Space Exploration,astronomy & Cosmology

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by StuBoy, May 26, 2020.

  1. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Given that God is infinite, and that the universe is also infinite... would you like a toasted teacake?

    More seriously, though, I suspect the barrier to discovering (evolved) life is simply distance. "Rare" is no real barrier in an infinite universe. I've got no doubt life is out there, but it seems unlikely it's right on our doorstep. We'll have to travel some distance to get there and as far as interstellar travel goes, we're very much in our infancy.

    I'd like to think we'd find intelligent life out there before I die. Unfortunately the chances of that seem remote; as far as humanity is concerned, the number of known intelligent species seems to be firmly rooted at 0 for the foreseeable future (it was 1, but then social media firmly dispelled those delusions of grandeur).
     
  2. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Apparently it's a 5G mast and the locals aren't happy.
     
  3. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    Distance or more correctly time. There could be thousands of civilisations growing then vanishing and unless they coincide with our last 100 years we may not pick up the evidence.

    However, if there were many galaxy traversing, solar system transforming civilisations leaving great signals of energy we could pick them up even if they took place thousands of years ago. They would just have taken a long time to reach us.
     
  4. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    After all the sci-fi movies of decades past, how ironic it would be if the most advanced species in the universe is us. Did James Cameron get it right in Dances with Smurfs?
     
  5. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team




    Thanks for that Smudger. But surely they will be doing some basic testing on Perseverance like they have done previously. Not sure I can wait till 2028!
     
  6. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team

    The story of human civilisation/culture can be told in many ways, one of them being the growing realisation that at each and every stage of our cultural/scientific development , we represent an increasingly insignificant role in the universe.
     
  7. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Something that is gaining credence is that with the more accurate geological dating it appears that self-replicating 'life' (very, very simple proto-bacteria) appeared incredibly early on in earth's history, virtually instantaneously (when measured in the vast epochs of geological time) - 'life' appears inevitable where liquid water exists.

    From what we know of silanes (the silicon analogue of hydrocarbons: the backbone of our biochemistry) is they're only really stable under extremely high pressures.
     
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  8. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    Hello sky crane! Taken about 2 metres from the surface I think.
     

    Attached Files:

  9. Moose

    Moose First Team Captain

    The Silanes really should be a Dr Who villain.
     
  10. zztop

    zztop Eurovision Winner 2015

    I'm somewhat disappointed by the whole Mars thing. It is my fault, as I'm usually well into anything to do with advances in transport, cars, boats, trains, planes, spacecraft, and this latest achievement is somewhat phenomenal considering the distances and time lag, etc.

    The imagery from Mars seen today is just amazing, and although we know it is all digital and probably gone through a complex version of Photoshop, it can take your breath away.

    I also find the whole "perfect planet" scenario so interesting, the fact that the ideal conditions for creating life as we know it, with our daily lives, loves and ambitions all the result of some amazingly complex coming together of many elements and forces. I found the video Smudger linked to interesting, SETI and the Fermi Paradox and our place in the universe is mind boggling.

    But I can't be excited by Mars which I fear will be a merely a pretty useless lump of rock (who cares if they find microscopic signs of life, not me!). Despite avidly watching the genuinely enthusiastic astronomy experts telling us what an exciting breakthrough this is, and how the holes in a rock are so "exciting" even though (if I heard it right) they won't actually be able to get hold of any samples until 2030, when I'll probably be dead.

    I saw similar excitement when we got a man on the moon, but although the last 50 years of working in space have brought many benefits in our lives on earth, as far as exploration is concerned it has been a pretty damp squib. I don't feel that anybody on here, or even my 3 year old granddaughter will get any benefits from this Mars landing.

    I'm not trying to justify my lack of excitement and enterprise on this subject, I really wish I could be as enthusiastic as others on here. My apologies. I think it may be because I'm getting on a bit, and would prefer us to be spending our money on improving travel on earth. Even though I am well travelled, there is still so much more to see on earth in my last few years here.
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2021
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  11. WillisWasTheWorst

    WillisWasTheWorst Its making less grammar mistake's thats important

    I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks like this. I’m happy that others can be enthusiastic about space exploration but it leaves me a bit cold these days. And I say that as someone who remembers the excitement of the Apollo programme as a boy in the 60s.
     
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  12. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    Here you may have hit the nail on the head, some of us never had that excitement of Apollo and some of the other exciting things in the 60's (like the development of Concorde etc..), and so the robotic exploration now, or what SpaceX are attempting to do is (in my personal opinion) the equivalent of that time for you.

    Regarding Mars being a useless lump of rock as ZZ implies, that may be true. However, a lot of what they do on Mars lays the ground work for further exploration in the future. We are at the stage where if we want to explore space and solar system (in particular manned exploration), we need to take these incremental steps. First Earth obit, then the moon and now Mars etc... For example there are various experiments on Perseverance designed to help understand what manned exploration on the surface of Mars would encounter. Of course if they find evidence of life then great, but it's not the be all and end of it.
     
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  13. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    It can be a bit crushing and also elevating to realize that were are a complete insignificance to the Universe. Just a product of happenstance. It would be a great realization to most people if they looked at the skies or were taken into orbit around the planet or further out how alone we are at present and how precious this blue jewel is. Taken from Voyager 1 and Cassini.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.


    — Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

    Makes you wonder what supporting Watford FC is all about and is it worth getting worked up about at time.

    Here is a a picture of Perseverance landing in the descent stage taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. And a video detailing the engineering advances put into Perseverance in light of knowledge gained from Curiosity.

    [​IMG]

     
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  14. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    I am sure you have many more years ahead of you zz. Your grandchildren or indeed great grandchildren will almost be certainly watching a manned mission to the planet and the first steps in colonizing the Moon and Mars. We are ephemeral creatures even though a millenium may seem a long time in recorded history it is nothing but the guttering of a candle in geological time. That is why I would love to see what is happening a few thousand years down the line. We all benefit when pressure arises on engineering and technology to be improved in order to reach a goal. Be it space travel, warfare (unfortunately). The uses of space medicine, growing materials in zero gravity, new efficient miniaturized motors and countless other things. The pursuit of knowledge is beyond compare.
     
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  15. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    I've always thought that the best thing (and possibly the most cost-effective thing) is send all the climate-change denying politicos, heads of industry and opinion formers into space and bring them back after seeing what a tiny, insignificant dot our planet is compared to the vastness of the empty universe.
     
  16. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    How frigging cool is this video?! I struggle to comprehend this is done automatically, millions of miles away, on another planet.

     
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  17. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    I believe alien life is all around us but we're just too far behind technologically to detect it in any way. The only thing we're likely to detect would be another civilisation going through our early development and for a tiny fragment of their time the possibility of radio waves, but the window for detecting such things would be miniscule in galalctic time scales and distances.
     
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  18. Otter

    Otter Gambling industry insider

    If we are to detect alien communications it would only be possible in this galaxy, anything from any other galaxy would be too weak to detect and red-shifted.

    Depending on the light-distance, there would be no chance of any meaningful two-way communication; also if humanity is anything to go by, any intelligent life-forms that evolve to have the ability to send radio signals possibly have the ability to screw up their planet either by over-consumption or by war, so they may be long gone before they get their reply.
     
  19. Filbert

    Filbert Leicester supporting bloke

    And if you really squint, you can just make out a yellow and black blob on the surface. That’s Troy Deeney that is.
     
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  20. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

  21. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    Careful, the usuals already don't see the point in exploring Mars. Don't give them any ammo to pretend to hate it.
     
  22. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

     
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  23. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    This is great to see, Curiosity managed to capture an image similar to this of its sky crane crashing as well. This discovery from Perseverance did not surprise me, shortly after the first pictures came down I was browsing the unmannedspaceflight forum and a member on there was discussing one of the pictures and suggesting it looked like the sky crane's demise had been captured again.
     
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  24. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member

    One day if storms have not damaged these too greatly they will be display items in a Martian museum. Orbex which will manufacture launchers for the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland has bought a very large 3D printer which will be used to manufacture rocket engines.

    https://www.scotsman.com/business/c...rgest-industrial-3d-printer-in-europe-3143984

    I know this is a dedicated thread to all things cosmological and the leap into space but sad news this week of the passing of John Mallard who was fundamental in creating the first NMR scanner and also work on PET scanners that are vital diagnostic tools for clinicians.
     
  25. hornetboy1

    hornetboy1 First Team Captain

    What I want to know is did they find Matt Damon?
     
  26. Smudger

    Smudger Messi's Mad Coach Staff Member


    The duo enter the airlock at fifty three minutes to commence their lengthy spacewalk as part of the process of improving the ISS solar array.
     
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  27. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    SpaceX only went a nailed the landing of SN10 this evening! Amazing stuff, looks like the landing legs didn't work and it's on fire, but they did it.
     
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  28. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    It just blew up on the pad after sitting there for about 10 minutes! Crazy.
     
  29. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

     
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  30. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    Incredible scenes. Like an Acme rocket.
     
  31. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Is 11 likely to be any time soon?
     
  32. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    SN11 is ready to be rolled out of its assembly building any day now. Optimistically I'd say later this month it will launch, but looking at the cadence of the previous tests my hunch would be that April is more realistic as they seem to be getting through 1 a month at the moment. SN11 will be the last version of the current Starship, SN15 will follow (they decided to scrap the ones in between), and that apparently will have some major upgrades/changes.

    N.B how quickly SN11 will launch also depends on how long it takes them to clear up SN10's mess, repair any damage and apply any fixes/modifications to SN11 to mitigate any anomalies they have discovered.
     
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  33. BigRossLittleRoss

    BigRossLittleRoss First Team

    On a slight aside but anyone notice the skewed almost disparaging reporting from some parts of the media in any of Space X exploits ?
     
  34. StuBoy

    StuBoy Forum Cad and Bounder

    I have, but this won't bother SpaceX at all, I am reading the book Liftoff by Eric Berger at the moment that documents SpaceX's early days, and they have been up against he establishment and all sorts since day one really. The media focus on the big bangs and pretty explosions, the journalists reporting on what is going on with SpaceX are not well versed about it, and their readers even less so. Joe Bloggs on the street just wants to read about a 'failed' test and big explosions without looking at the bigger picture.
     
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  35. Davy Crockett

    Davy Crockett Reservist

    As a cynical old git I think it is all a load of old bolix and NA$A is just a front to
    to steal USA taxpayers money . Listening to them talking about going to the moon
    mars whatever in 2000/2010/2020/2024/whenever is like listening to the Spuds fans
    banging on about next season for sure we shall win the league.
     

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