Cancer Posted October 31, 2018 Report Share Posted October 31, 2018 10 hours ago, L. Marcus said: ... Let's do another one. In progress. tkdguy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 2, 2018 Report Share Posted November 2, 2018 The DAWN mission to Vesta and Ceres is over, the spacecraft having run out of hydrazine fuel and so cannot keep itself oriented any more. L. Marcus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted November 2, 2018 Report Share Posted November 2, 2018 Ceriously? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 2, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 2, 2018 First Hubble and Chandra (although we were able to fix them), then Kepler, now Dawn? I hate it when everything breaks down all at once! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 2, 2018 Report Share Posted November 2, 2018 You mean like my job? And my marriage? Farewell, Dawn. You were metal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 3, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 3, 2018 Ghost moons? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 3, 2018 Report Share Posted November 3, 2018 On 11/2/2018 at 5:05 PM, L. Marcus said: Ceriously? Ce-real! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 4, 2018 Report Share Posted November 4, 2018 Opportunity may also have finally succumbed to the Martians after more than fourteen years; it has not yet responded after the winter. More than thirteen years beyond its design life, "Trapped in a world he never made." I'm going to contradict Old Man here. Opportunity has not been metal. It's been frickin' vibranium. L. Marcus and tkdguy 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DShomshak Posted November 4, 2018 Report Share Posted November 4, 2018 Like you said about Kepler, we are beyond mere legend here. We live in an age of myth and fable. Though it's sometimes a sad myth, in that so many people don't realize they live surrounded by wonders. To paraphrase one of Clark Ashton Smith's epigrams, the veil of Isis floats before them, and they see only a petticoat. Dean Shomshak Christopher and L. Marcus 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted November 4, 2018 Report Share Posted November 4, 2018 Mmm, petticoat ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
archer Posted November 4, 2018 Report Share Posted November 4, 2018 16 hours ago, Cancer said: Opportunity may also have finally succumbed to the Martians after more than fourteen years; it has not yet responded after the winter. More than thirteen years beyond its design life, "Trapped in a world he never made." I'm going to contradict Old Man here. Opportunity has not been metal. It's been frickin' vibranium. They haven't completely given up hope since upcoming seasonal windstorms still have a marginal chance of clearing enough of the solar cells to get the thing operating again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 7, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 7, 2018 Not news, just some observations of how space battles would be like: RDU Neil 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 7, 2018 Report Share Posted November 7, 2018 3 hours ago, tkdguy said: Not news, just some observations of how space battles would be like: There is a game for this. "Children of a dead earth" claims to be "the most acurate space game." Indeed it goes as far as claiming to "be a simulation first, a game second": http://childrenofadeadearth.com/ He even has a blog with results from his own and palyer experiments: https://childrenofadeadearth.wordpress.com/ Lasers: Get stopped by a whipple shield. And it is really hard to keep them on one point for long. Nuclear weapons: Transmit a bit of heat, but are otherwise laughably weak compared to earth One of the best weapons? A missiles with a nuclear warhead. The warhead explodes close to the enemy, forcing a solid penetrator out at high speed for maximum damage. tkdguy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted November 7, 2018 Report Share Posted November 7, 2018 Humongo-ginormous lasers for zapping asteroids A few vaguely interesting videos scattered around that linked page. I found this via a bizarre Astrophysical Journal paper (certainly behind a paywall) about interstellar communications via not-yet-extant-but-not-too-fantastic-tech lasers with the quote Quote There is interest in building gargantuan lasers to accelerate small spacecraft at other stars. A 100 GW "DE-STAR 4" laser operating at a wavelength of 1064 nm, as proposed by {reference}, could be detectable at interstellar and even intergalactic distances by a civilization with our technology {another reference by the same author}. However, no continuous-wave laser has ever been built to that scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 8, 2018 In case you missed this bit of weirdness, here's a new theory about Oumuamua Where's that headdesk icon when you need it? L. Marcus 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted November 8, 2018 Report Share Posted November 8, 2018 Hey, it's a hypothesis nearly as hypothetical as anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 8, 2018 Report Share Posted November 8, 2018 8 hours ago, tkdguy said: In case you missed this bit of weirdness, here's a new theory about Oumuamua Where's that headdesk icon when you need it? 7 hours ago, L. Marcus said: Hey, it's a hypothesis nearly as hypothetical as anything. ""It's certainly ingenious to show that an object the size of Oumuamua might be sent by aliens to another star system with nothing but a solar sail for power," Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said in an email. "But one should not blindly accept this clever hypothesis when there is also a mundane (and a priori more likely) explanation for Oumuamua — namely that it's a comet or asteroid from afar." Coryn Bailer-Jones, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, voiced similar objections. "In science," he said in an email, "we must ask ourselves, "Where is the evidence?, not "Where is the lack of evidence so that I can fit in any hypothesis that I like?" "Why send a spacecraft which is doing this?" he said. "If it were a spacecraft, this tumbling would make it impossible to keep any instruments pointed at the Earth. Of course, one could now say it was an accident, or the aliens did this to deceive us. One can always come up with increasingly implausible suggestions that have no evidence in order to maintain an idea." " This is actually a good example on how Conspiracy theories are halfway pointless. Or how a Conspiracy Theory and a Scientific one differ. I need to remember that one. DShomshak and Netzilla 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 13, 2018 Report Share Posted November 13, 2018 Is a Dark Matter Hurricane comming?https://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-predict-a-dark-matter-hurricane-will-collide-with-the-earth/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted November 13, 2018 Report Share Posted November 13, 2018 Yay! Maybe we'll get Team Flash! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninja-Bear Posted November 14, 2018 Report Share Posted November 14, 2018 Reading this thread reinforces Creationism. And no isn’t anti-science. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted November 14, 2018 Report Share Posted November 14, 2018 Science and faith are not exclusive. You just can't apply the standards of one to the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted November 14, 2018 Report Share Posted November 14, 2018 2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said: Reading this thread reinforces Creationism. And no isn’t anti-science. How does reading this thread reinfoce Creationism? All we talk about is space news, wich are usually science realted. Any creationism argument that might be cosntructed from this falls under: "The universe does not need to make sense." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted November 15, 2018 Report Share Posted November 15, 2018 Road trip! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted November 15, 2018 Report Share Posted November 15, 2018 Shotgun! Old Man 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted November 15, 2018 Author Report Share Posted November 15, 2018 On 11/13/2018 at 5:02 PM, Ninja-Bear said: Reading this thread reinforces Creationism. And no isn’t anti-science. How did you come to that conclusion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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