Sharks in the universe

[bluecoconuts]

That's an interest of mine too ... if you wanna start a new thread.

The universe? It's such a broad topic to cover. Just recently we discovered a Mega Earth (which shows that rocky planets can form further out and larger than previously thought) as well as discovered a new class of planets, a gas dwarf.... Otherwise I wouldn't even know where to start. When I discuss the details and math at work I see their brains turn off, that would probably happen here too, it's not very sexy science.

 

[-X-]

I saw that. Kepler 10c. I watch the science channel like a roided up nerd. Cosmos, Through the wormhole, etc. I also make regular trips to the planetarium when all the telescope nerds congregate to share their stuff.

We're discovering new planets orbiting around red dwarfs all the time. I just hope I'm around long enough to see us get atmosphere samples and whatnot, but until we find a way to break the speed of light barrier, I don't know that I'll get the opportunity.

 

[Tron]

*Jk, I love that stuff to.

 

[bluecoconuts]

I saw that. Kepler 10c. I watch the science channel like a roided up nerd. Cosmos, Through the wormhole, etc. I also make regular trips to the planetarium when all the telescope nerds congregate to share their stuff.

We're discovering new planets orbiting around red dwarfs all the time. I just hope I'm around long enough to see us get atmosphere samples and whatnot, but until we find a way to break the speed of light barrier, I don't know that I'll get the opportunity.

More and more scientists believe that we will find evidence of life outside of Earth within our (or at least my) lifetimes, we are getting close. Red dwarfs are some of the best potential candidates for life because of their very long very stable lives, which gives a planet plenty of time to evolve. That's of course assuming that mass extinction doesn't take them out, or they don't destroy themselves. It could be hard to find those civilizations, because if they are even just a thousand years more advanced than us they could be on a completely different level of information sending/receiving, and we may lack the ability to hear any messages. Similar to how earth has gone from a quiet rocky planet to suddenly sending out radio transmissions in a short amount of time. 300 years ago they could have been sending radio transmissions that we couldn't detect, and assuming that there's nothing here, moved on and have developed other, more efficient ways. There's also the problem that if we were to find a civilization that has been around much longer than us, they may not want anything to do with us. Similar to how we see a bug and figure "well it's just a stupid bug, what does it know?" as we walk on by. Advanced civilizations could see us and say "They're still limited to unmanned exploration of their inner solar system, why even bother?".

Hopefully we can get something exciting soon, and get some real funding into NASA to start moving beyond our solar system. It's been 45 years since we've landed on the moon, and we still haven't gotten a clear photograph of Pluto (although we will finally get some July 2015).

 

[-X-]

Love this thread.

I'm going out to get some Carvel, but I'll revisit this later.

 

[-X-]

Here's what blows my mind. The magnitude of it is just ... I can't wrap my mind around it.

Here's our galaxy...

Our solar system is there, and there are 300-400 billion stars, other than our sun, in our galaxy. 300-400 BILLION. It's so vast that it would take 100,000 years (at the speed of light, no less) to get to the other side. That's enormous. And we're just one of the over 170 billion *other* galaxies in the observable universe (or so they estimate). Add to that, there are spiral galaxies out there with more than a trillion stars, and giant elliptical galaxies with 100 trillion stars. So if you multiply the number of stars in our galaxy by the number of galaxies in the Universe, you get approximately 10(to the 24th power) stars. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. A septillion. And that's a conservative estimate. It’s recently been calculated that the observable Universe is just a bubble of space that spans 47 billion years in all directions, so there could be more.

And our tiny little yellow dwarf star is the only one for almost 50 billion years in all directions that has a planet orbiting it than can support life? I find that to be highly improbable and entirely egotistical of us to presume so.

And who's to say that our understanding of life is the same as that on another planet from another galaxy? Stephen Hawking had a really cool show (you can see it on Netflix) wherein he describes what other forms of life could look like. So does Neil deGrasse Tyson. There could be life-forms that thrive off of methane instead of oxygen. Life forms that can thrive in extreme heat or frigid temperatures and it would be considered normal. Even the microscopic tardigrade, on our planet, was able to survive in space with no oxygen, unimaginably frigid temperatures, and radiation. What if there are similar species elsewhere, only huge instead of microscopic?

Mind-boggling. I wish I had studied in school instead of trying to bang chicks and playing football.
I'd have become an astrophysicist if I could do it all over again.

 

[bluecoconuts]

A new study just came out that says there could be over 100 million planets capable of supporting complex life in our galaxy alone.

The Milky Way Galaxy is about 100,000 light years across, or roughly 600,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 600 quadrillion) miles across. In it there's roughly 400 billion stars.

Now just 315 megaparsecs (1 megaparsec equals 3.26 million light years, or roughly 19,164,319,264,469,815,000 miles, meaning I'm not doing all that math without being required to) is the galaxy IC 1101, which could very well be the largest galaxy known (assuming measurements are correct).... IC 1101 is between 5.5 and 6 million light years across (which is significantly bigger than our Galaxy of course), and has roughly 100 trillion stars, as you alluded to earlier. It's one of the first galaxies formed, which is why it's grown so large, many many years of swallowing other smaller galaxies to form into the giant elliptical galaxy that it is today.... Or at least how it was roughly 1,700,000,000 years ago, meaning it's probably quite a bit bigger now. It's just under 13 billion years old.

I hate to say that I know there's other life, intelligent life in fact out there in the universe, but really the chances are that there isn't is so small, it's almost a guarantee. Pure numbers says it must be so.

Random fun fact though, when discussing the big bang, because it happened so fast, astronomers had to create a new, very small unit of time, called planck time. There are more "planck" units in a single second, than in every second since the first second after the big bang until now. Things happened so incredibly fast, which is how the universe was able to 'expand' nothing faster than the speed of light.

 

[The Rammer]

I've always wondered if their was a whole asteroid, planet, moon that is made up with a precious metal (gold, platinum, aluminum) or a diamond or something. I'm sure there is somewhere lol

 

[bluecoconuts]

Planets made up of solid diamond have been discovered. Many stars have tons of gold in them as well, they spread around the galaxy when they explode.

 

[Selassie I]

I read an article last week that said there will be proof of life on other planets within the next 20 years.

I'm a freak for this kind of science too.

I find it very interesting that much , if not all , of the water here on Earth is thought to have been brought to our planet from comets and asteroids. I tend to believe that life was deposited here in the same way.

 

[Dieter the Brock]

Planets made up of solid diamond have been discovered. Many stars have tons of gold in them as well, they spread around the galaxy when they explode.

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSS

 

[-X-]

I've always wondered if their was a whole asteroid, planet, moon that is made up with a precious metal (gold, platinum, aluminum) or a diamond or something. I'm sure there is somewhere lol

You better believe there is. There are even large corporations that are trying to develop a method of harvesting those precious metals, because the first one that can is going to be set up for 20 lifetimes. The ability to implement such a plan is several decades out though, I hear.

 

[Angry Ram]

You better believe there is. There are even large corporations that are trying to develop a method of harvesting those precious metals, because the first one that can is going to be set up for 20 lifetimes. The ability to implement such a plan is several decades out though, I hear.

That's pretty sad if you ask me. Some might be surprised based on my viewpoints RE the natural world in the other thread, but I don't have problems with corporations and CEOs making the money.

But...how about making our own planet more sustainable than trying to expend resources to get shiny rocks from outer space? Maybe b/c I'm a dude, but never understood the desire for diamonds or silver or gold.

 

[bluecoconuts]

That's pretty sad if you ask me. Some might be surprised based on my viewpoints RE the natural world in the other thread, but I don't have problems with corporations and CEOs making the money.

But...how about making our own planet more sustainable than trying to expend resources to get shiny rocks from outer space? Maybe b/c I'm a dude, but never understood the desire for diamonds or silver or gold.

The desire for diamonds essentially came from the diamond companies... Back in the 20's and 30's they started the whole "get your girlfriend a diamond ring to show her you love her, what are you a poor sucker?" thing to get people to buy diamonds.... And our grandfathers fell for that shit hook line and sinker... Which is why diamonds are so big now.. As too why they're so expensive? Because the diamond companies limit them intentionally to drive up prices.

I doubt they're looking at traveling the many many light years needed for diamonds when we have plenty of the stuff here.

As for gold, it's formed in super massive stars, so needless to say we wont be getting that anytime soon. You have to wait for them to go supernovae to release it. Currently with our understanding of gold and planetary formation, it doesn't seem possible for gold to clump together to make an entire planet or even asteroid. It could be possible, but very unlikely... However there is plenty of gold out there though, since it comes from the stars, we know there are millions of celestial bodies with gold on them.


NASA is discussing "lassoing" an asteroid to bring into our orbit to study as well as potentially mine for metals, but that's pretty much it for now. However when we do put men on Mars, it wouldn't shock me if eventually we found gold.

 

[bluecoconuts]

And the CfA just announced a study that says life on planets around red dwarfs may be doomed due to harsher solar winds/weather from the smaller habitable zone forcing the planets to be closer. Of course the aurora's on such a planet would be far more beautiful than on earth, the magnetic fields needed to protect the planet is really too great. More research will be needed, but so far it doesn't seem good... Which is a shame since red dwarfs make up about 80% of the stars in our universe, and eventually all stars will likely be red dwarfs due to their extremely long lives.

 

[Selassie I]

You guys ever read any of Zecharia Sitchin's books?

 

[The Rammer]

You better believe there is. There are even large corporations that are trying to develop a method of harvesting those precious metals, because the first one that can is going to be set up for 20 lifetimes. The ability to implement such a plan is several decades out though, I hear.

And just when I thought I was a genius with the idea of mining astroids for materials I find this out! lol
Always my many thoughts of the stars above. This is one of my favorite subjects... pity I never went into any science field when I was younger. Stupid testosterone!

 

[The Rammer]

Here's what blows my mind. The magnitude of it is just ... I can't wrap my mind around it.

Here's our galaxy...

Our solar system is there, and there are 300-400 billion stars, other than our sun, in our galaxy. 300-400 BILLION. It's so vast that it would take 100,000 years (at the speed of light, no less) to get to the other side. That's enormous. And we're just one of the over 170 billion *other* galaxies in the observable universe (or so they estimate). Add to that, there are spiral galaxies out there with more than a trillion stars, and giant elliptical galaxies with 100 trillion stars. So if you multiply the number of stars in our galaxy by the number of galaxies in the Universe, you get approximately 10(to the 24th power) stars. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. A septillion. And that's a conservative estimate. It’s recently been calculated that the observable Universe is just a bubble of space that spans 47 billion years in all directions, so there could be more.

And our tiny little yellow dwarf star is the only one for almost 50 billion years in all directions that has a planet orbiting it than can support life? I find that to be highly improbable and entirely egotistical of us to presume so.

And who's to say that our understanding of life is the same as that on another planet from another galaxy? Stephen Hawking had a really cool show (you can see it on Netflix) wherein he describes what other forms of life could look like. So does Neil deGrasse Tyson. There could be life-forms that thrive off of methane instead of oxygen. Life forms that can thrive in extreme heat or frigid temperatures and it would be considered normal. Even the microscopic tardigrade, on our planet, was able to survive in space with no oxygen, unimaginably frigid temperatures, and radiation. What if there are similar species elsewhere, only huge instead of microscopic?

Mind-boggling. I wish I had studied in school instead of trying to bang chicks and playing football.
I'd have become an astrophysicist if I could do it all over again.

Love watching those shows on Netflix.... Makes you understand how small you in reality to everything in play. I want to go to a parallel Earth I have the natives worship me... eeeek in a parallel universe wonder if the me and you would support the Whiners......