The Space Thread

https://aeon.co/essays/time-is-not-an-illusion-its-an-object-with-physical-size

  On 5/25/2023 at 3:04 PM, Rubin Farr said:

https://aeon.co/essays/time-is-not-an-illusion-its-an-object-with-physical-size

was kind of surprised that none of the comments (or the article itself) brought up Whitehead's process philosophy... I personally don't subscribe to any "objects" being fundamental (and I know how weird that sounds), so adding yet another fundamental "object" (time) seems wrong to me in a metaphysical sense, but it is a pretty cool way to measure complexity and categorize molecular life/nonlife in astrobiology... and it definitely makes sense to say that "some things are too big in time" to exist at, er, certain points in time. the "block universe" has never sat right with me and I'm fully on board with the idea of a semi-deterministic future (the past inside the present, if you will). I just don't think they explain the source of the "selections" being made in their combinatorial spaces very well... maybe I missed it? but at one point they say "the space of possibilities is so large that the Universe must select only some of that space to exist", which is kind of a deus ex machina innit

is this thread supposed to be about outer space? whoops

that article is 70 layers of nonsense. i've had it open in a tab all day and i keep going back to re-read bits of it and it's somehow more ridiculous every time i read a sentence. if you told me it'd been written by AI i wouldn't be surprised, the way it's just throwing bits of things together. getting big not even wrong vibes from it.

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Relative rotation periods of planets in 2D

[obligatory uranus joke]

ISS crossing the crescent Moon, credit A. James McCarthy

more evidence of very early universe galaxy formation really stretching expectations/theories.

interesting explanation of the hyperbolic universe theory

https://www.livescience.com/space/rare-warped-supernova-revealed-through-space-time-phenomenon-predicted-by-einstein

https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-satellite-sidekick-habitable-exoplanets

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Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a global ice-covered water ocean. The Cassini spacecraft investigated the composition of the ocean by analysis of material ejected into space by the moon’s cryovolcanic plume. The analysis of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer enabled inference of major solutes in the ocean water (Na+, K+, Cl–, HCO3–, CO32–) and its alkaline pH. Phosphorus, the least abundant of the bio-essential elements, has not yet been detected in an ocean beyond Earth. Earlier geochemical modelling studies suggest that phosphate might be scarce in the ocean of Enceladus and other icy ocean worlds. However, more recent modelling of mineral solubilities in Enceladus’s ocean indicates that phosphate could be relatively abundant.

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05987-9

tl;dr: there is phosphorous on enceladus

Phosphorus starts with P(ee).

  On 6/23/2023 at 1:25 AM, trying to be less rude said:

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either there are krauts on enceladus or that german scientist just copied enceladus' homework

proof of germans on enceladus

Galactic 01: Virgin Galactic's first commercial sub-orbital spaceflight of the VSS Unity, carrying passengers of the Italian Air Force, Italian National Research Council, and Virgin Galactic.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA )Euclid space telescope is launching today aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The objective of the Euclid mission is to better understand dark energy and dark matter by accurately measuring the acceleration of the universe.
To achieve this, the Korsch-type telescope will measure the shapes of galaxies at varying distances from Earth and investigate the relationship between distance and redshift.
Dark energy is generally accepted as contributing to the increased acceleration of the expanding universe, so understanding this relationship will help to refine how physicists and astrophysicists understand it.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/01H3X9BMPCX165ZK9RA49J2416

Harvard professor Avi Loeb believes he's found fragments of alien technology

"We found ten spherules. These are almost perfect spheres, or metallic marbles. When you look at them through a microscope, they look very distinct from the background," explained Loeb, "They have colors of gold, blue, brown, and some of them resemble a miniature of the Earth."

An analysis of the composition showed that the spherules are made of 84% iron, 8% silicon, 4% magnesium, and 2% titanium, plus trace elements. They are sub-millimeter in size. The crew found 50 of them in total.

"It has material strength that is tougher than all space rock that were seen before, and catalogued by NASA," added Loeb, "We calculated its speed outside the solar system. It was 60 km per second, faster than 95% of all stars in the vicinity of the sun. The fact that it was made of materials tougher than even iron meteorites, and moving faster than 95% of all stars in the vicinity of the sun, suggested potentially it could be a spacecraft from another civilization or some technological gadget."

tldr: prof says aliens made marbles of our planet and threw them at us really hard, rude

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cheops/Cheops_shows_scorching_exoplanet_acts_like_a_mirror

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2023/07/aa46117-23/aa46117-23.html

Data from ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops has led to the surprising revelation that an ultra-hot exoplanet that orbits its host star (LTT 9779) in less than a day is covered by reflective clouds of metal, making it the shiniest exoplanet ever found.

Celebrating James Webb Space Telescope first year since its first full-color image.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-celebrates-first-year-of-science-with-new-image

Some images made by JWST over its first year:

A special lens within the James Webb's Space Telescope NIRCam instrument allowed the telescope to take a selfie in space.

The first publicly released science-quality image from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, revealed on July 11, 2022, is the deepest infrared view of the universe to date.

Saturn, its rings and three moons stand out against the blackness of space in this james webb space telescope photo. 

In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust.

The James Webb Space Telescope's imagery of NGC 628 (the "Phantom Galaxy") shows glowing dust in this citizen science image.

The star-forming Pillars of Creation, imaged in mid-infrared by the JWST in what will surely become an iconic picture.
 

A composite image of the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula, created with the Webb telescope's NIRCam and MIRI instruments.

The five galaxies of Stephan's Quintet as seen by the JWST in one of the first images released by the telescope in July 2022.

The Southern Ring Nebula, a halo of gas surrounding a star located 2,500 light-years away as seen by the JWST.

An hourglass-shaped, multi-coloured cloud set against the black, starry background of space in this image produced on Nov. 16, 2022. This cloud of dust and gas is illuminated by light from a protostar, a star in the earliest stages of formation.

This image from Aug. 22, 2022, of the planet Jupiter comes from the near-infrared camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum.

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red.

^^ beautiful

tripping on this, tripping like I would see faces and stuff when watching clouds,

this be technicolor HD version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epCAd5D0jLs

RIP Voyager 2