Space Never Fails to Blow My Mind, 2nd Edition

Discussion in 'The Mainboard' started by Bruce Wayne, Apr 13, 2015.

  1. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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    Yeah I got a feeling that was probably the equivalent of the Chicxulub extinction right there.
     
  2. lazy bum

    lazy bum active consumer
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    I know we really only have the resources to track things that affect us (and not enough resources for that, even), but it's pretty scary we had no idea that shit was about to go down.
     
  3. Taco Sa1ad

    Taco Sa1ad TMBSL
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    [​IMG]
    Ignore the wording on the picture but thats a representation of the size of earth compared to Jupiter. That impact would have literally fucked us. No one would be alive.
     
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  4. eHo

    eHo Fan of teams that never win shit and the Seahawks.
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    Not necessarily true. The atmosphere and gravity of Jupiter rapidly accelerated the meteor, which would not have happened on earth.
     
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  5. The Banks

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    I think he was referring to the size of the object that hit it, not the speed
     
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  6. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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  7. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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    Dust-devil photographed by Opportunity.

    [​IMG]
     
  8. Bruce Wayne

    Bruce Wayne Billionaire Playboy
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    So cool
     
  9. angus

    angus Well-Known Member
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    Processed photo of the impact on Jupiter.

    [​IMG]
     
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  10. angus

    angus Well-Known Member
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    Two infographics in link.

    http://www.space.com/32478-is-mysterious-planet-nine-tugging-on-nasa-saturn-probe.html

    Is Mysterious 'Planet Nine' Tugging on NASA Saturn Probe?
    By Shannon Hall, ScientificAmerican | April 5, 2016 05:20pm ET



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    Artist’s concept of “Planet Nine,” a hypothesized world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may orbit far from the sun.
    Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
    The hunt is on to find "Planet Nine" — a large undiscovered world, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size — that scientists think could be lurking in the outer solar system. After Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, two planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, presented evidence for its existence this January, other teams have searched for further proof by analyzing archived images and proposing new observations to find it with the world's largest telescopes.

    Just this month, evidence from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn helped close in on the missing planet. Many experts suspect that within as little as a year someone will spot the unseen world, which would be a monumental discovery that changes the way we view our solar system and our place in the cosmos. "Evidence is mounting that something unusual is out there — there's a story that's hard to explain with just the standard picture," says David Gerdes, a cosmologist at the University of Michigan who never expected to find himself working on Planet Nine. He is just one of many scientists who leapt at the chance to prove — or disprove — the team's careful calculations.

    Batygin and Brown made the case for Planet Nine's existence based on its gravitational effect on several Kuiper Belt objects — icy bodies that circle the sun beyond Neptune's orbit. Theoretically, though, its gravity should also tug slightly on the planets, moons and even any orbiting spacecraft. With this in mind, Agnès Fienga at the Côte d'Azur Observatory in France and her colleagues checked whether a theoretical model (one that they have been perfecting for over a decade) with the new addition of Planet Nine could better explain slight perturbations seen in Cassini's orbit. Without it, the eight planets in the solar system, 200 asteroids and five of the most massive Kuiper Belt objects cannot perfectly account for it. The missing puzzle piece might just be a ninth planet.

    So Fienga and her colleagues compared the updated model, which placed Planet Nine at various points in its hypothetical orbit, with the data. They found a sweet spot—with Planet Nine 600 astronomical units (about 90 billion kilometers) away toward the constellation Cetus — that can explain Cassini's orbit quite well. Although Fienga is not yet convinced that she has found the culprit for the probe's odd movements, most outside experts are blown away. "It's a brilliant analysis," says Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at Lick Observatory, who was not involved in the study. "It's completely amazing that they were able to do that so quickly." Gerdes agrees: "That's a beautiful paper."

    The good news does not end there. If Planet Nine is located toward the constellation Cetus, then it could be picked up by the Dark Energy Survey, a Southern Hemisphere observation project designed to probe the acceleration of the universe. "It turns out fortuitously that the favored region from Cassini is smack dab in the middle of our survey footprint," says Gerdes, who is working on the cosmology survey. "We could not have designed our survey any better." Although the survey was not planned to search for solar system objects, Gerdes has discovered some (including one of the icy objects that led Batygin and Brown to conclude Planet Nine exists in the first place).

    Laughlin thinks this survey has the best immediate chance of success. He is also excited by the fact that Planet Nine could be so close. Although 600 AUs—roughly 15 times the average distance to Pluto—does sound far, Planet Nine could theoretically hide as far away as 1,200 AUs. "That makes it twice as easy to get to, twice as soon," Laughlin says. "And not just twice as bright but 16 times as bright."

    And the Dark Energy Survey is not the only chance to catch the faint world. It should be possible to look for the millimeter-wavelength light the planet radiates from its own internal heat. Such a search was proposed by Nicolas Cowan, an exoplanet astronomer at McGill University in Montreal, who thinks that Planet Nine might show up in surveys of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the pervasive afterglow of the big bang. "CMB experiments have historically used solar system giant planets to calibrate their instruments, so we know that current and planned CMB experiments are sensitive enough to measure the flux from Planet Nine if it is as bright as we think it is," Cowan says.

    Already, cosmologists have started to comb through data from existing experiments, and astronomers with many different specialties have also joined in on the search. "I love that we can take this four-meter telescope and find a rock 100 kilometers in diameter that is a billion kilometers past Neptune with the same instrument that we are using to do extragalactic stuff and understand the acceleration of the universe," Gerdes says.

    In the meantime Batygin and Brown are proposing a dedicated survey of their own. In a recent study they searched through various sky maps to determine where Planet Nine cannot be. "We dumpster-dived into the existing observational data to search for Planet Nine, and because we didn't find it we were able to rule out parts of the orbit," Batygin says. The zone where the planet makes its farthest swing from the sun as well as the small slice of sky where Fienga thinks the planet could be now, for example, have not been canvassed by previous observations. To search the unmapped zones, Batygin and Brown have asked for roughly 20 observing nights on the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. "It's a pretty big request compared to what other people generally get on the telescope," Brown says. "We'll see if they bite." If they do, Brown is convinced he will have his planet within a year.

    "I really want to see what it looks like," says Batygin, who adds that his aspiration drives him to search for the unseen world. But Laughlin takes it a step further: "I think [the discovery] would provide amazing inspiration for the next stage of planetary exploration," he says. We now have another opportunity to see one of the worlds of our own solar system for the first time. "If Planet Nine isn't out there, we won't have that experience again."
     
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  11. broken internet

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  12. JohnLocke

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    SpaceX launch today
     
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  13. Bruce Wayne

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    10 minutes out

     
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  14. Bruce Wayne

    Bruce Wayne Billionaire Playboy
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    Holy shit they did it!
     
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  15. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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  16. Open Carry

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    I'm so excited to see all three of the boosters landing from the falcon heavy.
     
  17. Emma

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    Never fails, I always shed a tear
     
  18. Duck70

    Duck70 Let's just do it and be legends, man
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    Holy shit, I live like an hour from where it first touches US soil

     
  19. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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    Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison "Jack" Schmitt on the moon. One of the rare times you can see someone's face in their helmet without the visor down.

    [​IMG]
     
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  20. Larry Sura

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    pretty realistic looking movie set.
     
  21. broken internet

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  22. angus

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    Learned something today. Thanks broken internet for the new space news source.

    [​IMG]
    New research indicates that it may now be possible to predict when a neutron star will collapse to form a new black hole. Credit and Copyright: Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.
    Astronomy, Black Holes

    Can We Now Predict When A Neutron Star Will Give Birth To A Black Hole?
    10 Apr , 2016 by Matt Williams

    A neutron star is perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring and mysterious things in the Universe. Composed almost entirely of neutrons with no net electrical charge, they are the final phase in the life-cycle of a giant star, born of the fiery explosions known as supernovae. They are also the densest known objects in the universe, a fact which often results in them becoming a black hole if they undergo a change in mass.

    For some time, astronomers have been confounded by this process, never knowing where or when a neutron star might make this final transformation. But thanks to a recent study by a team of researchers from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, it may now be possible to determine the absolute maximum mass that is required for a neutron star to collapse, giving birth to a new black hole.


    As with everything else relating to neutron stars, the process by which they become black holes has long been a source of fascination and bewilderment for astronomers. As the densest of all objects in the known universe, their mass cannot grow without bound – meaning that any increase in mass will also cause an increase in their density.

    [​IMG]
    Artist’s illustration of a rotating neutron star, the remnants of a super nova explosion. Credit: NASA, Caltech-JPL

    Normally, this process will cause a neutron star to simply achieve a new state of equilibrium, or will result in a non-rotating neutron star beginning to spin. This latter effect will allow it to remain stable for longer than it could otherwise, since the additional centrifugal force can help to balance out the intense gravitational force at work in its interior.

    However, even this process cannot last forever. As Professor Luciano Rezolla of Goethe University told Universe Today via email:

    “If the star is nonrotating, then this mass is not too difficult to compute and is called the maximum nonrotating mass, or M_TOV. However, this is not the largest mass possible because if the star is rotating, it can sustain more mass than if is not rotating. Even in this case, however, there is a limit because there is a limit to how much a star can rotate before being broken apart from the centrifugal force. Hence, the absolute largest mass that a neutron star can achieve is known as the “maximum mass of a maximally rotating configuration”, M_max. This is the largest possible mass of the most rapidly rotating model. Suppose you have built such a model: if you added a single atom onto it, it would collapse to a black hole, while it would break apart if you spun it a bit more.”

    As neutron stars accumulate mass, the speed of their rotation will increase; and here too, there is a limit. Basically, sooner or later, a neutron star will reach its absolute maximum mass and beyond this, it will inevitably collapse in on itself to become a black hole. Unfortunately, in the past, astronomers have had a hard time determining what the value of this limit was.

    The reason for this is because such a maximum value is dependent on the equation of state of the matter composing the star. This thermodynamic equation describes the state of matter under a given set of physical conditions – i.e. temperature, pressure, volume, or internal energy. And while astronomers have been able to ascertain within a degree of certainty what the maximum mass of a nonrotating neutron stars would be, they have been less successful in calculating what the maximum mass is for those that are rotating.

    [​IMG]
    Cross-section of a neutron star. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Robert Schulze

    In short, they have been unable to determine how much mass is needed before a rotating neutron star will surpass its maximum speed of rotation and finally form a new black hole. As Rezolla explained:

    “What made it difficult in the past to calculate M_max is its value will differ from what composes the neutron star (i.e. its “equation of state”) and this is something we don’t really know. Neutron-star matter is so different from the one we know that we can only make educated guesses; and unfortunately, there are many guesses because there are several different ways to compute the properties of the equation of state. So one ended up up with a situation in which not only the maximum mass was different for different equations of state, but even the maximum rotation speed was different for different equations of state.”

    However, in their study, titled “Maximum mass, moment of inertia and compactness of relativistic stars” – which appeared recently in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society – Rezzolla and Cosima Breu (a Masters student in theoretical physics at Goethe University and co-author of the study) argue that it may now be possible to infer what the maximum mass of a rapidly rotating star would be.

    For the sake of their research, Rezolla and Breu relied on recent work by astronomers that has shown that it is possible to express the properties of stellar equilibrium configurations that does not depend on the specific equation of the state of their mass. In short, these studies have shown that there are certain “universal relations” when it comes to the equilibrium of stars.

    [​IMG]
    Artist’s rendering of an outburst on an ultra-magnetic neutron star, also called a magnetar.
    Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

    As a result, they were able to show that it is possible to predict the maximum mass a rapidly rotating neutron star can attain by simply considering what the maximum mass is of a neutron star in a corresponding, non-rotating configuration. But as Rezolla indicated, even with these data sets available, what was needed was a fresh perspective:

    “Universal relations simply state that objects that are apparently different actually share many things in common. For example, although we are different from other mammals, say pigs, our genome has a huge amount of common features, essentially because we have to synthesize the same proteins, breath the same air, etc. Hence, if we learn of hemoglobin actually works for one mammal, we have learned for many more mammals. This seems to happen also for neutron stars so that although there are many equations of state that predict different results for M_max, they all show there is a universal relation between M_max and M_TOV. More specifically, we have found that M_max = 1.203 +- 0.022 M_TOV.”

    These findings are likely to have interesting implications when it comes to future astronomical research. For starters, knowing the maximum mass a neutron star can achieve will be useful when analyzing the gravitational-wave signals produced by neutron stars, allowing astronomers to extract information on the equation of state before the object collapses into a black hole.

    Second, it will be useful in determining the moment of inertia for neutron stars, i.e. knowing how much mass is required before it begins to rotate. In short, scientists will be able to know with greater accuracy what it takes to set a neutron star to spinning and will able to predict with greater accuracy when a spinning neutron star will be on the verge of collapsing, and thus knowing when and where a new black hole will be.

    Al this, in turn, is likely to be a boon for research into black holes, the one object in the universe that is arguably more awe-inspiring and less understood than neutron stars. One step closer to understanding this grand, mysterious thing known as the Universe!​
     
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  23. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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    :beerchug: :heythere:
     
  24. angus

    angus Well-Known Member
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    The birth of an Earth?


    [​IMG]
    ALMA’s best image of a protoplanetary disk to date. This picture of the nearby young star TW Hydrae reveals the classic rings and gaps that signify planets are in formation in this system. Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
    Extrasolar Planets, Planetary Formation, Stellar Evolution

    ALMA Captures Never-Before-Seen Details of Protoplanetary Disk
    1 Apr , 2016 by Bob King

    [​IMG]
    ALMA’s best image of a protoplanetary disk to date. This picture of the nearby young star TW Hydrae reveals the classic rings and gaps that signify planets are in formation in this system. Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

    TW Hydrae is a special star. Located 175 light years from Earth in the constellation Hydra the Water Snake, it sits at the center of a dense disk of gas and dust that astronomers think resembles our solar system when it was just 10 million years old. The disk is incredibly clear in images made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, which employs 66 radio telescopes sensitive to light just beyond that of infrared. Spread across more than 9 miles (15 kilometers), the ALMA array acts as a gigantic single telescope that can make images 10 times sharper than even the Hubble Space Telescope.

    [​IMG]
    This photo of the ALMA antennas on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile, more than 16,000 feet (5000 meters) above sea level, was taken a few days before the start of ALMA Early Science and shows only one cluster of the 66 dishes. ALMA views the sky in submillimeter light, a slice of the spectrum invisible to the human eye that lies between infrared and radio waves. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/W. Garnier (ALMA)

    Astronomers everywhere point their telescopes at TW Hydrae because it’s the closest infant star in the sky. With an age of between 5 and 10 million years, it’s not even running on hydrogen fusion yet, the process by which stars convert hydrogen into helium to produce energy. TW Hydrae shines from the energy released as it contracts through gravity. Fusion and official stardom won’t begin until it’s dense enough and hot enough for fusion to fire up in its belly.

    [​IMG]
    ALMA image of the planet-forming disk around the young, sun-like star TW Hydrae. The inset image (upper right) zooms in on the gap nearest to the star, which is at the same distance as the Earth is from the sun, and may show an infant version of our home planet emerging from the dust and gas. The additional concentric light and dark features represent other planet-forming regions farther out in the disk. Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

    We see most protoplanetary disks at various angles, but TW’s has a face-on orientation as seen from Earth, giving astronomers a rare, undistorted view of the complete disk around the star. The new images show amazing detail, revealing a series of concentric bright rings of dust separated by dark gaps. There’s even indications that a planet with an Earth-like orbit has begun clearing an orbit.

    “Previous studies with optical and radio telescopes confirm that TW Hydrae hosts a prominent disk with features that strongly suggest planets are beginning to coalesce,” said Sean Andrews with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and lead author on a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    [​IMG]
    The model (at left) of a protoplanetary disk shows a newly forming star at the center of a saucer-shaped dust cloud. At right, a close up of TW Hydrae taken by ALMA shows a gap about 93 million miles from the central star, suggesting that a planet with a similar orbit to Earth is forming there. Credit: (Left: L. Calcada). Right: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

    Pronounced gaps that show up in the photos above are located at 1.9 and 3.7 billion miles (3-6 billion kilometers) from the central star, similar to the average distances from the sun to Uranus and Pluto in the solar system. They too are likely to be the results of particles that came together to form planets, which then swept their orbits clear of dust and gas to sculpt the remaining material into well-defined bands. ALMA picks up the faint emission of submillimeter light emitted by dust grains in the disk, revealing details as small as 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) or the distance of Earth from the sun

    [​IMG]
    This image compares the size of the solar system with HL Tauri and its surrounding protoplanetary disc. Although the star is much smaller than the Sun, the disc around HL Tauri stretches out to almost three times as far from the star as Neptune is from the Sun. Credit:ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

    “This is the highest spatial resolution image ever of a protoplanetary disk from ALMA, and that won’t be easily beaten in the future!” said Andrews.

    Earlier ALMA observations of another system, HL Tauri, show that even younger protoplanetary disks — a mere 1 million years old — look remarkably similar. By studying the older TW Hydrae disk, astronomers hope to better understand the evolution of our own planet and the prospects for similar systems throughout the Milky Way.
     
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  25. broken internet

    broken internet Everything I touch turns to gold.
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    Only 175 light years away? Pretty durn cool. It'll be a billion or so years before the bombardment eases and life has the ability to form, though. We'll be a high Type I, almost Type II civilization by then.

    That's given that humanity survives the next century without fucking itself over.
     
  26. letan

    letan Just looking for the gator board
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    So we might as well send a probe its way now right?
     
  27. JohnLocke

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  28. lhprop1

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  29. JohnLocke

    JohnLocke Terminally Chill
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    Just said they are working on probes that could get to Alpha Centauri in 20 years
     
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  30. Kevintensity

    Kevintensity Poster/Posting Game Coordinator
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    Explain like we're all five in here
     
  31. Magneto

    Magneto Thats right, formerly Don Brodka.
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  32. angus

    angus Well-Known Member
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  33. angus

    angus Well-Known Member
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    Is this an ‘alien probe’? Strange object set to sweep past Earth in 2017 (but it may just be space junk from the Apollo 12 mission)
    • 1991 VG was first spotted in 1991 by astronomer James Scotti
    • It's unusual because of its strange rotation and longevity in space
    • As well as aliens and space junk, one theory is it may be a small meteor
    By Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

    Published: 13:42 EST, 27 October 2015 | Updated: 15:24 EST, 27 October 2015

    • 673 shares

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      A mysterious object, that conspiracy theorists claim is an 'alien probe', is set to fly past Earth in 2017.

      Known as 1991 VG, the object was first spotted in November 1991 by astronomer James Scotti at the University of Arizona.

      It has baffled astronomers ever since because of its strange rotation and longevity in space.

      Some experts suggest it may be a section of the Apollo 12 rocket, but Scotti claims the timings don't add up.

      [​IMG]

      +2
      A mysterious object, that conspiracy theorists claim is an 'alien probe', is set to fly past Earth in 2017. Known as 1991 VG, the object was first spotted in November 1991 by astronomer James Scotti at the University of Arizona. It has baffled astronomers ever since because of its strange rotation and longevity in space

      THREE THEORIES ON 1991 VG
      Asteroid: Since James Scotti first spotted VG 1991, astronomers have discovered that asteroids under 100 meters have remarkably fast rotations.

      As a result Scotti says we can't rule out the possibility that VG 1991 is a natural space rock.

      Part of a rocket/satellite: Some experts suggest it may a section of the Apollo 12 rocket,

      Others argue it may be a secret rocket the Soviets sent into orbit, hidden from the rest of the world.

      Alien probe: Duncan Steel, an astronomer at University of Adelaide, suggested it might be an 'alien probe observed in the vicinity of our planet.'

      Conspiracy forums have run with this theory with many suggesting it is evidence of ET.

      'We looked into all the possibilities for it being man-made,' Scotti told Motherboard. 'There were a few possible spacecraft and rocket bodies that might be 1991 VG.'

      'But when we looked into each, we were able to eliminate each of them.'

      Others argue it may be a secret rocket the Soviets sent into orbit, hidden from the rest of the world.

      'The Soviets had rockets as powerful as American rockets, were quite fond of covering things up when they went badly, and were attempting to get to the moon themselves,' a Reddit user wrote.

      'It is plausible that a forgotten Russian mission resulted in this object.'

      When Scotti first spotted 1991 VG, it was around 10 metres in diameter, passing 280,000 miles from Earth – around 50,000 miles further than the Earth and the moon.

      The object showed a rapid rate of rotation and its brightness fluctuated. This behaviour, at the time, had not been seen for any asteroid of its size.

      The object also had an orbit that was strikingly similar to that of Earth.

      Once data was gathered on 1991 VG, Scotti realised this was the second time the unidentified object had passed Earth. The first was March of 1975.


      Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ace-junk-Apollo-12-mission.html#ixzz45dgweP7T
      Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
     
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  34. Merica

    Merica Devine pls stop pointing out my demise. :(
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  35. Magneto

    Magneto Thats right, formerly Don Brodka.
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    How long would it take for the data to come back?
     
  36. Scott Van Pelt

    Scott Van Pelt Penis Doctor
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    Alpha Centari is a little over 4 light years away so I imagine around 4 years or so
     
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  37. Heavy Mental

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    Sounds like under their timeline, if everything goes as they planned, we'd hear back in 44 years.
     
  38. One Knight

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  39. jorge

    jorge Founder of Post ITT if your team sucks
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    I don't remember where this argument took place but I found out the order of magnitude for galaxies in the observable universe is 100s of billions but grains of sand on Earth would be measured in quintillions.
     
  40. Larry Sura

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    So stars>sand still?
     
  41. Bo Pelinis

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    There are hundreds of billions of observable galaxies. There are between 100-400 billion (I read 300 somewhere, but numbers kind of conflict) stars in the milky way galaxy alone, which is in no way a large galaxy. It's actually pretty small on a relative scale. I think it's safe to say stars>sand.
     
  42. Kevintensity

    Kevintensity Poster/Posting Game Coordinator
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    Which contains the most

    Stars in the universe
    Grains of sand on earth
    Hairs on human head
    Ways to arrange a deck of cards
     
  43. Bo Pelinis

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    A crazier thing I read was that there are the same amount of H2O molecules in 10 drops of water as there are stars in the universe.

    [​IMG]
     
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  44. Bo Pelinis

    Donor TMB OG
    Nebraska CornhuskersKansas City RoyalsKansas City ChiefsBig 8 Conference

    Deck of cards.