Space: What's out there II

trippie wrote:

I don't have much of an opinion on aliens or the rest of the cosmos, but....if there are any Aliens coming here to Earth, I would assume they are far more advanced then us. Why or why not make direct contact with us is totally coming from them knowing this, I would surmise.

Yep, I wonder if for aliens that coming to earth wouldn't be like a visit to the zoo. I've been to the zoo, and I've wondered if I would be able to help the chimpanzees break out of prison or something. lol Give them an oxy-acetylene blow torch, a map and GPS, some black pygamas, repelling equipment and a pep talk. Would they understand me or eventually figure out how to use the high technology intended to boost their odds a little? Or would the odds be better that chimps evolved into a technically advanced species on some other planet?

In 2005 Paul Hellyer, former Canadian Minister of Dafence wrote:

"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning...The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

trippie wrote:

The USA only needs Will Smith to fly into the Mothership and save the planet.

I wonder where they got the wild idea that motherships are like a mile or two in length? Astronauts and cosmonauts would surely see something that size. Crazy.

trippie wrote:

Or you know, these aliens will die because of the bacteria on earth that they are not immune to.

That could be one reason why aliens aren't socializing with the general population, they're avoiding bacterial infections. I think there was a book written about it, Guns, Germans and Steel or something.

trippie wrote:

And besides, that aliens would come all the way here to exploit our resouces and us, for their form of Capitalism. Cause Capitalism is the best.

So that's why Darwin packed his bags and went on long voyages to remote islands. He needed money and so joined an exotic bird smuggling ring? I knew it. That capitalist dog!

NASA FINDS EARTH-SIZE PLANET CANDIDATES IN HABITABLE ZONE, SIX PLANET SYSTEM

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

Bill Borucki, Kepler PI

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

Jack Lissauer, Kepler Co-Investigator

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit.
Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

Debra Fischer

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

From what i've read I was beginning to think the end of man would be caused by plagues or by nano-weaponry, chemical or biological WMD. And that's an increasingly realistic danger. I've read where nuclear weapons are considered passe by modern militarists and would-be megalomaniacs. Not nuclear? Not again, I thought. Way too messy and damages too much real estate in trying to imagine myself one of the most insane people ever to be in charge of things.

And I wish it was true. I, too,  thought that since the end of cold war international leaders have finally come to their senses and began to realize that nuclear weapons should be decommissioned, dismantled, and scrapped for all time. And lots of people believe that this must surely be the case today after such a costly cold war that almost resulted in the end of habitable earth. But it's not true. Star Wars plans to weaponize space during the Reagan era was a reality, and it looks as if space is the final frontier for world domination. The irony of it is that the country with the most to lose in space are the cold war victors. Their economic and forward operating military dependence on satellite communications makes the US the most vulnerable to disruptions by relatively cheap methods of anti-satellite weaponry. I believe we've reached the edge and staring over the abyss. This is the last window of opportunity to end the madness. Mankind is now standing before the dreaded precipice.

(click on image for larger viewing)

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[i]Arp 147 contains a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with an elliptical galaxy (left), triggering a wave of star formation. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/S.Rappaport et al, Optical: NASA/STScI[/i]

See:Triggering a Wave of Star Formation.

After more than eight months locked in a windowless capsule, researchers on a mock trip to Mars ventured from their cramped quarters in heavy space suits Monday, trudging into a sand-covered room to plant flags on a simulated Red Planet.

The all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese entered a network of modules at a Moscow space research centre last June to imitate the 520-day flight and see how they cope with the constricted, isolating conditions of space travel - minus the weightlessness.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/02/14/mars-500-mission-russia.html#ixzz1DxvHaVjQ

[url=http://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view]Guy Hottel's FBI memo[/url] From the real X-Files

3 crashed saucers approx. 50 feet in diameter, check

9 bodies approx. 3 feet tall, check

And then 24 hrs l8r, the elite USAF 509th bomber group suddenly realized they were looking at weather balloons? The same guys who were entrusted with delivering atomic bombs over Japan a couple of years before?

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I know other astronauts share my feelings.... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs.- former Col. Gordon Cooper, Project Mercury astronaut, January 14, 1997

I have no idea, but it's fascinating just the same. A man and wife astronomer team in the US recently compared dark flow of the universe to a partial carton of milk. The contents of the carton seem to be sliding in one direction at a million miles per hour, they said. It's suggested that there is something very large out there beyond the edge of the universe and pulling all of the galaxies in its direction. I think the article you pointed us to, Sknguy,  suggests something similar. Could it be another universe? Or is there a simpler explanation? In any event, it looks like they are stuck with dark energy for a while. Mysterious dark energy apparently makes up some large percentage of the matter in the universe, and they know very little about it. Does DE represent Einstein's cosmological constant? Some physicists think so.

That's a good question. I don't know either other than to repeat what I've read. Space-time, according to Einstein and so on, is like a flowing river. It can have branches and fork into new paths. And space-time can result in whirlpools apparently. I think the whirlpools may be black holes or perhaps wormholes. Einstein said, through his equations, that it may be possible to travel in time through hyperspace by way of wormholes. No one knows if this would ever be possible. It may be possible in the distant future given a certain amount of human evolution and plenty of technological advancement. We haven't been a technically advanced species for very long at all. 

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13081831]UFO sightings have been made public by the FBI[/url] BBC interview with Nick Pope. Nothing astounding about the FBI releases. Something for skeptics and believers alike, and a lot of the reports were nonsense as well.

I think he's talking about curved space(Einstein), curvilinear space, "D branes", "flops", phase diagrams etc. He's talking about compact dimensions far too small to see with the human eye and perhaps dimensions which may be far too large to observe with the human eye. I dunno about all those fancy ideas. But I think he is definitely not describing things in terms of flat world Euclidean geometry. 

I think some of these modern day theoretical physicists believe that study of the very small, the sub-atomic and quantum, is a model of the universe all around us. And I don't really understand what they are talking about. Not a lot.

Spectrum wrote:

The definitions of Space are a necessary part of workng toward what others may be saying. Is Greene talking about symmetry?

I'm not sure. My understanding of symmetry is what existed at the moment before big bang. Everything there is in the universe today was once compressed into an infinitely small and hot tiny bit of something or other called the singularity. 14 billion years ago, nothing existed outside of it, not gravity, time nor light or anything else that they know of. And ever since then everything is increasingly non-symetrical since expansion of the universe began. And now they realize there is a mysterious force causing everything to expand at a greater rate than they can account for given the previously estimated amount of matter in the universe. There is something else out there, and they think it's dark energy and representing Einstein's cosmological constant. I think Einstein made it up for the sake of making his equations balance, but now it's thought to be real.

 
Dark Matter Results from 100 Live Days of XENON100 Data

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/science/space/14dark.html?_r=1&ref=science
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/72744/title/XENON100_fails_to_find_dark_matter
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/04/scienceshot-dark-matter-keep.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=underground-xenon100-experiment-clo-2011-04-14&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_physics_20110415
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110414/full/news.2011.235.html
http://www.interactions.org/cms/?pid=1030649
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_images.jsp?cntn_id=119246&org=NSF
http://www.infn.it/news/news.php?id=609
http://lescienze.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/titolo/1347477
http://www.abruzzo24ore.tv/news/Xenon-a-caccia-di-materia-oscura-nel-cuore-del-Gran-Sasso/16596.htm
http://www.ilcapoluogo.com/Rubriche/Arte-Cultura-e-Spettacolo/Xenon-fa-luce-sui-misteri-della-materia-oscura-dai-Laboratori-Nazionali-Gran-Sasso-di-Nicola-Facciolini-10971
http://www.cityservices.it/notizia?id=8368
http://www.scienzainrete.it/contenuto/articolo/Dal-Gran-Sasso-novita-sulla-materia-oscura
http://www.laquilaweb.it/news.asp?id=644&cat=4
http://www.abruzzoweb.it/contenuti/laboratori-gran-sasso-primo-identikit-particelle-materia-oscura/23966-4/
http://www.primadanoi.it/modules/articolo/article.php?storyid=5641&com_id=8521&com_rootid=8521&
http://www.agenziastra.it/notizia.php?action=visualizza_notizia&id=74831

Space Shuttle Endeavour

By recording the traces cosmic rays make as they pass through, the AMS might uncover a universe that is now invisible. Although Ting is hesitant to make predictions about what the instrument will find, he said the instrument was designed with dark matter and antimatter in mind. Very little is known about dark matter although it makes up an estimated 90 percent of the mass in the universe.

Although Earth-based facilities have been built to create powerful streams of subatomic particles, Ting said their limits are more than 14 million times weaker than the power produced by cosmic rays in space.

"No matter how large an accelerator you build, you're not going to compete with space," Ting told reporters recently. Ting offered the news media a close look at the AMS before it was packed for loading into Endeavour's cargo bay for launch.
See: AMS to Focus on Invisible Universe

Hey no problem sknguyII,

Look to where experiment is located on space station

Quote:

[b]Space Applications[/b]

[i]AMS-02 will provide a plethora of cosmic ray data that will help to advance and perhaps redefine much of what we know about the Low Earth Orbit space radiation environment.[/i]Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - 02 (AMS-02)

If you follow many earth based experiments going on with regard to the idea of cosmic particle collisions this is a project well in hand and in relation to the man-made experiments going on at the LHC, ICECUBE and SNO etc.

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Killer plasma ready to devour the Earth Reports by Robert Uhlig David Derbyshire and Roger Highfield
(Filed: 07/09/2001)

By colliding gold nuclei at huge energies, the RHIC is investigating "quark-gluon plasma", a state of matter in which the fundamental sub-nuclear particles, called quarks and gluons, become unstuck and swill around in a kind of particle soup that should have been around shortly after the Big Bang.

Dr Allanach warned that if experiments with the RHIC go wrong, it could produce a new hypothetical kind of particle called the killer strangelet.

In a catastrophic chain reaction, the killer strangelet would gobble up nuclei until it had eaten a million billion, when its weight would pull it towards the centre of the earth.

Something disturbing though is what is speculated about strangelets with which I thought had been long resolved according to LHC investigations? It seems to have reappeared, is quite shocking really for me considering the responses to the disaster scenarios speculated by court challenges not so long ago.

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Peter Steinberg, when at Quantum diaries, lead us through this.

The creepy part of these kind of discussions is that one doesn't say that RHIC collisions "create" black holes, but that nucleus-nucleus collisions, and even proton-proton collisions, are in some sense black holes, albeit black holes in some sort of "dual" space which makes the theory easier.

The statements made by proponents of the LHC to quell the fear mongering that went on as long as those disaster scenarios played out n in experimental backdrops revealed in the collision process.

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High Energy Physics

The study of high energy physics, also known as particle physics, grew out of nuclear and cosmic ray physics in the 1950’s, and measured the properties and interactions of fundamental particles at the highest energies (millions of electron-volts) then available with a relatively new technology, particle accelerators. Today that technology has advanced so that forefront particle accelerators produce exquisitely controlled beams with energies of trillions of electron-volts and intense enough to melt metal. The science has advanced with the technology to study ever-higher energies and very rare phenomena that probe the smallest dimensions we can see and tell us about the very early history of our universe. While the science has revolutionized our understanding of how the universe works, elements of the technology have helped transform other fields of science, medicine, and even everyday life. The science and its impacts will be remembered as one of the highlights of the history of the late 20th century.

 

3-day Solar-Geophysical Forecast issued May 27 22:00 UTC
Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be low with a chance for C-class events, and a slight chance for an M-class event, as regions on the disk continue to evolve.

Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to be predominately unsettled with occasional active periods, including isolated minor storm conditions at high-latitudes for day one (28 May). This is expected due to effects from the recurrent coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS). In addition there are possible effects from the disappearing filament observed on 25 May. Quiet to unsettled conditions, with isolated active levels, are expected for days two and three (29-30 May) with continued CH HSS effects.  See: Today's Space Weather

***

The plots on this page show the current extent and position of the auroral oval at each pole, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite. "Center time" is the calculated time halfway through the satellite's pass over the pole.Auroral Activity Extrapolated from NOAA POES

Hi Fidel,

An interesting concept that speaks too...

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The Alcubierre drive, also known as the Alcubierre metric, is a speculative mathematical model of a spacetime exhibiting features reminiscent of the fictional "warp drive" from Star Trek, which can travel "faster than light", although not in a local sense.

See Also: Hypothetical Methods of Space Craft propulsion

Best,

So 2 lights travelling towards each other disapears "antilight" at twiice the speed of light?

The following below was part of a blog post entry I had done some time back when the Angel and Demon's show was featured

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``For me, the most attractive way ... would be to capture the antihydrogen in a neutral particle trap ... The objective would be to then study the properties of a small number of [antihydrogen] atoms confined in the neutral trap for a long time."Gerald Gabrielse, 1986 Erice Lecture (shortly after first trapping of antiprotons) "Penning Traps, Masses and Antiprotons", in Fundamental Symmetries, edited by P. Bloch, P. Paulopoulos and R. Klapisch, p. 59 (Plenum, New York, 1987). See:Goals for ATRAP

Perhaps you may see some familiarities with research material that may insight some correlative recognitions of events as they are portrayed in the science fiction scenario portrayed in the plot? So of course you do your homework first, and then you write about it?

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The techniques for slowing, cooling and storing cold antiprotons make it possible for ATRAP and its competitors to pursue the production of antihydrogen that is cold enough to trap for precise laser spectroscopy. TRAP got extremely close to cold antihydrogen with our simultaneous confinement of 4.2 K antiprotons and positrons reported in 1999. All the initial cold antiproton experiments were carried out at the CERN Laboratory with antiprotons coming from its Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR), a unique facility that then closed. Antihydrogen experiments in 2000 and beyond will be pursued at the new Antiproton Decelerator ring of CERN which was constructed for this purpose. Using the techniques developed by TRAP, antiprotons will be accumulated within traps rather than in storage rings, thereby reducing the operating expenses to CERN.

I finished the book Angel and Demons a couple of days ago. I've had the book for sometime, but just hadn't bothered. I needed a little break from the reporting here so thought to immerse myself in some reading, knowing the movie is out there now.

Fidel wrote:

Will understanding antimatter be the dawn of limitless future energy and a better world?

In 2008 I had written this as well....to give you an idea

All M.C. Escher works (c) 2001 Cordon Art BV - Baarn - the Netherlands. All rights reserved. www.mcescher.com

The Devil, is in the details of a Mirror World?

While the "true cast" is here? :)

Mirror world or Alice in Wonderland, we have a unique way of adding the incredibility to the credible?

Scientists have basically decentralized space, Mike. Anything's possible now, including the possibility that market ideology works in some parallel universe. 

Ah Mike it's really not that difficult to think outside of the way you've always thought? With a "little more information" things change, and perspective can change.

I think market ideology "is a algorithm" that was developed to see if it could fly, and of course,  with us as consumers we make it happen?:) Does it ever fail.....we may not yet all recognize the signals.....yet some may, and do.

Strange things can still happen out of the norm in the world that defies our logic and reasoning? Why would one question one's reality based on spirituality, or,  if they talk to plants. Speak to animals, or,  fly in their dreams. if it works for them...... why are there are some scientists who can work outside of that mainstream and feel okay with that....I wish I had examples.  They leave room for the subjectivity of experience with the hopes people can bring something out of it.

I believe it would be a serious mistake not to have some grounding factor,  as an inductive/deductive relationship with the world. Something that we all can test and try. Would you throw out the Justice system?

Quote:

PLato said,"Look to the perfection of the heavens for truth," while Aristotle said "look around you at what is, if you would know the truth"

Michael wrote:

Well the problem with the grounding factor is the aristotalianisation of it that we are currently caged in spec, the idiot in that painting pointing his finger downward and subsequently debasing the imagination and the possibilities of transfiguration.

Ah yes you can see the relationship between Plato and Aristotle in the painting by Raphael? Because it resides in the signatory's room in the Vatican does not give credence to the Catholic church itself but is a recognition by Raphael of what is current as a grounding factor proposed by Aristotle.

Michael wrote:

To answer you're last Q, I would never have brought it in in the first place, terms like justice are perfect examples of overlocalised inside-outside organizational definitions and assumptions that are devoid of emergent spatial twists and turns.

It is a Socratic method of approach, not only in Justice, but of education itself. Would you overhaul both. Do you have some technological means? Sports?

"Well other than the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes disease, we've understood nothing else". 

Apparently they did understand something very important. And they hadn't studied English. Amazing.

The Pyramid(as an expression of Liberal Arts Encapsulated) is a combination of  the Trivium , and  the Quadrivium

 Painting by Cesare Maccari (1840-1919), Cicero Denounces Catiline.

 the trivium