Astronomy and Cosmology

I have been studying in the field of astronomy. Of course I come across many questions that I may never find the answers to. But one question came to me today after watching a document on black holes. The question is this " is it possible to weaponize or use a quasar?" This assuming we master the control of a black hole . The question seems crazy but somewhat realistic to me and I would like to see what anyone eles thinks.

Why can't we just go faster than the speed of light? I know its supposed to be a big law in physics but it doesn't really make sense to me. I mean light isn't the fastest thing in the universe. There are other various particles that travel WAY faster than light would. So why can't we? How is adding a few more kmps from a speed almost the speed of light to go faster than light such a problem?

I'm not that good on my astrophysics, but considering many models point to a multiverse, why couldn't the effects of gravity of the outside universes be propelling the increased expansion of our own? the "dark energy" we indirectly detect is speeding up the expansion of our own universe, but as i mentioned, couldn't the gravity from neighboring universes be pulling on each other and driving this expansion?

Is it really sure that the total amount of matter+energy is constant in the Universe? What happen with antimatter and dark matter & energy?... and with neutrinos?

http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/fermi-data-tantalize-with-new-clues-to-dark-matter/#.Uz-BRURpcnV The Fermi X- and gamma-ray satellite has measured excess gamma rays from the Galactic Center of the Milky Way that cannot be explained. They are believed to be the signature of dark matter which is concentrated in the Galactic Center near the central black hole of the Milky Way. The high gravity is believed to concentrate the dark matter making the effect strong enough to be visible to our instruments in the region of the Galactic Center. There is currently tension between three different experiments intended to detect dark matter in particle experiments deep under…

If dark energy pervades the universe and is responsible for inflation, and that the space between galaxies is inflating, how do galaxies collide? Would inflation not keep them apart and why does dark energy only seem to work on galactic scales? Why, or is it, not working within our solar system?

So as far as I understand everything in our solar system orbits the center of mass (Barycenter?) So in a binary system with planets how would the planets orbit? Would it orbit around both suns in one long orbit? Orbit around one sun? Or orbit kind it like a figure 8? I'm no science expert just an enthusiast.

Consider 2 equal light sources that continue to emit a consistent stream of photons as they rotate around a stationary Centre Of Mass (C.O.M.) inclined at 45 degrees and these streams travel at the speed of light, in a straight line without deviation or obstruction, from the point of emission to the Observer. Newtonian Domain In this model there are no (1) small sizes, (2) great speeds or (3) huge masses involved to allow the projections to be scaled proportionally in a 3D Euclidean space that represents the paths of current and already emitted photons at a discrete instance in time. The only divergence from a true Euclidean representation is made by measuring the…

This still just baffles me and I was hoping it can be explained better. How do we know that an entire spiral galaxy is spinning at the same speed? I mean, we (solar system) haven't even made it one lap around the milky way yet. How can we tell that other galaxies are spinning at all? For simplicity, I was reading on Wikipedia: "...a new sensitive spectrograph that could measure the velocity curve of edge-on spiral galaxies to a greater degree of accuracy than had ever before been achieved. Together with fellow staff-member Kent Ford, Rubin announced at a 1975 meeting of the American Astronomical Society the discovery that most stars in spiral galaxies orbit at rou…

In the following snippet from the Wikipedia article on Cosmic Background radiation, there is an original foto of the radiation spectrum followed by two corrected versions. In one sense they are corrected for movement, but they are also corrected for "dipole term". It looks like they are saying "our" dipole term, if so I don't understand their meaning. From the foto itself though it seems to mean to me that they are referring to the dipole term of the early universe, as if its a given the early universe is a dipole and they are correcting by removing that dominant feature. Any opinions or arguments? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation

Has anyone heard about this yet? I heard it on the radio. They detected this in Antarctica. This is supposed to confirm inflation at a trillionth or a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang. Does this confirm the existence of gravity waves? I don't have a clue what this is or means. Anyone know? I tried to post a link, but somehow it won't let me.

I want to check my probable point sources by this link http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR?-source=II/246. for example I input the coordinates of M31(in galactic or ecuatorial system) and the search engine doesn't give any result, no object found. But M31certainly is in 2MASS catalog How should I use this search engine ? Thank You in advance.

My school is entered into a competition called Can Sat, we must create a miniature satellite the size of a soft drinks can and record different temperatures from different insulators to see if the cheaper materials are as good as the more expensive alternatives. We are looking for social media support and it would be greatly appreciated if anyone could follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook. Thanks for reading. Twitter: @TheFelixProject Facebook: TheFelixProject

How do we know that there are 100 billion galaxies in the universe? If the universe is expanding away from every point,rather than as a sphere from a central point,how do we no it's limits?

Firstly excuse my ignorance on this subject I was watching an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson and he described how POSSIBLY the fabric of space time itself may be unable to endure an infinite amount of expansion, and would simply tear at some point. This concept seems unintuitive to me, as it describes the expansion of space as a kind of "stretching" wich has many implications.. Now im having trouble thinking about this as a 4 dimensional problem, but obviously it has implications in the 3rd dimension as we are observing objects in the unvierse growing farther apart. So for now I'm going to stay in 3 dimensions and hopefuly not appear too ignorant, I am thinking a…

Hello. First of all I'd like to apologize for the shitty posts I made since I joined. But hey, poeple can change. Well, now to the topic: Most physicists consider the Universe to be flat, right? But what does it mean to be flat? The Universe expanded in three dimensions, so how can it possibly be flat? Also, I'd like someone to explain me what that flat region in the cosmic microwave background radiation map is. What does that mean? Does that mean that the Universe is hotter in that flat region, and if so, why is that? I got a feeling that my second question might answer the first one, but hey, I'm confused

Why is there so much dark energy in the universe if we can't find any naturally? Where is it all? Why is regular energy so special. Why are we so special that we have regular energy?

Today in science class we were talking about waves, you know, sound waves and radiation and other types of waves. So, the science teacher was saying that sound is basically just a mechanical latitudinal wave. So then, I asked him if sound travels in a vacuum. He said no, because there is nothing in a vacuum. No air or nothing. I asked him why, and he said that he didn't know. I understand that space doesn't have any air in it, but how can there be nothing at all? There must be something in the vacuum like air, right? Can you tell me, I was mind blown today. I always thought that in space there was a different form of air, or something that sound could go through, …

How was the speed anomalies of the space probes NEAR, GALILEO, ROSETTA etc. measured I often hear that Doppler Effect was used. But how does that work ? Once I hear a atomic clock was ion board the Pioneer 10 and 11 space probes. A signal was send from earth and to the pioneer probes, - asking what time it is (on board) , the atomic clock on board replied, - and the signal was turn back to Earth with that information. Now it was easy to calculate the distance based on the time it took the signal to return. But this has (so far I understand) nothing with Doppler Effect measurement to do. What is this time calculation technic called ? So fare I understand Dop…

Could the Eridanus Super void be the center of a some ultra mega super cluster larger than our own observable universe?

As obvious as it may seem, Dark Matter is Dark Matter. It is matter that doesn't interact with light and accounts for most of the gravity we see

I originally asked this question about a year ago in the Classical Science section. (You can read it here). Since then, I have come across new (to me) information that I would like to get clarification on. Pantheory's post was the last of the original thread: By far the the simplest definition of space is that it is the volume the matter encumpases, or as you said: the distance between matter. But this is not the present theoretical consensus model of space (unfortunately ) Although space is known to have energy within it, as in zero-point-energy, and hypothetical particles within it like dark matter, or theoretical particles like the Higg's and virtual par…

I'm curious if this topic has ever been discussed. My personal theory is that dark matter is just dead energy. Which explains the 5-1 ratio. Has this ever been discussed? Or am I just an idiot? I have a weird feeling about this one.

A. Is it possible to travel @ or near light speed (or beyond!) B. Would general relativity slow time down enough inside your spacetime bubble (?) to allow you to travel x far. C.What are the most likely methods of fuel or propulsion/spacetime manipulation D. Materials needed to build such a vessel E. In our lifetime or ever I have none of these answers or anything that would even resemble an answer. My answer would be maybe

if dark matter is showing it's existence with gravity effects, wouldn't it be drawn into a black hole along with everything else approaching it, being crushed into the primal constituents of whatever it is made of? If the majority of the universe is of dark matter rather than normal matter, wouldn't that mean black holes are accordingly composed primarily of dark matter?...