Space In General

Svensmark and Calder, "The Chilling Stars". Cheap at only $9 on amazon!

Ah my apologies, you did actually put that first time round but I missed it.

Henrik Svensmark is the physicist who initiated the multi-year, hugely funded 50+ scientist CERN CLOUD experiment. Initial cloud chamber tests carried out a few years ago by Svensmark have been confirmed by the big accelerator at Switzerland. More cosmic rays = more clouds = global cooling.

I'll add links to papers and articles a little later, particularly if you are really interested. 👍 Personally, I think it's a huge deal.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

It sounds interesting, but I'm not certain I have enough time at my disposal at the moment to read it sadly.
 
More cosmic rays = more clouds = global cooling. This is a continuously breaking story, and very bad news for AGW enthusiasts, research funding priorities, etc, so CERN must cast their news releases with appropriate circumspection.


How is it bad news for AGW enthusiasts? Did you read the same article as I did?

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. "At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step," he says.

Basically it means it could have an effect, but overall it is too early to say that AGW is dead.


Also I would say the debate about what dark matter is in essence is still up for debate. I think people get too hung up on the idea that it is what the name suggests, completely black or "invisible". Neutrinos are a sort of dark matter; they interact with the "visible" matter similarly to the way dark matter does, which is not very much.


http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2011/09/21/28760/

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/47130

http://www.newscientist.com/article...rk-matter.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
 
Resurrecting this thread to post this:

295420_374715142593664_828055105_n.jpg


To throw in some perspective (other than the 1 billion light-year measurement), the Virgo Supercluster, in which our galaxy (and around 100 others) is located, has a diameter of around 110 million light years.

That means the light we're seeing from the furthest reaches of our supercluster was emitted around the time that the first primates evolved on our planet.

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is between 100,000-120,000 light-years across and contains 200-400 billion stars.

To put that into perspective, the light we're observing from the farthest reaches of our own galaxy was emitted around the time when Y-chromosomal Adam would have lived.

Both the above - even our local supercluster - are essentially invisible on the diagram. It's also worth pointing out that in the interim 13.7 billion years of light we've been seeing, the universe has been expanding - so it's likely now much, much larger than that diagram shows.
 
That's pretty incredible to think about. A beam of light started that long ago, and we're just now seeing it. That's a long way to travel.
 
That's pretty incredible to think about. A beam of light started that long ago, and we're just now seeing it. That's a long way to travel.

And the best part? When you place Earth on the left side of the chart, there is another 13.7 billion lightyears to see. And more, more, more, more.......
 
Sorry if this is a repost:


I strongly recommend anyone who hasn't watched it yet to watch it. Probably my favourite video on YouTube.
 
That is awesome.

I find that it's always good to remind myself that I am an insignificant speck upon an insignificant speck to the infinite power.
 
Thanks for resurrecting the thread to post that, homeforsummer, and that video is mind blowing too. I actually get quite sad when I realise it's highly unlikely we'll set foot on Mars in my lifetime, and then when you realise quite how insignificant that is in the grand scheme of things... I just wish I could find out how far we manage to get before the human race becomes extinct. Now I'm thinking about space and the sheer scale of it is hurting my brain again.
 
This is another epic video narrated by Morgan Freeman. It's good to see that other people find this stuff awesome too. 👍

 
Ah... nothing makes a video better than watching it to the soothing sound of that voice... :lol:
 
A recent major Helioseismology experiment, conducted by NASA, Princeton and Max-Planck Institut, has published results which challenge our understanding of the origin and operation of the sun's magnetic field. According to NASA, the solar magnetic field underlies most all the Big Questions science has about the sun's solar wind, coronal heating, flares and CME's, sunspot cycle, etc., and by analogy impacting our understanding of all the other stars in the universe.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/...ientists-had-previously-projected/#more-67063
"A team of scientists has created an “MRI” of the Sun’s interior plasma motions, shedding light on how it transfers heat from its deep interior to its surface. The result, which appears in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, upends our understanding of how heat is transported outwards by the Sun and challenges existing explanations of the formation of sunspots and magnetic field generation."
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.3173.pdf <--the science paper

Respectfully submitted,
Steve
 
It's hard to keep up with modern science nowadays. You can dedicate 8 hours to understanding something then the model is revised or abandoned due to new research.

Eternal confusion.
 
For those that don't know, the NASA Curiosity Mars Rover will be landing on Mars at 1:31 a.m., EDT on Monday August 6th.

Everything you need to know about the landing is HERE, and of course it will be covered live by NASA.

I'll be watching on the NASA TV channel. :)
 
Today the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Their very practical and worthwhile mission is to study the Van Allen radiation belts with the goal of protecting future space missions and terrestrial infrastructure from space weather.

Here is the solar/space physics back-story from NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/electric-atmosphere.html

Our day-to-day lives exist in what physicists would call an electrically neutral environment. Desks, books, chairs and bodies don't generally carry electricity and they don't stick to magnets. But life on Earth is substantially different from, well, almost everywhere else. Beyond Earth's protective atmosphere and extending all the way through interplanetary space, electrified particles dominate the scene. Indeed, 99% of the universe is made of this electrified gas, known as plasma.

Plasmas seethe with complex movement. They generally flow along a skeletal structure made of invisible magnetic field lines, while simultaneously creating more magnetic fields as they move. Teasing out the rules that govern such a foreign environment &#8211; one that can only be studied from afar &#8211; lies at the heart of understanding a range of events that make up space weather, from giant explosions on the sun to potentially damaging high energy particles in near-Earth environs.

To distinguish between a host of theories developed over the years on plasma movement in those near-Earth environs, RBSP scientists have designed a suite of instruments to answer three broad questions. Where do the extra energy and particles come from? Where do they disappear to, and what sends them on their way? How do these changes affect the rest of Earth's magnetic environment, the magnetosphere? In addition to its broad range of instruments, the RBSP mission will make use of two spacecraft in order to better map out the full spatial dimensions of a particular event and how it changes over time.

Scientists want to understand not only the origins of electrified particles &#8211; possibly from the solar wind constantly streaming off the sun; possibly from an area of Earth's own outer atmosphere, the ionosphere &#8211; but also what mechanisms gives the particles their extreme speed and energy.


Respectfully submitted,
Steve
 
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