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Planet found in Earth's nearest neighbour star system
- Thread starter nutball
- Start date
Crappy news releases annoy the hell out of me.
The observable universe has different densities from place to place on all scales. Detection of such large structures can put some constraints on the particular early-universe models, but they aren't going to completely overthrow our understanding of the universe.
Well, that's kind of the case with everything, though, whether you're talking about a galaxy or a planet or a rock or an atom or a proton (perhaps not that many 9's for some of them, but you get the idea).Referring to such a thing as a "structure" when 99.999999999999999999999%+ of it is pure emptyness is a bit silly IMO.
UniversalTruth
Veteran
Solar system is not growing and there is no way to grow becuase of the gravity of Sun, which can be regarded as constant despite synthesis in which matter is converted into energy. The only thing that expands (according to recent studies and observations) is the Universe, namely space. Edwin Hubble proved that through observations of distant galaxies shifting in the red end of the spectrum of light, this confused Einstein quite a lot. According to modern calculations, the Universe is expanding at a rate equal to or greater than the speed of light, so we have a horizon beyond which we can not "look." Weird thing is that you can go to the speed limit of light but this is not in conflict with Einstein's theory because we have expansion of space.
So, do not confuse the expansion of space with the extension of the Solar system. Here, extremely powerful gravitational force works. Galaxies are moving apart from each other but the galaxies themselves remain grouped with "almost" reliable black holes which play as their centres of gravity in monstrous proportions.
And therefore, if I'm not mistaken, now Earth is at the farthest point from the center of our Galaxy. So, it means that till 12/21/2012 we had been in recession, going further away from the center, and after that date we should go up, or get closer.
Someone was trying to refute me, claiming that because of the expansion of the Universe at any time we are in the most distant point from the center.
So, do not confuse the expansion of space with the extension of the Solar system. Here, extremely powerful gravitational force works. Galaxies are moving apart from each other but the galaxies themselves remain grouped with "almost" reliable black holes which play as their centres of gravity in monstrous proportions.
And therefore, if I'm not mistaken, now Earth is at the farthest point from the center of our Galaxy. So, it means that till 12/21/2012 we had been in recession, going further away from the center, and after that date we should go up, or get closer.
Someone was trying to refute me, claiming that because of the expansion of the Universe at any time we are in the most distant point from the center.
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Not sure what you're trying to say. If you look up the position of the earth within the milky way, you see that we're sitting pretty much right smackdab halfway between the edge of the disc and its center, ours is not the furthest star from the center of the galaxy.
As for bringing 21st of december up, not sure what that has anything to do with anything. No, we weren't in recession of anything important really up until that date. Nor did we cross the galactic ecliptic plane on that date, or anything like it. It's just the maya bullshit of last year that has made that date in particular to be repeated at all, AFAIK it has nothing to do with anything of significance in astronomy, with regards to our own solar system anyway. Maybe someone spotted something interesting elsewhere on that date, but the mayans had nothing to do with that. Of course.
Anyway, I read somewhere that the 21/12 2012 date is a miscalculation, as the mayans did not have leap years in their calender like we do, and their baktun new year has actually already passed, years ago, without anyone even noticing it - because why should we. It wasn't anything more than turning a page in the calendar.
As for bringing 21st of december up, not sure what that has anything to do with anything. No, we weren't in recession of anything important really up until that date. Nor did we cross the galactic ecliptic plane on that date, or anything like it. It's just the maya bullshit of last year that has made that date in particular to be repeated at all, AFAIK it has nothing to do with anything of significance in astronomy, with regards to our own solar system anyway. Maybe someone spotted something interesting elsewhere on that date, but the mayans had nothing to do with that. Of course.
Anyway, I read somewhere that the 21/12 2012 date is a miscalculation, as the mayans did not have leap years in their calender like we do, and their baktun new year has actually already passed, years ago, without anyone even noticing it - because why should we. It wasn't anything more than turning a page in the calendar.
UniversalTruth
Veteran
Sorry.
I was trying to say that the distance between Earth and the centre of Milky way is not constant. And our own Solar system travels around that central Black hole in the same way Earth travels around our Sun. And this distance has max and min values.
On 21 December 2012 we reached the max value.
Blazkowicz
Legend
I'm concerned the world will end on year 2038, we'll have a much greater calendaring issue then
Blazkowicz
Legend
What? rotation around the galaxy center is 220 or 250 million years and totally out of reach of the Mayans. And if you're thinking about esoteric, very long time units they have, feel free to wait it out, it will be quite a long time till the biggest one increments.
Afraid I'm gonna have to call bullshit on that one, the earth's orbital time around the center of the galaxy (which would be its gravitational center, not neccessarily the same thing as the black hole, which is only a small fraction of a percent of the mass of the galaxy), is so long that there's no fucking way in hell anyone could possibly determine that dec. 21st of last year was THE day when we were furthest out in our orbit. No way.
If we have even determined the exact shape of our orbit at all, the max value would necessarily have an error margin on the order of decades, if not centuries. Shit, millennia? Picking any one day as THE day would be an exercise in futility due to the extremely improbable chance of being right; going with blaz's low-ball figure of 220 million years, that'd be way less than one in 80 BILLION you'd randomly pick the right day.
Anyway, since dec. 21st is firmly mired in maya bullcrap, you can be absolutely certain nothing of any significance whatsoever (well, greater than on any other random day anyway) happened on that day.
Why are you so hung up on 21-12-2012 anyway, is it some kind of compulsive disorder you have that you gotta swallow all the bullshit about everything in the entire universe, if so, what's your standpoint on the WTC collapse, and the so-called Roswell incident? What about the Tunguska blast of 1908?
C'mon, go for broke here and pick the most wildly improbable explanations for all of these!
Well Galactic dynamics isn't exactly my strongpoint, but I'm pretty sure you'll find that the Suns motion through the Galactic disc is far from being a nice neat ellipse with a readily identifiable (and predictable) furthest-away-from-anything. There's too much local structure in the disc. It might on average resemble some nice geometric shape, if you're willing to ignore excursions on the scale of parsecs.
The motion of the planets about the Sun is a pretty bad approximation to they way stars move in the disc of a spiral galaxy.
The motion of the planets about the Sun is a pretty bad approximation to they way stars move in the disc of a spiral galaxy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21471908
Exoplanet about the same size of the Moon discovered...
Exoplanet about the same size of the Moon discovered...
UniversalTruth
Veteran
Spin of massive black hole accurately measured for the first time
For the first time in space history, the spin of a super massive black hole was accurately measured. The black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is more than 2 million miles wide, (that’s eight times the distance from Earth to Moon), and spins so fast, its surface travels at nearly the speed of light.
For the first time in space history, the spin of a super massive black hole was accurately measured. The black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is more than 2 million miles wide, (that’s eight times the distance from Earth to Moon), and spins so fast, its surface travels at nearly the speed of light.
Yes, I read the BBC article that that piece is apparantly based on, and it's got some of its science somewhat mixed up. Black holes don't actually have a surface (as singularities don't have any area at all, they're just a point), and the event horizon is not a physical manifestation and thus not technically a surface at all.
This article over at Ars technica has some interesting and related discussions in its comments, dealing with black holes and spin, and how there could be a maximum velocity of something which is not actually a surface:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013...-matter-spiraling-into-black-hole/?comments=1
This article over at Ars technica has some interesting and related discussions in its comments, dealing with black holes and spin, and how there could be a maximum velocity of something which is not actually a surface:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013...-matter-spiraling-into-black-hole/?comments=1
Yes it's a shame about Kepler, though not unexpected as its been struggling for a while. To be honest though it'd found just about all it was going to, as it's long-period planet candidates are basically unconfirmable.
Other missions will have to pick up where it left off to find true Earth analogues (if they get the funding!).
Other missions will have to pick up where it left off to find true Earth analogues (if they get the funding!).
UniversalTruth
Veteran
I wanna see JWST in space already
Blazkowicz
Legend
At least there's still data left to process so new planets can be discovered for a while (one to two years, said an article)
The recovery attempts will be fun too, with no official hope it actually works. Just spin the wheels so they wear out, correcting the error away. Kepler is like my 30-year-old bicycle, the guy who put it together told me the chain had to adapt to the rear sprocket (esp. the small one) to eliminate a random hiccup. A few dozens kilometers later it's been pefectly working.
The recovery attempts will be fun too, with no official hope it actually works. Just spin the wheels so they wear out, correcting the error away. Kepler is like my 30-year-old bicycle
, the guy who put it together told me the chain had to adapt to the rear sprocket (esp. the small one) to eliminate a random hiccup. A few dozens kilometers later it's been pefectly working.I want us to build a lifting-body sarcophagus of some sort large enough to contain the Hubble for the day it is due for retirement, to take the telescope safely down through the earth's atmosphere. Shoot it up there on a Falcon Heavy, together with a Dragon capsule with 2-3 astronauts to perform the required work... That's a priceless artefact we got circling up there, it must be saved for posterity. To let it just incinerate upon re-entry would be a horrific crime.
