Voyager I and II

[Zer010]

Over 11 billion miles covered so far and reaching the heliosphere is an E P I C achievement. I am surprised the Kuiper belt was not more of an issue for it to get around.

Linky

This almost never happened too that floors me.

[lexandro]

Yeah its an amazing feat of engineering and daring by NASA to get these things to where they are now and STILL working. As for the Kuniper belt, its big but not that dense due to the distances involved. There are plenty of massive gaps all over the belt to easily pass through out in the heliosphere and beyond.

Ive always had a sneaky suspicion that he kuniper belt and the space around it has a "blocking" effect on signals coming in to the system from other stars (like quasers etc). I think NASA's best endevour to find life outside out own system would be to send a 'scope of some kind outside the belt. Well that or send one to the lensing point (cant remember the terminology - lagrangian point?) when the gravity amplifies signals and light from outside the system.

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by lexandro

Yeah its an amazing feat of engineering and daring by NASA to get these things to where they are now and STILL working. As for the Kuniper belt, its big but not that dense due to the distances involved. There are plenty of massive gaps all over the belt to easily pass through out in the heliosphere and beyond.

Got to it before I could make the edit I was looking it back up when I realized that small planets could fit through some of the gaps. Good illustration of that here

[DarkFox]

its sad that the American push for exploration of the galaxy (that pretty much lead the world in the field) has given way to the dollar....

After thinking about this for the last few minutes, thought I would add that I dont think we will see a major push for advancement in space until and Indepence Day like event happens...

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by DarkFox

its sad that the American push for exploration of the galaxy (that pretty much lead the world in the field) has given way to the dollar....

After thinking about this for the last few minutes, thought I would add that I dont think we will see a major push for advancement in space until and Indepence Day like event happens...

Not so much, space has minerals that can vastly affect the rare earth metals business. Companies have been after this for a while the intital problem was risks. Thank NASA for piloting the business plans [then running it into the ground ].

In other news Japan wants to build a real functional mecha just like a Gundam. Price is a bit steep but that is how humanity is despite the obvious fact we only have 1 planet. (/funny)

EDIT: More on asteroid minerals Link

[BigE4u]

We all know noone is going to live elsewhere than the rock we are currently living on.... so why not party like its 1999 everyday.

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by BigE4u

We all know noone is going to live elsewhere than the rock we are currently living on.... so why not party like its 1999 everyday.

Golden Age of the PSX? Then hell yes life was much simpler then

To think some of the aestroids that orbit near Earth have as much if not more platinum in them than we dig up each year on Earth.

Course that pales in comparison to the Diamond Planet. I would so get a Diamond crystal skull.

[Sparkey247]

i was nearly brought to tears when i found out they were grounding the shuttles.

what the h3ll happened? in the 60's we were challenged and we put a man on the moon now we cannot even get up off the ground at least not from American soil.

i have been intrigued about the cosmos since i first learned what it was, and oh lord what i would give to turn on the tv and see the we humans (not just Americans) have found and were able to travel to another planet in a different solar system that is like earth. with today's technology its seems very dimm if not completely dark. what makes me the most sad about the matter is that i have this strong feeling that if we ever do manage to go that distance it will not be in my time

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by Sparkey247

i was nearly brought to tears when i found out they were grounding the shuttles.

what the h3ll happened? in the 60's we were challenged and we put a man on the moon now we cannot even get up off the ground at least not from American soil.

i have been intrigued about the cosmos since i first learned what it was, and oh lord what i would give to turn on the tv and see the we humans (not just Americans) have found and were able to travel to another planet in a different solar system that is like earth. with today's technology its seems very dimm if not completely dark. what makes me the most sad about the matter is that i have this strong feeling that if we ever do manage to go that distance it will not be in my time

Like the articles stated it was the pressure of two UCLA students that pushed NASA to do the mission or wait a 175 ( ) years for the next chance.

Back in the 60s theories on galaxy structures was still being argued know we know that galaxies are small on th euniversal scale in comparison to clusters, super clusters and filaments (largest on record is 1.4 billion lightyears across known as the "great wall": link))

You have to imagine 1.4 billion light years with 1 ly = 9460730472580800 meters and that still may not be the end

EDIT: Makes me wonder what would happen if you had to travel 9.4605284 × 10^15 light years would that finally be the "edge"? ^^;;

[Sparkey247]

it seems like the more we know the more afraid we become.

every now and then i drive down to North Western University.

when you park in the parking garage past that there is a little walk way beyond the walk way there are rocks and boulders lining the cost of lake Michigan. students at the university paint things on the rocks some times even carve things into them that can be better seen during the day.

http://nurockart.com/

but at night if your standing on these rocks and look over to the right you see DT Chicago. it bulges out like a peninsula.

but if you look up, well i spent 3 hours just looking at the stars and just wondering.

i got my first telescope about a year ago (local good will) and when i fixed it on the moon i D@mn near S**T myself at what i seen all my life i wish i could be closer celestial bodies other than ours and as far as humans have seen but to see just the moon so close through the eyes piece was well put in a single word Awesome.

light speed. as humans we have managed to travel was 4 roughly 40,000 kl/h on a return flight from the moon on may 26 1969. light speed just seems out of our grasp.

the one thing that always puzzled me i actually read it in a book i think.

lets say a stewardess is walking .3 mph on a plane traveling 600mph. the stewardesses total velocity would me 600.3 mph.

that same stewardess walking that same .3 mph hour on a plane traveling the speed of light (if it was ever possible), well her total velocity would only be the speed of light.

and if the speed of light is the so called governor of the universe (as the universe on history channel has said countless times) then how do we explain quantum entanglement. where two entangled particles can be separated by light years and if you rotate one clockwise the other being light years away will instantaneously rotate counter clockwise. that particle has to have received information at a speed faster than light.

i know im jumping around here a bit and i have to apologize but to think that in my life time we will have possibly had a probe exit our solar system well to me that's just insanely awesome. like when my step father talks about how he remembers when we landed on the moon how he watched it on tv. ( my mother was only 6 years old, my stepdad was in his 20's).

i can later tell my kids yeah i remember when Voyager left our solar system. not for bragging rights but as a mile stone for humanity

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by Sparkey247

...
light speed. as humans we have managed to travel was 4 roughly 40,000 kl/h on a return flight from the moon on may 26 1969. light speed just seems out of our grasp.

the one thing that always puzzled me i actually read it in a book i think.

lets say a stewardess is walking .3 mph on a plane traveling 600mph. the stewardesses total velocity would me 600.3 mph.

that same stewardess walking that same .3 mph hour on a plane traveling the speed of light (if it was ever possible), well her total velocity would only be the speed of light.

and if the speed of light is the so called governor of the universe (as the universe on history channel has said countless times) then how do we explain quantum entanglement. where two entangled particles can be separated by light years and if you rotate one clockwise the other being light years away will instantaneously rotate counter clockwise. that particle has to have received information at a speed faster than light.

i know im jumping around here a bit and i have to apologize but to think that in my life time we will have possibly had a probe exit our solar system well to me that's just insanely awesome. like when my step father talks about how he remembers when we landed on the moon how he watched it on tv. ( my mother was only 6 years old, my stepdad was in his 20's).

i can later tell my kids yeah i remember when Voyager left our solar system. not for bragging rights but as a mile stone for humanity

I am a bit rusty so bare with me. The stewardess is kept under pressure within the object moving at 600 mph so from the outside it would seem in totality that she is moving 600.3, that is the okay part. The universe just likes to take that and blow it apart Going at least light speed would not allow this since the pressure keeping our bodies together would collapse (know as atomic particle compression) upon slowing down we wouldn't be human anymore

Hubble's constant and Dark Energy allow for greater than speed of light to occur since they are not matter or antimatter. The speed of light is our govenor for all within the matter range however according to the Model matter/energy only accounts for roughly 5% of the universe (DE=70,DM=25, A-M/E=5 NASA Explains (note be sure to drop down to latest discoveries at the bottom some real eye openers in there))

Your right though, this marks a real turning point in our generation. We have Mars rovers and exiting the solar system so far Plus we still have 10 to 15 years in the nuclear batteries before the probes go offline. If it took 35 years to go 11 billion then the estimate would be approximately 3.14 to 4.71 billion more miles

/ot I am glad I am not the only one that loves space

[lexandro]

I really dont get the maths, but one thing did strike me decades ago and its only recently been mentioned as a "viable" hypothesis. Thats "supersymmetry". Now as I said I dont really understand the math of it, but the concept (or at least the inkling of a concept) struck me in high school in the 90's. I learned that there was anti-matter created in the lab, and I was being taught newtons laws, specifically the 3rd law of every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

At the point I had a light bulb moment and thought that I would exand it very simply by stating that EVERYTHING in our universe has an equal and opposite. Be it force, element or particle.

Trying to get over a concept you dont really understand yourself to a teacher who cant work out what you trying to say is frustrating to say the least. As I'm not that good at math I couldn't expand on it with an equation or and kind of proper theory. It was just a basic concept.

When I was watching a TV show about the hunt for the higgs bosun few months ago, it was explaining theories about particles. It mentioned supersymmetry and I almost fell of my chair, I was gobsmacked. The fellow describing his theory was saying exactly what I thought and had fully fleshed it out in to an equation and proper theory.

Talk about mind blowing, little old me on my very own had come up with the same idea 20 years ago as this guy was talking about now.

[Zer010]

Originally Posted by lexandro

I really dont get the maths, but one thing did strike me decades ago and its only recently been mentioned as a "viable" hypothesis. Thats "supersymmetry". Now as I said I dont really understand the math of it, but the concept (or at least the inkling of a concept) struck me in high school in the 90's. I learned that there was anti-matter created in the lab, and I was being taught newtons laws, specifically the 3rd law of every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

At the point I had a light bulb moment and thought that I would exand it very simply by stating that EVERYTHING in our universe has an equal and opposite. Be it force, element or particle.

Trying to get over a concept you dont really understand yourself to a teacher who cant work out what you trying to say is frustrating to say the least. As I'm not that good at math I couldn't expand on it with an equation or and kind of proper theory. It was just a basic concept.

When I was watching a TV show about the hunt for the higgs bosun few months ago, it was explaining theories about particles. It mentioned supersymmetry and I almost fell of my chair, I was gobsmacked. The fellow describing his theory was saying exactly what I thought and had fully fleshed it out in to an equation and proper theory.

Talk about mind blowing, little old me on my very own had come up with the same idea 20 years ago as this guy was talking about now.

You make a very great point. Getting a teacher to convey information is already hard and as you said even worse when they fail to do that. Every now and again I will catch a good science segment (I do admit the lack of space programs is starting to grind my nerves when they are replaced with fishing shows and other stuff that should not be on an educational/information channel )

A discussion I had with a friend on the subject at the university on HI we both came to the conclusion that by the time the rules are written the universe will simply change them. We are racing against the clock to figure it out too since our Sun will burn out and if mankind manages to get past that we are going to collide and merge with Andromada with a another galaxy following. Amazingly enough the Earth probably won't hit anything but we will be thrown out of the Goldie Locks zone.

Next time I look at an OC project I should keep that in mind

[WiCKeD]

Originally Posted by Sparkey247

i was nearly brought to tears when i found out they were grounding the shuttles.

what the h3ll happened?

Debt. 10char

[TSXmike]

looking up at the starts and wondering has and always will be one of my favorite past times. trying to comprehend some massive objects and the great distances out in the cosmos. how can someone not find that incredibly fascinating!

i really shouldve been an astrophysicist.