Starship Asterisk*

Hmm, thanks for the answer, but the "interested in trying" part threw me a little. I don't think(?) you're denying it would be ideal if some of its output were extrapolatable into visible light, thus making it more accessible for human eyes. If that output could be post-processed to deligh...

I can't seem to find an answer for this, and it seems like a pretty pertinent question:

Will we be able to extrapolate a reasonable approximation of visible light coloring from infrared data gathered by Webb telescope?

Wow, what a treasure trove of ideas. I hope there's more interest here than is indicated by the thin response. This is way more interesting than orbital trajectories and cooling rates! Maybe you could find a diagram/illustration to publish as an APOD to disseminate this stuff (especially that great ...

Thanks for the reply, Prof. Nemiroff. I hope at some point there’s a way to make this a bit more accessible to non-astrophysicists. Until then, I don’t understand well enough to even intelligently ask the questions that arise. The information coding possibility sounds (if I understand correctly, whi...

Yeah, makes sense. Certainly fits well with (if not entirely subsumes) the gravitational lensing he also mentioned.

In RJN’s posting today seeking a grad student assistant, he mentions that one of his research interests is “relativistic illumination”, and I’m not familiar with the term (and Google and Wikipedia offer scant help).

Can anyone fill me in?

This is NOT my work....but it's very clever and fascinating.

Earth’s Rotation Visualized in a Timelapse of the Milky Way Galaxy by Aryeh Nirenberg:

Late to the party here, but I listened to this live as a kid, and the big takeaway was that it was a clutch landing just as they were about to run out of fuel. While technically true, it’s not an apt narrative. Glad to finally get the story in context.

I’ve dabbled in astronomy since 1967, and I still can’t begin to wrap my mind around a distance like “35 million light years”. And images like this from that distance only boggle me further. Hey... I can't wrap my mind around distances like 4 light-years. I can't really imagine the distance to Prox...

I’ve dabbled in astronomy since 1967, and I still can’t begin to wrap my mind around a distance like “35 million light years”. And images like this from that distance only boggle me further.

I haven’t deleted anything.

Thanks.

If I understand your question correctly, it was addressed when I suggested we assume, for simplicity, that it's equally likely to be hit anywhere within a 90° horizontal angle and at any vertical angle of 0 - 45°. However I’m still not sure if I’ve translated your previous reply into the correct “1 ...

Good point. Not sure.

Thanks! 163.6 squared is 26765. So the odds are something like 2 in 26765, or 1 in 13382?

Very brief and entertaining video clip It takes a couple viewings to see exactly what's going on here: the ball flew straight into the pitcher's glove (and he then had to manage his body’s reaction). I'm curious about the odds of a ball reaching a 11cm x 11cm target from a distance of 18m. Maybe as...

Alert the media: “FLPhotoCatcher” has definitive answers to scientific mysteries.

FLPhotoCatcher wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2019 1:56 pm

Given that there was no life to begin with (there's a slight possibly there are microbes from Earth), then there was no life to sterilize.

Any quick/sloppy guesstimates on the odds that an appreciable quantity of sub-surface water on Enceladus has NOT been through a life-killing cycle of eruption and expulsion? That strikes me as the key question. I.e. to what degree does Enceladus‘ cryovolcanic activity function as an efficient water ...

Regarding the impact simulation program, there’s a lot of very dry technical material, but this seems to be the one handling big-picture policy/strategy (ie “what do we do??”) overview. If you’re going to watch just one, this might be a good one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=kp...

Thanks. Is that your response to my thumbnail sketch, to the article I linked to, or just your policy position on dark matter/energy, generally?

Any comment on Jamie Farnes’ theory, much-discussed in popular press, re: dark energy and matter being combined into “dark fluid”, characterized by a negative mass?

https://theconversation.com/bizarre-dar ... sts-107922

Why did it take two days to reach ISS? And why does the caption say "just" two days?

The YouTube video linked to "results from Juno" shouldn't be missed. It's a particularly insightful 90 minute talk by Juno project scientist Steve Levin and it's way less dry than you might imagine, almost entirely devoted to the mission's most surprising results.

geckzilla wrote:

Jim Leff wrote:You're talking past my point. I'm aware of science and medicine.

The problem with a corpse isn't that it's broken. It's that we don't know how matter animates. We have no idea.

You have no idea.

You do? Cool! Be sure and shoot a video!

You're talking past my point. I'm aware of science and medicine.

The problem with a corpse isn't that it's broken. It's that we don't know how matter animates. We have no idea.

And it's not just the abundance of those few elements that make life based on them very reasonable. It's also the amount of energy required in their various reactions. It's hard to imagine life opting for reactions that require more energy input, no matter what sort of strange environment they migh...