Astronomy and Cosmology

Hello, I'm building a small, simple program that allows people to easily experiment with interactions between bodies in our solar-system and any fictive system you want to play with. Since each body may loose its original orbit due to gravitational influence from other bodies, I need a way to determine its new orbit from its distance to the sun, mass and speed alone. The semi-major axis of the elliptic orbit can be determined since: v^2 = GM((2/r)-(1/a)) and therefore a = -(1/((v^2/GM)+(2/r))) Now, my question is: Is there a similar way to determine the orbits semi-minor axis (and eccentricity) from speed, mass and distance to sun alone? …

Please read this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283225706_HOW_TO_GIVE_A_SPACECRAFT_A_TRANSLATION_MOTION_AT_CONSTANT_MASS Abstract When you fire a bullet the gun experiences a backward displacement that can be stopped when the fired bullet hits an attachment to the gun beyond the muzzle. At the end you have the entire gun system being displaced through space at a constant mass. This is best done using an electric gun that does not consume gun powder. I have written this basing on experiments I have personally carried out. Your ideas are welcome.

Hello! I had a theory, thats been scraching my brain for quite some time and i didnt know where to write this. So, science says, that The Big Bang doesnt have a center, a starting point. That it expands from anywhere to everywhere. And this table showed, that it expands constantly from any point, any planet or star if we look at it so. A B C From A 0 km/s 10,000 km/s 20,000 km/s From B -10,000km/s 0 km/s 10,000 km/s But doesnt universe expand exponentially? Taking example, that point B is where we stand, and the The Big Bang's starting point is somewhere be…

hello all is in the title thanks for yours answers

This relates to my other thread on "Flatland" and Hilbert space. But is a seperate question. Are there any theories or models which attempt to account for dark matters gravitational influence, yet its seemingly non interactional presence otherwise, by describing dark matter as a higher dimensional particle which does not intersect with our 3 dimensions but however is so close to doing so it's gravitational effects still pass to our 3 dimensions? Or perhaps explaining it as all particles/fields having a higher dimensional form, the common matter and energy we observe intersect as to be observed by us in 3D. Some particles and fields however don't intersect with 3D,…

There was an excellent interview of Neil Tyson by Fareed Zakaria on CNN recently. Anyone see it? He suggested a reason ETs may have not made contact with us is because humans are not intelligent enough for ETs to WANT to communicate with us. This would explain the Fermi Paradox. We don't interview the Queen of a termite mound. If they are so much more advanced than we are, then they should be able to covertly figure us out. They could tap into TV and learn all the languages on Earth. What they would learn about humans is how politically divided we are. To make contact with some humans may cause problems with other humans. They are politically savvy enoug…

So again I had a brilliant thought, a mirror universe wich would balance out 2 sides of an equation, but it seems Sean Carroll had it first. Considering it, the equally opposing, more simple universe from nothing seemed like a good candidate to compare. The Mirror Universe - Sean Carroll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M._Carroll http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/big-bang-may-created-mirror-universe-time-runs-backwards/ VS Universe from nothing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbsGYRArH_w Which one of these would you choose if you assume one is correct and the other not? Why?

Why look for ET? May be they has already found us? And study us? For example: we started to at least partly control near space in 1970-es in the US (https://en.wikipedia...illance_Network) and the USSR (https://en.wikipedia...lligence_Centre) but before that era of control (for example, say, in the 19th century ET’s may have landed undetected and built an underground / underwater or ground camouflaged bases. In these bases they may have stored mini-robots imitating small animals or birds to use them for monitoring human activity. Recent developments in recon UAV’s (http://www.avinc.com/nano ) and battery technologies (http://techon.nikkei...0140224/335902/) show that this…

This I KNOW cannot be officially proven today, as current technology is not advanced enough to detect this. I posted this so people can just post their hypotheses on this matter. As scientific law states, all matter must be composed of something. So therefore, dark matter must be composed of something, but what? My theory states that dark matter is composed of a Sterile Neutrino, which is similar to a quark, but has no electromagnetism, which means that there is no way to detect this. Sterile Neutrinos do have a gravitational force, however, and so they could be the building blocks to the mysterious phenomena. Sterile Neutrinos are hypothetical matter, and so this m…

Here I am not supporting wars. This is just my theory (could be a foolish one). I always think that wars have made us more intelligent. It is the need to defend ourselves we advanced in technology (or is it the other way around). We started with weapons like swords and moved upwards. We came up with radios, planes, Turing machine which led to advancements in computers. As we advanced in computer technology, mastered its language we started to get many answers for a lot of questions. I also feel like if we find some new language (like computer language) we get all the answers to the questions about our universe. So my question is, are wars a reason for our advance…

Is the flow of time constant, or can events that haven’t occurred yet influence our behavior? A new paper provides scientific proof that humans can see into the future. You probably saw this coming. Can we see into the future? It’s a power claimed by soothsayers, oracles, witches, astrologists, and prophets since time began flowing in the direction science generally accepts it flowing in: Forward. (link removed by moderator)

Hello guys. Well, I'd like to share an article I wrote about that. I really felt like I had to write this https://medium.com/astronomy-cosmology-space-exploration/cd70cb8cb68f Feel free to tell me what you think, if you agree or not and why. advertising link removed It kinda saddens me that most people are too ignorant about the big stuff out there

Although this is a sad reminder, Earth and life on it will not be around forever. The most obvious reason is that a few billion years from now, the sun will have consumed itself. Apart from its disappearance removing the planet's only source of light, and releasing it from its orbit into an endless travel through space, the explosion the sun will cause during its death will turn all planets in the solar system to a crisp. And even if the sun wasn't a problem, there's the Earth's molten core. Eventually that will cool off too... meaning the Earth's tectonics will stop entirely, as well as the magnetic field surrounding it and protecting the surface from lethal radiation. S…

So if I was approaching 2 black holes the force between the two could develop a sweet spot. If I was to ride this sweet spot, I would travel in a figure eight around both black holes and end up in the same exact starting spot. Only this time I would be there long before I ever made the original journey. That would be time traveling into the past, theoretically at lest it is possible. But what if we did find a way to time travel? I always hear about different paradoxes that undermined time travel, Today I just have a thought about returning to the past that I am sure you good folks could rip apart or play along with. My thought is: If we could travel to the past, Wh…

Well everyone seems to want to know how the universe "started". It is a very valid point and has fueld debate FOREVER. But I'm asking you to just open mindly think for just a few minutes. What if there never was a beginning. Now at first that may seem just horribly impossible. But think about it. We as humans, all we know is that something must start and end just as everything does. (You must build a house first, there isn't always a house) but what if the universe was always here and always will be. What if there are no boundaries to our universe. It could go on for infinite. Everything on planet earth has a boundary. Your room has walls, a boundary, your house has a bou…

You know how currently the universe is the largest thing we know of? It supposedly started from a huge mass of energy exploding at one single point like a grenade and creating everything we know of today. We haven't been to the edge of the universe or even the edge of our galaxy and it raises the question as to what lies beyond the universe. Many assume it would just be empty space of nothingness forever, but I don't think the void of 'nothingness' is true. Say a grenade goes off in a test room. The fragments of shrapnel will go off in all directions. Now remove gravity and friction. Our universe is basically the grenade in the test room, except the test room is much much…

How can it be that intelligent people claim that there are black holes in the universe, e.g., at the center of galaxies, although the universe has only existed for a finite time in the cosmology they believe in? A black hole is an object whose mass is surrounded by an event horizon at which time is dilated infinitely. Such a state cannot be reached in a finite time. An event horizon is infinitely remote from an observer. This alone is sufficient to realize that black holes are merely mathematical constructs that do not exist in reality even if the universe is infinite in age. Isn’t it obvious enough that objects that need more than infinite time to form cannot exi…

May be the beginning of the rotation of galaxies due to the expansion of the Universe.When the expansion of the Universe,where there were particles with mass movement speed decreased,it is possible particle with mass appeared compact and and there where there were more paeticles with mass became the site of the future nucleus of the galaxy.The rest of the formed mass in the form of gas clouds following the core and twisted.

I've decided to read a book 'Parallel Worlds', which centers around the idea of parallel universes in near future. I am curious to know what is the science behind parallel universes. Please help?

Hi all, Last days i'm walking with a question in my mind and im not smart enough to answer it. So that's why I put it here where the smart people come. The universe is expanding, and if it has a boundary we cannot say into what. But if there's nothing behind the edge than we cannot say that we are expanding because relative to what is space expanding. From our view space is getting bigger. But from the view of space mass is shrinking. So like everything also an expanding universe is relative. The only thing you can say is that the ratio space - mass is changing. Bigbang 0% space - 100% mass Now 99,99% space - 0.0000000000000000000042% mass The quest…

These musings have been sent to the New Scientist magazine, as well as, a number of eminent scientists over the past year. To date I have received no responses. I was hoping that some one on this forum may feel able to discuss and contribute to this. **************************************************************************************************************************************************************************** For the last thirty years I have woken up at night wondering how life began. why this should happen I don’t know. As a layman I do not have the knowledge or information afforded to yourselves, and unable to go any further than my …

When speaking of the universe and parts of it, it is common for people to refer to those parts as being "in" the universe. I think this is sloppy wording. By definition if something has the position considered as "in", then there is an opposing position "out". Given that by definition the universe is everything the position of outside the universe is nonsensical. For example should the sentence: "It is the largest known star in the universe." Instead be worded as: "It is the universe's largest known star." This semantic error I believe actually causes a lot of problems with visualisation when picturing the universe on a large scale, leading to "God's eye" views o…

Just wanted to share. It is totally insane. The scale I mean, and the void.

I need some up to date solar system books, and especially about Mercury. Can you recommend me some ?

I often come across some nice astronomy pictures, but that do not warrant a thread of there own, so I thought I would make a thread where I could place some of these amazing pictures that are out there. This one caught my eye, Saturns southern auroura. http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011366/