Astronomy and Cosmology

Kepler's 1st law of planetary motion states: Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus. This question had been bugging me. There are two foci in an ellipse. If this theory is true, what would be at the other focus point? Kepler's Laws

Anybody know why (more or less) the planets orbit the sun at the same angle?

It's coming on live on the Science Channel at 9pm EST - is anyone else gonna be watching?

Approx a year or two ago there was an aticle in the media about a system of planets orbiting around it's own sun just like ours I can't remember if it was a tabloid issue or on a radio or T.V. Bullettin...However at the time I was really enthralled but I have not heard a thing since has anyone else heard about this as well & got any further updates? or have I got my wires crossed somehow?...I think apparently this system of planets were many light years away...

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6864 "Astronomers have directly observed an extrasolar planet for the first time, but are at a loss to explain what they see."

Alpha Centauri is very unique in that it is the closest system to our own sun (4.35 ly) and contains two sun like stars in a binary pair. According to this website, http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/schatzer/Alpha-Centauri.html it is possible for planets to exist within 2 AUs of both stars. This distance also allows for planets to exist within both star's habital zone. Do we not currently have the technology to see if there are actually planets orbiting these stars? I always assumed the VLT interferometric array in Chile would be capable of doing the job.

Hi I had a thought that I would like to share and have your opinion on it. After Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, the only explaination to it was that the expansion came from a big explosion: the Big Bang theory was born. Now we have other data from the distant supernova survey that tell us that the expansion is accelerating and to explain it we supposed some kind of dark energy with quality opposed to gravity, some kind of repelling force. Here is my thought: with dark energy we don't need to suppose a big bang. The rought picture of the motion in the universe is: A) at big scale we see things going away from each other (dark energy) and B) at sma…

I just came up with a theory about black holes. I've read that they appear to be black because the gravity pulls all light into the black hole. In Physics class, I learned that the acceleration of gravity in a black hole would cause any object falling into a black hole to exceed the speed of light after only 2 seconds. What if light and matter doesn't just get pulled in black holes, but instead they just start moving faster than the speed of light? Wouldn't that make them appear black because they wouldn't be able to reflect any light? They would be moving so fast that light couldn't touch it, and reflect off of it? Would it be possible that light can move faster th…

Budget Analysts Call For NASA Cuts Washington DC (UPI) Nov 29, 2004 This seriously ticks me off. They have the hide to deal out favourable contracts to all their buddies in the Arms industry like Lockheed Martin, essentially cutting the knees out from under potential privateers NASA competes against, then with NASA left in a monopoly position the penny pinching bureaucrats looking for someone to villify and squash, turn their forked tongues on a long awaited Space vision. One thing you can say thats positive about the Butcher of Baghdad Bush junior is he doesn't worry about going after what he wants. I find it a genuine breath of fresh air to see a political le…

Is gravity produced by the rotation of the Earth, the mass of the Earth or a combination of both? I was wondering about making gravity on a space station. I've seen the hamster wheel type of station that makes everything stick to the walls...but what about putting a spinning ball in the center of a space ship. If the spin causes gravity then you could have a small('ish) mass and spin it very quickly to pull everything towards it. If the mass makes the gravity then the gravity producer might need to be so big that it would not be feasible....if it is a combination of the two then it could possibly work...right?

Does anyone know the velocity the Earth is travelling in relation to a fixed point in space? In other words....if an object could be released that was absolutely fixed in place, at what rate would I move away from it?

Hello, Those of you who have any knowledge about the shape of the universe, would you please come forward and share? The main idea seems to be that the universe is flat. And this has been proved by WMAP related experiments. Now what exactly does a flat universe mean?? and if you have any links on the shape of the universe and related information, please send them.

Stephan Hawking states that there could have been a so called "Pre-Universe" or a universe before the Big Bang. Now Black holes he states can lose their mass because matter is somewhat able to escape. Thats why when you look at pictures of black holes you see that there is matter streaming at the poles at high speeds. Now when to much of this matter is ejected out the smaller the mass of the black hole. Now it is "said" that when the black hole finally loses all its mass and then implodes. Now this implosion is also said to release most of the matter in which the black hole ate. Well what if the big bang was actually a black hole in which it was born from a big star. Or i…

hi guys & girls anybody knows the new ether rebirth???

Doe's anyone have data about Titan it's size land mass water mass gases e.g.hydrogen,oxygen,temparture,distance from earth doe's it have a magnetic pole? All info gratefully receieved could Titan ever sustain life as we know it?...us.2u

is there only one universe?

The most distant objects that we see are 13 billion light years back; It must have took them trillions of years to reach there from the center of the universe. That depends on their speed with refrence to the center of the universe. I see no problemo with this theory. how about U ?

Hello, and welcomeback for me Sorry I wasn't here long, but I had serious workoholism issues i needed to resolve. How different is life when you're unemployed <breaths in relief> I'm coming back into action, and with a question: I'm now in my uncles house in California, having myself a nice trip, and mostly visiting my little cousins. One of them - Noa - is going to be 5 in a few days. I've decided I'll teach her to be a true geek from an early age (and continue the legacy, of course), and buy her a brand new telescope. Since I'm going to be the one who teaches her on how to look on stars, and where to actually look for them - My question's this…

This has always puzzled me. Quarks come in fractions of 1/3 instead of -1 or +1 so it's hard to find one by itself. If one were to pull them apart, the energy put into fighting the string nuclear force would eventually cause it to 'snap.' The energy required to constitute such would have to be 2(E/cc) because the interaction creates two more quarks, I think? (weather or not the number is correct is kindof irrelevant) In the early universe, pairs of matter and antimatter would annihilate and give their energy in the form of photons. At the force splitting of the strong and electroweek, the symmetry was broken. For around every billion antimatter particles ther…

Providing there is an edge and that the universe is expanding, I wonder if it can be detected. We are seeing objects pretty far out there. We are seeing so far back that we're seeing more towards what the beginning looked like...new stars and such. Well, what happens when you're looking so far that the stars haven't formed yet? No energy is being made! How do you detect just dust and gas on the far side of stars? Energy from stars isn't passing through the dust on the way to us thereby transfering energy to the dust and making it visible. Therefore I conclude that we will never see the edge of the universe, not in a million years or it comes crashing back i…

I propose we make a new telescope in space that is 100m wide using mercury on a spinning plate as a reflector. How should we build it? Water proof fabric on telescopic poles? Divide the plate into sections and send them up in a shuttle?

How was it actually created - The Big Bang, colliding branes, God! I don't actually know what to think. Any thoughts

the moon's of jupiter have plenty of water ice and they have great scenery because jupiter is big in the sky and very beautiful and because of the gravity assist the delta-vee cost of getting there is not all that great like the galileo spacecraft did, you can do a close flyby of J and then slingshot with the other moons and arrive at Callisto with almost no fuel burned (after the main burn at earth for transfer orbit) mars is dry and does not have these advantages people on Callisto could use nuclear power to melt tunnels into the ice and create under-ice habitats and extract chemicals and stuff the jovian moons are a nice system--even…

NASA just claimed that " Spirit" one of their probes found some goethite indicating that Mars may have water. Although i've searched the web a bit but I don't understand the connection between water and the rock. Deos this strengthen the fact that scientists believe there is water on Mars. What do you think?

has everybody noticed that the bubbles in coke float upwards to escape the liquid. well what would happen in zero gravity where there is no up or down?