Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
Proxima Centauri b
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login | |
|
BarkellWH
Posts: 3462
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
|
RE: Proxima Centauri b (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
There are so many interesting discoveries being made, and yet to be made, regarding the Cosmos. The W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, put out a news release on the findings of some astronomers who have discovered a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of dark matter. They named it Dragonfly 44, and it has so few "stars" and other "normal matter" that it would fly apart were it not for the dark matter providing the mass. To quote from the Keck Observatory news release: "The mass of the galaxy is estimated to be a trillion times the mass of the Sun – very similar to the mass of our own Milky Way galaxy. However, only one hundredth of one percent of that is in the form of stars and "normal" matter; the other 99.99 percent is in the form of dark matter. The Milky Way has more than a hundred times more stars than Dragonfly 44." The concept of "dark matter" is intriguing. It surely has mass, but it is interesting to speculate what it consists of? Does it have form and shape? Does it have a consistency that can be felt in a tactile fashion? Does it consist of subatomic particles of some sort? Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East." --Rudyard Kipling
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 26 2016 17:18:37
|
|
Piwin
Posts: 3566
Joined: Feb. 9 2016
|
RE: Proxima Centauri b (in reply to Ricardo)
|
|
|
Of what I've read, it seems they're not even sure whether it's a rocky planet or not (haven't determined a maximum mass yet). Would be a shame to get there and find a big ball of gaz. It is exciting though, probably because its proximity makes it so much easier to imagine one day going there. This Breakthrough Starshot project sounds really interesting. Sending a stamp-sized object on an interstellar trip...Crazy! Hopefully for them it'll work, or it will go down in history by its initials, the BS project. It seems much more likely that machines will get out there before any humans, as long as payload is an issue. That being said, I'd be curious to know how (un)likely it is to develop some sort of cryogenic system, this "hyper sleep" thing you mentioned. As far as I know, if you freeze an adult human being, he'll just die. But then it gets weird when you consider the fact that some assisted fertilization techniques do in fact use cryogenics. They can freeze an early-stage embryo and it can develop just fine when you unfreeze it. I wonder if they even know at how many weeks/months that stops working and whether it's theoretically possible to make this work for adults.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 26 2016 17:20:56
|
|
Ricardo
Posts: 14943
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
|
RE: Proxima Centauri b (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
|
|
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo A bit off topic but here is something cool about mapping dark matter. The moon is about 30 thousand miles away and another 570 thousand miles out we can find the first concentrations of dark matter that pertains to earth. While we can't detect it on earth sending a sensitive probe out to that distance might turn up results as to whether the stuff is particles or what. https://www.rt.com/usa/323364-dark-matter-earth-hair/ Sorry, I still haven't gotten over a 43-year career as mathematician, physicist and engineer, but http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/moon-distance/en/ says he moon ranges between 252,088 and 225,623 miles away in its elliptical orbit around the earth. RNJ Ha ha! My bad, I was writing the differential range it takes in it's own orbit. (from wiki). So basically, they need to send the probe out to a little more than twice the moon distance from earth to possibly detect the concentrated dark matter. Back on topic I watched a talk from a planet hunter that studied Alpha Centauri system from last year. While he didn't focus on Proxima the question came up about it and he admitted that because the habitable zone around Proxima was so close, the flare ups of the star would certainly sterilize the surface of the planet, in addition to the reality that the planet would most likely be tidally locked face on (like our moon is to earth, and Mercury to the sun). All bad news for it being a 'habitable" planet. Ricardo
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here: www.ricardomarlow.com
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Aug. 28 2016 16:23:56
|
|
New Messages |
No New Messages |
Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
Locked w/ New Messages |
Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
6.445313E-02 secs.
|