Astronomy and Cosmology

http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-20/ssc2005-20a.shtml a spiral galaxy has a skeleton of dustcloud the basic structure of the arms is made of dustcloud the Spitzer infrared telescope satellite took a picture of Andromeda galaxy in 24 micron infrared (visible is 0.4 to 0.7 micron, so this wavelength is way longer than visible light) it is kind of like taking an Xray photograph and seeing the bones. you dont see the stars (unless it is a star that happens to be surrounded by a dustcloud) thanks to Sean Carroll, of cosmic variance blog, for flagging this

Why is is that most of the planets of the solar system all lie pretty close to a plane? Is there something special about it? Sorry for sounding stupid...

I had to make up for my last stupid posting, so here , I hope this will be of interest: It takes two (October 2005) - News - PhysicsWeb http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/10/3 Now maybe they will figure out the base event at the heart of these explosions. Erich

I really am questioning what exactly the moon is. There is sever explanations. 1) It formed with the Earth ; ie from the same material that formed the Earth. Yet does not follow the same plane of rotation as the earth. 2) It was created during a collision with a large comet or planetoid with the Earth. 3) It was a rogue satellite captured by the Earth. But there is so many discrepincies that can throw those ideas out of wack. The composition of the moon is different than the Earth. The Earth has alot of iron, the moon has almost none. The age of the moon rocks and samples is older than anything on the Earth. So that totally rules out number 1 and most of nu…

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I am only thirteen. I am profoundly intelligent and plan on being a scientist or engineer in the future. Some of you may have read my very few posts but in conclusion, I am asking for some help. I want to learn about space and things in that area but the things they teach us in school are not informative and are basically insignificant pieces of information. Where should I begin to learn about space/astronomy? I have no idea where to find information on this subject but it is of an immense importance to myself. Please extend any assistance you can. Thank You, Mike

Let's imagine that there will be a big crunch at some point in the future and the universe will collapse. Then let's assume that another big bang will occur and the process will repeat itself many times. Will the amount of usable energy (non-heat) be conserved or will it be reduced after each cycle?

Is it possible Moores law technology; will supercede nano technology?...us.2u

Ok... if you have a completely static black hole (as in not moving, not rotating, etc.), is the Swartzchild Radius the event horizon radius? Wikipedia seemed to imply that but didn't really say it.

At least this should be a worldclass science media event. STARTS TOMORROW (Thursday 6 October) 18 Nobel laureates to attend this one. Private foundation money. (may be some I.D. religious spin) Admission to the 3 days of talks costs $500 Location: Zellerbach concert hall on campus of UC Berkeley. Homepage: http://www.foundationalquestions.net/townes/symposium.asp ("Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery" international symposium in honor of Charles Townes) Summary of Program: http://www.foundationalquestions.net/townes/symp_over.asp (1. major unknowns, 2. possible new technology, 3. future of science and fringe questions like philosophy and religion) …

well to begin i got my idea yesterday i was sick and wasnt able to fall alseep for hours so i hade nothin to do but think the whole time since u know it was pitch black in my room anyways anyways i was thinkin and i have always been interested in science the human body space and planets stars well anyways i was thinkin why are all the plants almost perfectly round if not perfectly round werent planets made basicly the same way as astroids mass just collecting agaisnt each other as a result of gravity and yet astriod are not perfectly round... they are pretty lumpy yes some are round but most arent quite as round as planets so why why are planets round when astroids are no…

I was having a look at NTSA website on black hole simulations and I noticed that the graphics are based on a 2 dimensional plane with the forming of the black hole represented in three dimensions. The (debatable) singularity therefore being represented as an everdecreasing cone. I've always imagined blackholes as a star collapsing into a smaller and smaller sphere with space-time curving inwards as the star collapses. The event horizon being the curvature where the star once was, what happens past this point is a bit more tricky to wrap your head round...there are numerous theories. It's quite hard to visualize this...if you imagine yourself on the sphere and ev…

SPACE ENDS Space ends, space does not go on forever and ever it ends. The difference between space ending or not ending is if space does not end then space does not have a shape but once you understand that space ends then space can take a shape and that shape can move from one shape to another shape. Yes space ends and moves.

'm not too big on astrology but for my line of work, it's becoming a bigger factor. You see I am a amatuer photographer, a night amatuer photographer to be more exact, and moonlight plays a huge role in my line of work. I tend to go out more the week the moon goes from, excuse me if I get this wrong, Gibbious Waxing -> Full Moon -> Gibbious Wanning since that is when I get the most moonlight. Well to my point. I live in Los Angeles California and was wondering what path the moon takes during the winter. I heard a lot of stuff like, "Summer, the moon goes from south to west and in Winter from north to west." So... the moon rises in either the north or south and a…

Now I know our universe isn’t infinite, however from what I understand about M-Theory the 11th dimension contains an infinite number of p-branes. Now many think that these p-branes each contain a universe (each with a different set of physics etc) But how could this infinity be possible? Then that would leave the absolute possibility that something would arise that would destroy everything, thus nothing would be possible. (Unless these infinite universe follow a set of rules) Now I could be wrong in my understanding of the M-theory (and if I am please correct me), but my question applies to any theory about multiverses or a system in which there is infinity… I don’…

What would happen if you covered the entire earth with a mile thick layer of say rock or steel (possibly material collected from the asteroid belt or other moons/planets) then built a giant, structure on the north pole area. this structure would be large enough to easily see from space. Large like 1/3 the height of the earth added on top. A giant mountain more than a building. Anyone want to wager a guess what if anything would happen regaurding gravity, orbit, rotation or anything else. Thanks from Jimmy Ray

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4237800.stm Most distant cosmic blast sighted "Astronomers have witnessed the most distant cosmic explosion on record: a gamma-ray burst that has come from the edge of the visible Universe. Gamma-ray bursts are intense flares of high-energy radiation that appear without warning from across the cosmos. They can release as much energy in a few minutes as our Sun will emit in its expected 10-billion-year lifetime. The blast was observed by the Swift space telescope and by a number of ground-based observatories. The latest, record gamma-ray burst was detected on 4 September, 2005, and lasted about three minutes. I…

Ashtekar and Bojowald are two of the most prominent people in Quantum Gravity research. Ashtekar was a co-founder of the LQG approach and Bojowald initiated the field of Loop Quantum Cosmology, where LQG methods are applied to help understand the big bang, inflation and features of the microwave background. In 2001 Bojowald showed that quantum gravity eliminates the classical big bang singularity and leads to a prior contraction phase. Now these two are working on a quantum gravity model of black holes and gravitational collapse (in a way the opposite of big bang expansion). http://www.arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0509075 Quantum geometry and the Schwarzschild singularity A…

I'm finishing up a book and in it a physicist Yakov Zeldovitch was explaining how a binary star system oribited each other. He went on to say that if one star collapsed into a black hole the remaining star would continue to circle around what appeared to be empty space. Then he goes on to say that the gravity of the black hole would begin violently stripping matter away from the companion star. I understand the process of a star collapsing into a black hole, but what I don't understand is why the black hole has more gravitational pull than it had when it was a star. I also understand how a black hole keeps pulling in matter and getting more powerful, but where…

Ok, I might be totally off-base here, but I recall hearing something about the moon's rotation slowing the Earth. Or was it speeding up, or slowing down the moon? Something involving the two interacting and altering each other's rotation, anyway. So, this got me thinking, could you possibly calculate, using what we know of this phenomenon, the day length a million years ago (assuming this was the only factor)? What about, say, 65 million years ago? Or 250 million? I'm not really interested in the usual "will the moon fly off or hit the earth?" stuff, but more about day-length in general, and the possible ramifications for paleoecology. Mokele

The Wiki page on "Star Lifting" has some details about removing material from the star, but it's mainly the parts from the popular definition that I've bolded that interest me. What would constitute an "unstable" star, and how could it be stabilized? Is there any way to prolong the lifetime of a star beyond star lifting? What sort of "envelope material" could be mixed with the core? Surely any technique to significantly prolong or reduce the lifetime of a star would alter it's brightness - am I correct?

so as im not an einstein with astronomy. this is either blatant bullcrap or it could possibly be true. what do you guys think, should we now all be shitting ourselfs? thanks the link for the topic http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/science/61501

I would like to know what happens to the supermassive blackholes in the center of galaxies when they collide. Do the two holes instantly join like 2 drops of water, or do they sort of "rip" at each other as they pass between each other?

I'm just wondering what the current consensus is, or, if the consensus is still in the affirmative, whether there are any growing beliefs in alternative theories (besides Creationism, obviously). For a while now I thought that the Big Bang was essentially proven beyond any reasonable doubt, but quite recently I read an article that claimed otherwise, citing (if I remember correctly) the discovery of red giants in galaxies too distant for them to have had time to form if the Big Bang model of the universe holds true. Anyway, there was some other theory proposed, in which the universe could have been trillions of years old, going through oscillations of galaxy formation…

Hi, First of all, cause this is my first message, I say hello to everyone and I would like to apologize for my english, it is not my native language. I am looking for a software that could give me the amount of solar energy received on earth according to latitude, longitude, altitude and day of the year. I think that such software exist but I don't where I can find it. Many thanks in advance.

What oh, what is space IF this question is answered plenty more scientifc questions can be answered as well. 1. a. Mathematics A set of elements or points satisfying specified geometric postulates: non-Euclidean space. b. The infinite extension of the three-dimensional region in which all matter exists. 2. a. The expanse in which the solar system, stars, and galaxies exist; the universe. b. The region of this expanse beyond Earth's atmosphere. -SmarterChild, Aim bot OK...so what is it? 1. well i am refering to the physucal space, as in outer space (def 2.) 2. The expanise....IN WHAT? what hold all this? Space, is something, it is not nothing, ot…