Looking at faraway stuff - The Bear and Badger

davyK

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Quite a feat really. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-66881285

Not half.

SpaceGazelle

Could be a biggie too and Panspermia is a pretty interesting theory. Glycine has been detected on comets before but they couldn't rule out cross contamination from the Earth.

Matt_82

It was a lovely, clear night last night.

I was excited to look up from the garden to see a shooting star.

Spoiler:

Minnesänger

Matt_82 wrote:

It was a lovely, clear night last night. I was excited to look up from the garden to see a shooting star.

Spoiler:

It was a fucking seagull.

Spoiler:

Matt_82

Made it all the more special.

g.man

Ordinary Things latest is a fascinating insight into the absolute clusterfuck we're creating with space junk in earth orbit...

Diluted Dante

That came up for me, but since both the thumbnail and channel icon looked like garbage (lol) I did not click.

g.man

I really like his stuff tbh, though I probably had the same reaction to his thumbnails when I first saw him.

davyK

g.man

This arguably belongs elsewhere, but ima leave this awesome video from Like Stories Of Old in here...

SpaceGazelle

Amateur astronomy is getting nuts.

davyK

Is there a good take on recent findings made by the new telescope? Seems theres stuff older than the big bang found but now I'm seeing videos about time not existing and string theory possibly being dropped....this all linked?

Have tried some YT but so far it's history lessons and little new content with AI sounding commentary....possible the whole thing is AI created....ie is a bit shit.

Unlikely

davyK wrote:

Is there a good take on recent findings made by the new telescope? Seems theres stuff older than the big bang found

With a telescope?

davyK

The James Webb telescope.

Unlikely

Older than the big bang?

davyK

Well..... the stuff they have found seems to be older than it should be....they reckon there wasn't enough time after the BB to form as they are.

Unlikely

Oh.

SpaceGazelle

There's a lot of bullshit on YT about the JWST. Cosmology is hard because you only get a decent machine every few of decades. Astronomy is a catch all for all space science but cosmology deals with the really big scales, from galaxies up to the Universe itself.

This is a problem because the equipment you usually need to investigate that science hasn't been developed yet so you spend the time making theories that can't be tested. Once you do get the gear you can start doing proper science and it happened with Hubble and now with the JWST. So it's hardly surprising the new equipment is upending a lot of the theories because that's how science works. You theorize, look to see if they're correct and then throw most of the theories away because evidence.

What's happened with the JWST is that galaxy formation is wrong. They theorized that it'd take ages for established galaxies to form and that's clearly not the case because they've seen into the early universe thanks to the JWST. YT has interpreted this (for clicks) as the galaxies are older than the universe but in actual fact it's just the galaxy formation theory that is wrong. They're not older, they just grew up quicker than expected.

There will be loads of new discoveries to come because now they have the JWST, which is akin to a bacteriologist finally getting a decent microscope.

SpaceGazelle

That's not to say some huge discoveries aren't around the corner. If the galaxies are doing weird shit that may reveal a new force or that gravity is wrong. It's just that vids saying galaxies are older than the universe is clearly nuts.

SpaceGazelle

And religious people lap that shit up.

SpaceGazelle

davyK wrote:

I'm seeing videos about time not existing and string theory possibly being dropped

String theory might be flat out wrong or a bit true. It hasn't really gone anywhere but that's fine, sometimes you need to check things to see if they're not true. There are valid arguments that a lot of time and money has been spent on it at the expense of other theories.

The time not existing thing might be true but it's early days. Right now we know time is a personal thing and not absolute - it's twinned with space and they exist as a spacetime thingy and time does not exist in isolation, it depends on movement through space and everyone has their personal time because everyone moves through space independently so it's possible the time thing is just an illusion. Sounds insane but nature is insane to our dumb spear throwing brains. Maybe we're not clever enough to see past the fog.

davyK

SpaceGazelle wrote:

What's happened with the JWST is that galaxy formation is wrong. They theorized that it'd take ages for established galaxies to form and that's clearly not the case because they've seen into the early universe thanks to the JWST. YT has interpreted this (for clicks) as the galaxies are older than the universe but in actual fact it's just the galaxy formation theory that is wrong. They're not older, they just grew up quicker than expected. There will be loads of new discoveries to come because now they have the JWST, which is akin to a bacteriologist finally getting a decent microscope.

Yeah - this makes more sense. Looking forward to a Cox doc on it all.

SpaceGazelle

Euclid telescope is up and having a blinder. The first sort of Big Data telescope which means it doesn't see as far back as the JWST but can see a lot at once.

bad_hair_day

Half an hour until Starship attempt two launches.

Go team SpaceX!

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB

SpaceGazelle

What a beautiful launch.

mannaboy

Amazing to watch. They’ll have learned a ton from that, despite the RUDs.

SpaceGazelle

Yeah all part of it but damn that launch looked clean. Those engines are amazing, you'd never know that thing was that heavy.

mannaboy

Scott Manley showing why the booster was terminated, many of the centre engines not relighting and others going out, means press the (automatic) red button.

https://x.com/djsnm/status/1725879871115833705?s=46&t=S5mvgV8y9jIS13sN5loeIw

bad_hair_day

SpaceGazelle wrote:

What a beautiful launch.

Hearing the flight team’s cheers, got a bit choked up TBH.

SpaceGazelle

Yeah me too and it's nice to have some progress that isn't dystopian tech.

What Musk has done with SpaceX is pretty unbelievable. They're so fast on their feet and strangely old school. Build, learn, build again. The decision to ditch carbon fiber and go with stainless steel seems obvious in retrospect but took a genius to ditch it, and as fast as he did. He started with it and turned it off overnight. It's this ability that makes SpaceX is so good because the big decisions are made by one guy and he knows exactly what he's doing and is quick to adapt. He's not just in control, he's an exceptional rocket scientist and that is a hell of a combo.

Howdy, Stranger!

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