Astronomy and Cosmology

Just outta curiosity do you think that man can ever develop a huge neural net based on stars or other spacial phenomas....perhaps by building large face plates to direct the intensity of light in a certain direction

I am a senior in high school. And that means that I will soon have to choose a college to go to and a major along with it. Astronomy lies at the heart of all my scientific interest and I would love to make a living of it. But is it a good idea? I know there are career books out there that give you the average salary and stuff about a career, but I'm not going to base the rest of my life off of a few paragraphs I read in a 1500 page book. So what do you guys say? Should I "risk" majoring in astronomy (or physics), or should I safeguard the rest of my life with engineering?

After reading a Mars article on the main Forum Page I had a thought. I fwe build a nuclear plant or anything else permanent cant bacteria infect the planet? If we bring up a piece of non-sterile e3quipment it could place bacteria on the red planet that we later find and confirm as the first discovered like on Mars. I think NASA agress with me becuase they were recently persuading Japan to keep a craft that was no longer functioning to go to Mars. I think we should send up only nessecary misions and figure out if there is life on Mars before we accidentally put it there.

When I see a picture of space being bent by gravity it is always 2D. Why is it portrayed as 2D? If space is bent by gravity surely it would be bent more like a funnel shape, but a funnel shape would have uneffected areas of gravity, so you could try a ball shape, but now space is completely wrapped around the planet. What would be a proper 3D representation of the bending of space? I think that space doesnt bend like that at all. What if space is the force, and gravity is a result of the force being deminished. For example, space is treacle, and the nearer you get to a planet, the tracle turns more and more to a liquid state. This thinning of space, would be caused be…

News in... across the UK and Ireland, there will be a lunar eclipse tonight starting at 11:32pm and lasting until 1:06am (sorry for such short notice). the TOTALITY of the eclipse (visible to the naked eye) will last 24 minutes. it will appear as deep Red / Copper color it`ll not be 100% total blackout, but our atmosphere WILL distort the reflected light *sigh* looks like another late night for the old YT2095

Oddly to say such conclusion possible to do by using of existing theory. - A BB theory . - A theory of expanding universe. - A theory of the expansion of space at the speed of light. - A red shift in spectrum of the stars which "confirms" all these theories. So. Is it not strange, that the observer is residing on the Earth, of a thousand of the years does observes a not changed picture of starry sky? Considering "theoretically maximum speed of the light" with which occurs the expansion of space, observer must see enough a quickly changing picture of the location of stars. Accepting all enumerated above a theories as reliable, it is possible to expect several expl…

General Relativity states that a magnetic field cannot rotate faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, but the Hubble has observed some pulsars that rotate about once per second. They have strong magnetospheres that extend beyond the point where the magnetic field is rotating faster than light speed. Are the phenomena that occur at this circumference known?

In Science News (September 13th issue)a 90 light year away star, called the HD 70642, may have the first similiar solar system as ours. Specifically the twice as large Jupiter like planet which orbits the HD 70642, does so in a circular path. This allows smaller (Earth Like) planets to survive zooming, crashing metorites and astroids, etc. Personally, I don't think we will find life in our meager street of the universe. As for life on our "block" (the Milky Way), there has got to be...just got to be. As for our "city", our superclusters of Galaxies.....in the Virgo Group...got to be, got to be...

Discussion thread for the news article.

can someone please tell me a site were i can get cool star pics:spam:

http://www.motherplanet.com

Sorry for the non descriptive subject title but thats all I could say to myself. "LONDON, England (Reuters) -- A giant asteroid is heading for Earth and could hit in 2014, U.S. astronomers have warned British space monitors. But for those fearing Armageddon, don't be alarmed -- the chances of a catastrophic collision are just one in 909,000. Asteroid "2003 QQ47" will be closely monitored over the next two months. Its potential strike date is March 21, 2014, but astronomers say that any risk of impact is likely to decrease as further data is gathered. On impact, it could have the effect of 20 million Hiroshima atomic bombs, a spokesman for the British go…

we were taught at school that gravity was caused by the earths spin. so is gravity caused by rotation different to the orbit of the earths?? thanks in advance

has anyone caught a good glimpse of mars yet either with telescope or naked eye. i was wondering if anyone knew where to look because im borrowing my friends telescope if that could help me see something where i live

Do any of you think it is possible that we have 2 universes growing at different places in the nothingness? While reading some posts my mind got warped and i thought of that, thoughts?

I think SETI should start a Ufology department, but something like that may be too poorly thought of for an organization to take up. I think ufology is a valid area of interest, if only to prove the nonexistance of UFOs (but not geared towards that conclusion by any means). A methodical and statistics based investigation into UFOs could be beneficial. You never know, we might just find some extra-terrestrial intelligence at home. Any thoughts?

We all know of the effects the moon has on things like tides. I believe this is in reaction to the Moon's gravity, right? With Mars getting so close to us in the next few days, might it's close (relative I know) proximity cause some of the same effects the moon does? I know it is still much farthre off, but it is much larger than the moon.

This is also a paraphrased version of some paragraphs in the latest scientific american special edition on time. Do space and time exist independently of stars, galaxies and their other contents(substantivalism) or are they merely an artificial device to describe how physical objects are related(relationism)? As John D. Norton of the University of Pittsburgh said "Are they like a canvas onto which and artist paints; they exist whether or not the artist paints on them? Or are they akin to parenthood; there is no parenthood until there are parents and children". This brings up a long-neglected thought experiment of Einstein's. Consider an empty patch of spacetime. …

Since 1990 there have been detections of cosmic rays arriving with energies over 10E20 eV. At present less than a dozen have been detected that are undisputed but astrophysicist Bob Streitmatter, leader of the high-energy cosmic radiation group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland says the Earth surface is struck about one strike per square mile per century. The latest detectors search for the cascade effect in the atmosphere as the energies carom to the ground. At ground level the cascade is estimated to be about 50 ft wide by a couple feet thick moving near the speed of light. I know these energies are something we still can't come near producing in our…

We all see as an option that the big bang was an incredible amount of mass and energy being injected into our empty universe through an infinitley small point in space. I propose the point of mass never became larger but used its energy to move through the universe at C+ speed. Like a beam of energy constantly refreshing a picture on a TV screen giving us the appearence of reality The particle constantly visits every point in our expanding universe and refreshes reality for us. By using its accelerations, decelerations, and spins it can give the appearance and forces related to each iota of matter and by average time in one space it can give the appearance of m…

Mars should be the closest it will ever to get Earth in roughly 60,000 years (don`t know how accurate that is?). On August 27`th this year! (2003) according to "heresay" a good pair of binoculars will be more than enough to get a decent veiw of it. for UK folk it`ll be in the East/South East region of our sky about 20 degrees above the horizon (from my reconing). It`s quite plainly visible now, sadly I don`t have the facilities to take pics from my telescope, but as a red dot in the sky that doesn`t twinkle. It looks great even with the naked eye! make a calendar note, and check the news closer to the date for more details. All the best

Ive taken a real big interest in the stars... space.. space travel what not, i want to know where to start, i no nothing, so i need real beginner... maybe some books mentiond or something, or some websites to check out that just give basic info. thanks.

I was watching a program on interstellar travel on the Science channel the other night and it made me angry. They were talking about traveling to planets that we might find in different star systems, but they never mentioned intelligent life, or life more advanced than us. Why the hell would we waste time traveling to planets to drop probes to find out what we already know, that there's no intelligent life there. Why is everyone so scared of finding something that makes us look stupid? Why the hell would we explore planets that are unlike ours? I can understand that they may do it for different reasons other than trying to find intelligent life, but to me that just seems…

Hello, I have been searching for forever to try and figure out this Kepler's law stuff. I know that planets don't follow circular paths around the sun, but rather their paths are eliptical, the same with moons and other things. My question is "Why?" The diagram that I looked at showed that one of the foci would be the sun (for a planet orbiting the sun) and the other would be some blank place in space, so what I want to know is why is that blank place in space so important that planets are attrated to it. The same goes for moons orbiting the planets. Any explainations or links on the topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot for all of your help.

The cosmic soup seems to be made of these three items... Can someone...briefly....explain them..and what percentage in the soup they comprise.