GooberTheHat wrote:

cockbeard wrote:

Given that orbits mean that distances between "destinations" could vary massively I'd be inclined to pick some heliostationary (if that's a thing, or helio/geo stationary if not) orbits at five locations along the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and if we are looking outwards as well, maybe similar on the outside

The asteroid belt isn't dense with asteroids. I don't think you'd necessarily need "inside" and "outside".

For context:

The total mass of the asteroid belt is approximately 4% that of the Moon

You guys been copping a look at Jupiter and Saturn sitting side by side? Lying in bed with the window blinds down, I turn my head and there's Jupiter, luminescent as fuck. Took a pic with my phone yesterday and you could see the eye at 2x Zoom. With my phone.

(Look SE)

GooberTheHat wrote:

cockbeard wrote:

Given that orbits mean that distances between "destinations" could vary massively I'd be inclined to pick some heliostationary (if that's a thing, or helio/geo stationary if not) orbits at five locations along the inner edge of the asteroid belt, and if we are looking outwards as well, maybe similar on the outside

The asteroid belt isn't dense with asteroids. I don't think you'd necessarily need "inside" and "outside".

I wonder whether asteroid mining will lead to a global economic change as profound as the industrial revolution.

Who would do the mining? Private industry? Nasa? SpaceX? Huge multinations such as Shell or BP? Would other countries standby and allow USA/China/Russia take the spoils for themselves? (Obviously this is in the far distant future, but im just speculating).

Lol i thought that as well.

Cummings-boris, a worse future and a bleaker tomorrow

Whats the magnification on it?

Dinostar77 wrote:

Whats the magnification on it?

400x i think.

Nope 1000x

It is fucking brilliant. First thing we looked at was his bogey.. followed by some pond water, then some blood.

Lord_Griff wrote:

Bought my son a microscope, the exact opposite of this thread.

Admiration of scale goes both ways.

Drone on Mars.

https://www.space.com/first-mars-helicopter-ready-to-launch.html

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Drone on Mars.

https://www.space.com/first-mars-helicopter-ready-to-launch.html

Cool, lets hope they dont fuck it up. Or get it stuck in a tree.

Absolutely stunning false colour xray of milky way.




A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays.

The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos - instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded.

The map uses the so-called Aitoff projection, which unwraps the sphere of the sky on to an ellipse. The band across the middle is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, with the centre of the galaxy in the middle of the ellipse.

The image has been encoded with colour to help describe what's going on. Blues represent higher energy X-rays (1-2.3 kiloelectron volts, keV); greens are mid-range (0.6-1 keV); and reds are lower energy (0.3-0.6 keV).

Much of the galaxy's plane is dominated by highly energetic sources. In part, that's because copious amounts of gas and dust have absorbed and filtered out the lower energy radiation. Sources include stars with strong, magnetically active and extremely hot atmospheres.

The greens and yellows that draw a kind of mushroom feature covering a great swathe of the map represent hot gas inside and just outside our galaxy. This material imprints information about the formation and evolution of the Milky Way.

Some of the bigger splodges are well known actors on the sky. The bright yellow patch just above the plane on the far right is a concentration of supernova remnants - the wreckage of stars that have exploded and whose shockwaves have super-heated a surrounding cocoon of dust and gas. This particular patch is dominated by the Vela supernova remnant. This was an explosion that happened thousands of years ago but a mere 800 light-years from Earth.

Look next at the diffuse red glow at the top and bottom of the map. This is largely X-ray emission from hot gas well beyond our galaxy. And in the white speckles, we are seeing principally the signature of super-massive black holes. Indeed, about 80% of all the sources contained in the new map are the gargantuan black holes that reside at the centres of distant galaxies. They pump out X-rays as their immense gravitational pull draws in and eviscerates matter.

Some of the super-massive black holes making an appearance in the map are seen when the Universe was younger than one billion years old, less than 10% of its present age.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53102718

Black neutron star' discovery changes astronomy.

Scientists have discovered an astronomical object that has never been observed before.

It is more massive than collapsed stars, known as "neutron stars", but has less mass than black holes.

Such "black neutron stars" were not thought possible and will mean ideas for how neutron stars and black holes form will need to be rethought.

The discovery was made by an international team using gravitational wave detectors in the US and Italy.

Charlie Hoy, a PhD student from Cardiff University, UK, involved in the study, said the new discovery would transform our understanding.

"We can't rule out any possibilities," he told BBC News. "We don't know what it is and this is why it is so exciting because it really does change our field."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53151106

I mean, if you read the article they do say it's most likely to be a really light black hole, or a really dense neutron star. The theories for how those are possibly created already exist but since this is the first time something like that has been observed everyone will now do some extra looking for other similar objects. 

I suppose the coolest option is it being the lightest black hole ever discovered, which the only current proposed theory for the creation of something like that seems to require a three star system. 

But the real coolness of the article is that the object they recorded was one of two objects that collided in space, one a 23 solar mass black hole and the other a 2.6 solar mass object, the 2.6 solar mass object is what they are trying to work out. But it was recorded using that new gravity detection array thing that uses really long laser beams to measure ripples in fucking space time. That is some fucking star trek shit boiiiiii.

No one can create gravity, ergo Plato, no one can create gravity waves. Where's my cheque?

Science definitely needs more your mum jokes