Astronomy and Cosmology

Hi, Can a man-made satellite orbiting around the Earth help us gather information on: a) the ozone layer b) ocean currents c) other planets Are all the choices correct? Thanks

Source. This has been kicked around by biologists for millenia. What a pointless question. How can we define something when we only know of one inhabited world to draw definitions from. That's like defining language when you only know one letter of the alphabet, which in any case would make writing up such a definition rather challenging. Hhh. H hhh hh hhhh hh h hhhh hh hhhhhhh hh hhh hhhhh. Hhhh h hhh hhhhh h hhhhh h hhhh.......... Everything is measured or described in relative terms. If you don't have any reference points you're just lost. The same problem arises with 'intelligence'. Ask a psychologist what intelligence is and he'll balk. Corner…

Jdurg said in another thread, “I've always found it interesting how when we look up at the stars at night, we're actually looking back in time (Since if a start is hundreds of thousands of light years away, it takes the light hundreds of thousands of years to reach us). For all we know, many of the stars we are looking at may have gone 'BOOM' a long time ago. I always found that to be neat.” I understand that this happens because it takes that long for the light to reach us. However, doesn't this split time itself? Time is change. If the light that we are seeing hasn't changed to the present time yet, aren't we seeing another time? Therefore, isn't time itself i…

Some time ago I was reading a book titled "The Strange & Myserious" where they reckoned through some strange phenomea it could be possible to see a mirage in cloud formation...displaying another city or town in a completely different location reflecting what was actually happening. Also they maintained some of these cloud formations could reflect history from years gone by. I don't know if it's possible, that that there could be any truth in these stories or it was just sheer romantatism. Out of interest I'm asking you the experts phallacy or possibility?....Can our planet do that?....us.2u

Would I travel further-out or travel farther-in to find out ? How do we know that the objects that exist farther-in toward the original point of BB are new , when only one BB has occured . for example : I represent space being water . I represent a stone being an object . I drop the stone in the water ,the stone blows up as it reached a critical point,the water splashes and ripples expanding in an outwards motion pushing current water and creating a new type of water which exists in our known universe called 'dark energy' being the bond that glues our universe The particles & matter created from this stone expand with the water as the movement is exert…

is the universe infinite in size?

I've been poking around recently about asteroids and, more specifically, what happens when one hits us. Cratering is fairly obvious, but much of what I read concerned asteroids 'exploding' in the atmosphere, and indicates that it's fairly frequent. What I'm a bit fuzzy on is exactly how an large lump of fairly inert rock can 'explode'. The first idea that comes to my head is that it's like when a piece of material under force loading finally breaks; the sudden failure produces a pressure wave which, when it reaches our ears, if percieved as sound. So, is the explosion of an asteroid in the atmosphere basically a big version of the same principle, just under a lo…

How much does gravity have an effect on galaxies pulling on each other? What is the gravity constant for a galaxy?

I have noticed one of the seven stars over the ladst 4 or 5 tears has really dimmed prior to this I don't recall it being so dim is there an explanation for this? or has it always been so; & only recently I've noticed.

I just had a crazy idea that makes perfect sense to me. I was watching the new'ish TV series called Lost, a few episodes ago they used rockets to signal to between 3 groups of people each a distance away. If our Milky Way galaxy is fairly flat, then if we sent a huge rocket like an incredibly powerful nuclear bomb. Instead of sending the rocket towards the closest star send it vertically out of our galaxy. Then any alien civilisations looking to the stars would see it more visibly. Even if the thickness of the galaxy between our system and the top/bottom edge would take 50,000 years sending it out perpendicular (I think that's the right word ) to our system woul…

For those of you interested in Saturn's rings you might find the new news interesting. Here is a link to the animation: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/102072main_pia06144_half_movie.gif And here is a link to the article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-120304.html I am willing to bet this will give us more insight into Moon formation as well.

There is so much speculation as to whether this phenmonea exist through the years I've seen maybe once or twice craft or something like that not being sure as to exactly what I've seen I guess I've just kept it to myself thinking there's proberly a valid explanation I remember in my youth the whole sky.. "viewing to my right"- in the distance, was incredibly bright light like lightning but it wasn't a flash it stayed there for I think approx 5-10 seconds then vanished this would've been in the south-west in the winter of the 1970's, other odd things have occured but I'll relate to them later if anyone's interested. But like I said there's always a reason isn't there?...…

hi all, i want to ask something about the multiverses theory (parallel universe). Maybe it is not a universe, it is multiverse, and GOD is the GOD of these multiverses because these multiverses are all in just one big universe. anyway, i would like to clear my point to make you see what im thinking of. well ... Let me talk from a creationism and religious point of view right now. Now, GOD created a very big universe which contains multiverses which are connected by each other through wormholes. Suddenly, GOD created a man and woman (Adam and Eve) and sent them to the earth (our earth). they started as they are the parents and the source of the humani…

Everyone knows the earth is moving around the sun in an oval course, and that it's rotating around itself during that movement. And we all know that it's rotating not in a 0 degree inclination, but something that resembles 23 degrees (if I got it right, correct me if I'm wrong). Not long ago I've heard a theory that states that this inclination couldn't have been simply created as the earth was created from the sun, but was done about 10,000 years ago when a large meteor crashed on earth, relatively close to one of the poles, presumably shifting earth and causing it to rotate with an inclination of 23 degrees. That theory also states that due to this shift the two…

What are the consiquences of a magnetic pole shift?

If it's daylight on the other side of the world then it's dark here because our world blocks the sunlight can anyone explain if astronauts travel in space where it dosen't have our spinning planet to block out the sunlight why it is dark in space? & if the moon dosen't have an atmosphere how come in the daylight hours it's not one ball of molten lava I would have thought with the vast temparture differences "day & night" & no atmosphere to protect it the moon would be no more I see no one has answered my question about the "van allen" belt pherhaps after all there isn't one if there is I would gratefully receive that logic also we're shown on video footage th…

As far as I can make out we only see colour because of various gases witin our atmosphere & the natural sunlight that basically beams through these chemicals i.e. our Earths Atmosphere as a spectrograph that bends each particle of light into various lenghts which give us an equation of colour so we recognize our blues,greens etc..yet the U.S. Astronauts that appear on "The Moon" display the American Stars and Stripes in all their glory and also the American banner flaps in an atmospheric" WIND"? All the science that I learnt in my curriculum about rainbows and colours, I believed were true. Have I been misled or were the American Astronauts just actors?

Hey there guys! This is my first post (except for my introduction post) and here it goes: I was watching TV once (Discovery Channel I think) and I heard this thing about the radio waves coming from us are already dissapating. Therefore the radio waves being sent by aliens must already have vanished long ago so they won't get caught by SETI or other radio telescopes..... I don't know if this is true as I can't really remember :S Has anyone else heard about this? From your favourite member: Haz

Universal Fractal Approach I look everywhere for expression of fractal constitution of matter and of process. This stems from my gut/rational assumption that every phenomenon cannot but be based on and be an elaboration of a smaller-scale similar phenomenon. Having an information background in some Life sciences I see ALL aspects of Earth life as a fractal affair (postings in Evolution/Morphology/Exobiology). But I feel that every studied basic phenomenon everywhere may and can and should be analyzed for the variety of its possible/probable/plausible fractal predecessors. Thus, with only scan occasional information background in cosmology, I wonder if, for ex…

Universe E, m and D. Hoping to get some comments on the rationale of the following relationship between the universal energy-mass-expansion: For the total universe energy E on the left side of an equation let the right side of the equation be the sum of values of m(1+D), where D is the Distance from point of Big Bang and the sum is for all (spatial) values of D from D=0 to D=selected value. Both m and D vary continuously. From D=0, singular m decreases continuously as D increases with expansion ( and vice versa?). This appears rational and true-to-universe, and implies that eventually nearly all mass will be so diminished (and also diluted local…

I just read that the fastest meteorites can travel up to 160,000mph which is a significant difference to the 67,000mph the Earth travels around the sun at. I was just wondering if the meteorite hunters take time dilation into account when dating a meteor rock. If a chunk got blown off Mars 2 billion years ago because of time dilation when they carbon dated it they found it to be 1.999 billion years old. The process that affects the carbon allowing it to be dated would be slowed down by the time dilation, wouldn't it??

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6413598/ Interesting stuff.

http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/42/5/10 any thoughts I was also wondering how can any neutron star still be considered a star? it would seem that al fusion would have stopped if it was truly composed of neutrons.

The principle of ignorance tells us that the beginning of this universe was totally undefined. There were no mechanics dictating how it should act; no mechanics could. We cant even conclude there was a point when the universe wasn’t in existence. Nothing: no time, matter, energy, space, information, nor any properties whatsoever. So the second you state “something cant come from nothing” the second you apply a property to nothing. So therefore nothing is unrestricted. This is why quantum mechanics is grounded in the laws of probability. There was a probability that nothing would fluctuate, but there was also a probability for each and every possible state to flu…

entangled particles are just the same particle separated by space (yes, i know it makes no sense, but that is how they can transmit info faster than light). so, is it possible that when the universe was created, enough particles were entangled in such a way that there are entangled galaxies? maybe even planets or asteroids?