Starship Asterisk*

The Starchip story (sending camera-wielding nano space ships to Alpha Centauri via laser acceleration to 1/4 the speed of light) is in lots of news reports this week, but the coverage from The Economist offers richer technological detail than others. The report mentions that at 80,000 km/sec, the sp...

" The last thing anybody wants is fragments of Cassini orbiting Saturn"

Due to exo-ecological concerns?

Rob -

OMG! Runner-Up: Celestron Cometron 7x50 (Cost: $30)

That's just crazy! I'll order NOW!

4.5 stars on Amazon, too....

Thanks. Wow, that's exciting. I'm close enough to NYC that the seeing is lousy. But I should pick up a cheap pair of binoculars for marginal situations like this. Can anyone recommend an unserious, inexpensive pair for informal viewing? Preferably one that minimizes hand-shake (I'm not gonna use a t...

We can assume neither's expected to be naked-eye visible, or the explanation would have said so, right?

With the schnozz, it looks like Birdperson from the (superb) Rick and Morty series.

http://cdn3.denofgeek.us/sites/denofgee ... person.jpg

Thanks. Great link....I wonder if the LIGO guys are going to study that ejection case.

Hey, FWIW, I just did a quick google search of the issue, and found this breaking news: Twin black holes from gravitational wave discovery may have been born from a single star

Are all massive black holes located at galactic centers?

Hard to imagine how one wouldn't be, unless it had absorbed an entire galaxy of stars, and my understanding is that the universe is not old enough for that to have happened anywhere.

heehaw wrote:All the good APOD folks should hear the rumor (from good sources): please read the New York Times this Thursday, February 11. No guarantees, but I hear ... this might be IT!

Looks like you win this year's science gossip leak award!

aLIGO represents a perceived turning point in gravitational wave detection. As long as it performs per design, I believe scientists will begin to question the physics if no detection is made over a reasonable (years) time frame. Circular, no? How can we know it's been performing per design if nothi...

"I would not agree that there ever was a 'first' member," said the Cloud. McNeil did not understand this remark, but Kingsley and Marlowe exchanged a glance, as if to say 'Oh-ho, there we go. That's one in the eyes for the exploding universe boys.' Way to nail it with the perfect, super-o...

PS - I'd imagine there'd be some serious inefficiency involved in transferring errant H2 molecules from the "scoop" and into actual use...

I think it's still uncertain if a Bussard ramjet or similar system could work in most interstellar space, where the ISM is very tenuous. It almost certainly could work in regions where the gas density is higher. Oh, I wouldn't imagine that current ramjet tech would apply. Just wondering what the to...

scientific thinking begins with an observation that suggests a question. That makes much more sense to them than the idea that it somehow starts with a hypothesis, and also makes it much easier for them to apply. That's a distinction without a difference. Even if a hypothesis seemingly springs from...

I hope this isn't too much of a tangent, but all the talk of dust made me think about how unbelievably sparse even "thick" interstellar dust is. Per this link in today's APOD , the most abundant interstellar molecule is H2. So I wonder whether even at this extreme sparseness, if a spacecra...

Any chance it will be visible to naked eye on the 17th?

Also, how rare was this? Am I just guilty of being too lazy to keenly watch for Mercury, or is it a rare sighting from a city environment?

Thanks much, Chris. I don't remember it being so offset to the south (and it definitely wasn't as high, bright, or sourthward as Jupiter). But, for one thing, I'm having trouble mentally mapping that image against my memory. Was Mercury skewed more southward from sun position than upward from horizon?

I've been an astronomy buff for 45 years, but never observed Mercury, living in a city with clogged horizons and plenty of ambient light. On August 1 at a little after 8pm, I was enjoying the view of the Statue of Liberty, due west from Red Hook, Brooklyn, at sunset. While we waited to try to see a ...

My first thought: this looks like the last frame of a lingering shot of a sci-fi film explosion effect. My second thought: this after-explosion has lingered for more or less the length of our entire civilization My third thought: that's what the protozoa in the puddle near my front porch might have ...

several have been observed, including one so new that we're still waiting for the light along one path to reach us. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150309.html The Wikipedia entry for that supernova (SN Refsdal) says it's "the first detected multiply-lensed supernova." Have there been others ...

It doesn't look as if M31 is starting to warp due to its proximity to us. I'm assuming Milky Way, too, remains undisturbed for now. How close do the two need to come before gravitation starts to cause malformation (to an extent that might be noticeable in an APOD photo from someone's telescope in a ...

We are frequently reminded that gamma ray bursts are among the most dangerous phenomena that can impact our planet. Yet in all the reports I've seen about 3C 279, including this one, no one's discussed any health impact. I understand this galaxy is way too far away for this to pose danger of any cat...

Thanks, but that just restates that it went fast. I'm asking how that speed was achieved....on only the second fastest rocket (even if it had used the fastest rocket, that still doesn't explain how this particular launch was faster than all previous ones).

How did they achieve the launch speed? Was the rocket stocked with extra fuel, or was it a light load, or....?

It wasn't a particularly novel rocket, I don't believe....