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.

The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system.

The results were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

"When I realized that we were getting solid zeroes, I was amazed," said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator and senior staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse for 33 years, showing us something completely new again."

Scientists believe Voyager 1 has not crossed the heliosheath into interstellar space. Crossing into interstellar space would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles. Scientists are putting the data into their models of the heliosphere's structure and should be able to better estimate when Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. Researchers currently estimate Voyager 1 will cross that frontier in about four years.

"In science, there is nothing like a reality check to shake things up, and Voyager 1 provided that with hard facts," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator on the Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument, who is based at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Academy of Athens, Greece. "Once again, we face the predicament of redoing our models."

A sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched in Aug. 20, 1977 and has reached a position 8.8 billion miles from the sun. Both spacecraft have been traveling along different trajectories and at different speeds. Voyager 1 is traveling faster, at a speed of about 38,000 mph, compared to Voyager 2's velocity of 35,000 mph. In the next few years, scientists expect Voyager 2 to encounter the same kind of phenomenon as Voyager 1.




"The solar wind has turned the corner," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space."

Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.

Launched on Sept. 5, 1977, Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 into the heliosheath. Scientists have used data from Voyager 1's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument to deduce the solar wind's velocity.

When the speed of the charged particles hitting the outward face of Voyager 1 matched the spacecraft's speed, researchers knew that the net outward speed of the solar wind was zero. This occurred in June, when Voyager 1 was about 10.6 billion miles from the sun.

Because the velocities can fluctuate, scientists watched four more monthly readings before they were convinced the solar wind's outward speed actually had slowed to zero. Analysis of the data shows the velocity of the solar wind has steadily slowed at a rate of about 45,000 mph each year since August 2007, when the solar wind was speeding outward at about 130,000 mph. The outward speed has remained at zero since June.
 
Here are a couple of suggestive indications, one recent, the other much older, which suggest Earth had wild and rapid changes in its magnetic field about 3000 years ago. What does this mean? To me, since I am aware of extensive laboratory studies documenting perceptual/consciousness effects of strong magnetic fields on humans, it means auditory and visual effects of these fields may have changed the course of human civilization on Earth at that time.


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/magnetic-copper-slag

"But a new study of ancient copper mines in southern Israel found that the strength of the magnetic field could double and then fall back down in less than 20 years."
"They found that the magnetic field abruptly spiked twice during the 180 years they studied, once around 2,990 years ago and once around 2,900 years ago. Both times, the field jumped up in strength and then fell by at least 40 percent in the space of about 20 years."

http://books.google.com/books?id=50...nepage&q=Folgheraiter +etruscan vases&f=false

The results appear to indicate that in the eight century B. C. the magnetic dip in Central Italy was small, and in the reverse direction to what it is at the present time, so that a magnetised needle at that epoch would have assumed a position with its south instead of its north pole pointing downwards. Some two centuries later, the declination seems to have approached the value zero, the earth's magnetic field being nearly horizontal, while in many of the vases the direction of polarity is the same as at the present time. There are, of course, many difficulties in the way of drawing precise conclusions from these observations - such, for example, as the uncertainty as to the date of fabrication of the vases; but the results are sufficiently consistent to establish the validity of the method. Dr. Folgheraiter points out that the prevalence of austral magnetism at the bases of Etruscan vases might be interpreted either on the supposition that the magnetic equator has been so displaced as to pass to the north of Etruria, or by admitting that the northern and southern hemispheres had their magnetic polarity opposite to that of the present time, and that the latter state may have been arrived at by successive variations in the magnetic declination.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini
 

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