Astronomy and Cosmology

What happens if you give birth to a baby in space? or is it(birth) impossible?

What does your Drake Equation yield? I heard Michio Kaku interviewing a guy working at SETI a couple of weeks ago on his radio program "Explorations". Did anyone catch that? They discussed the likelihood of detecting intelligent signals from nearby stars. The SETI guy, sorry I missed his name, said he didn't know how common intelligent life was, but within the next few decades the SETI search will either find ET(s) or conclude that they are not out there, or at least not transmitting. He was critical of the Rare Earth hypothesis, among other things, explaining how even it Earth had no moon the loose rotational axis would move so slowly that it would hardly pose a thr…

I asked this in a thread in the relativity forum and it got buried and never got answered. Does the separation of matter caused by the expansion of space experience the same time dilation and length contraction as a similar distance change and speed from a rocket ride? I am thinking that if two galaxies are at rest with the CMB but are separating at relativistic speeds due to a increase in distance from expansion, they will share the same time frame. I am thinking that if the two twins blasted off from Earth experiencing equal acceleration but in opposite directions, They also would experience the same time frame. Despite there increasing separation speed. …

if you get a telescope for example hubble and look deep enough into space you see light and images from billions of years ago would it be possible if we looked far enough we could see the big bang?

Im sorry if im mising the plot completely here.... If the universe started at the big bang (or something similar) and then expaned from there, and we know within reasonable doubt how old the universe is then can we not say that the universe is no bigger than light could have traveled during that time (since nothing can move faster than light) ???? Maby im mising something... Thanx

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1172740v1?sa_campaign=Email/pap/21-May-2009/10.1126/science.1172740

Computer Simulations suggest that: hundreds of medium-sized Black Holes are roaming loose in the Milky Way. These rogues... are the orphaned Central Black Holes of the many smaller Galaxies that the Milky Way has swallowed over its billions of years of existence. For: Galaxies, such as our own, most often grow by absorbing smaller, satellite galaxies, such as the Large Magellanic Cloud, which orbits the Milky Way. And: each of the hundreds of billions of Galaxies in the Cosmos formed a massive or supermassive Black Hole at its center [and] when big Galaxies collide -- a relatively common occurrence -- their central Black Holes eventually merge. But: someti…

More accurate measure of supernova brightness means more reliable distances. (Type Ia SNe are used as standard candles.) This will enable more accurate measure of the Hubble rate---the expansion rate/distance ratio basic to cosmology. The SciAm has a news item about this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=a-better-way-to-size-up-distant-gal-2009-05-22 ===sample excerpt== the new method can be used to measure a supernova's luminosity, and hence distance, much more quickly, and with a level of accuracy the study's authors say surpasses the traditional approach. The researchers found that the ratio of the brightness of two co…

I was wondering how close you could look at our moon with the Hubble telescope? Could they see the American flag that was put there? If so that would prove to the skeptics that say they never landed on the moon that they actually did.

Ok ive been looking over alot of science forums for awhile now and there is something that keeps bugging me. I believe we estimate the universe at 13.7 billion years old. Hubble has taken deep field photos of galaxies that appear to be 13 billion years old. That appeared just after the dark age. Here is my problem. We can supposedly see things that happened just 700 million years after the universe began, yet at that time when the light came from those galaxies we couldnt have been more than 1.4 billion lys away from them. Thats even if we were moving at the speed of light up until that point. So how could we just now be seeing that light? I would have though…

The Hubble rate figure of 71 (km/s per megaparsec) has been the standard one to use for over 10 years now, since 1998. One of the main reasons for the HST was the socalled "Hubble Key Project" of determining it. And that team reported in 1998. There was a range of uncertainty though. Now it looks like, using the HST during the years since 1998, they have narrowed the uncertainty to about 4 percent and have a new estimate of 74. It will take some time for this to be accepted, and for changes to be made. Like the default parameters in Ned Wright's calculator are still 0.27, 0.73, 71. I would guess that eventually the default numbers will change to 0.25, 0.75, an…

Should the earth be properly aligned to receive a coronal mass ejection from the sun of sufficient size to cease all alternating current on earth for one half of one cycle after which the magnetic poles of earth have reversed, would this appear to be a loss of one half instant of time relative to the rest of the universe? I found the following while researching: http://www.etheric.com/LaViolette/Predict.html Regardless of your perceptions of Dr. LaViolette, he was certain that the galactic center was not acting like an empty, imaginary center of rotation. Since we are now nearly certain that the most powerful force in the universe lies at its very center, …

Everyone knows that BLACK HOLES suck up everything around them, even light can't escape. Consider a black hole. It keeps on sucking up the space around it endlessly, Since there is no limit, infinite amount of space and time are twisted and sucked up, THERE MUST BE ANOTHER UNIVERSE WITHIN THAT BLACK HOLE!! IS THAT POSSIBLE? Please Explain. Waiting for ur kind response....

http://www.esa.int/esaMI/herschelplanck/index.html a lot of media stuff about it at this site.

I know that the title is badly worded, sorry. Is it possible for the big bang to still be happening and that is the cause of the expansion? Also, off topic. Could gravity be a result of a fourth dimension? I know this is kind speculation, but it is more of a question than a speculation. But move if you must.

I thought that it would be great if someone would be able to post latest news concerning the field of Astronomy and Cosmology. Personally I am a novice in the field (some would describe me as a baby) however I would like to contribute to the community. The latest news in the field that I was able to identify is the said news about Stephan Hawkins who is being sick and kept in London’s Hospital undergoing tests to determine his health status and reasons for his latest hospital addmision. As well as the discovery of a planet that resembles the mass of the Earth by 1.9 times. Here is the link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/science/22planet.h…

Is dark matter losing support? This Physorg article seems to think so: http://www.physorg.com/news160726282.html They suggest that perhaps there's yet another deviation in Newtonian mechanics at play which needs a different theory to explain besides the "dark matter" explanation. What do you think?

I hear what you're saying but my point is that a previous detailed understanding of other models is not a prerequisite... and in fact, may detract from a new theory that is being concieved. Some authors (fiction and non-fiction alike) do not read books as they feel it will cramp their artistic freedom. Many creative works have originated from unlikely sources. It's then up to the scientists to nitt pick the theory to confirm or deny it.

On the equinoxes, the earth's rotational axis is perpendicular to a line drawn between the centers of the sun and the earth with tangents to the surface of both lying in parallel planes. Do the axes of the sun and earth ever wobble through a point where they have the same linear function in both parallel planes?

RaulDuke started a valuable thread in which a number of persistent confusions came to light. He elicited excellent responses from several people---Airbrush, Sisyphus, NowThat, Severian and probably others I'm forgetting. The thread has grown. I'd like it if we could have a shorter focused thread that examines the causes of the confusion that people (not just RaulDuke) get into. The reaction was kind of coherent and unanimous, on most points, which is one reason I think it worked. An exception that stands out in my mind is that early on Sisyphus made the key point, which then was seemingly forgotten as a ton of other comment, often informed and valuable, poure…

I have no idea what I'm talking about, but If the universe were considered a system and its expanding, wouldn't the internal energy go down, and that would counteract natural entropy, or do I just have the completely wrong idea about this stuff.

Submitted for your amusement, an attempt to tell a 13.7-billion-year story in five minutes. Why is the second most abundant element in the universe so rare on Earth? There are at least a couple science errors that have been corrected since this first-ever performance of the thing. Name them! /Brian http://www.sciencecomedian.com/blog

are really used as a base to estimate the age of the universe? The oldest stars we see are "some of the first"? Thats like looking at the oldest living human who is say 115 years old and using them to estimate that the human race started 115 years ago.

There's no limit to the varying ideas about why the Fermi Paradox occurs, so I think it would be interesting to hear others' ideas. My top 3 list (from most likely descending toward less likely): 1) Chemical Evolution, plain and simple. It is so unlikely, even over billions of years, trillions of gallons of water, and millions of suitable planets, that life is extremely rare. Chemical evolution has always been the weakest point in the theory of evolution in my eyes. The odds of any self-replicating molecule coming into existence are inconceivably low. For life of Earth, somehow an information-storing molecule (RNA most likely) had to come into existence throug…

Gravity slows down time In Black hole, there is a lot of gravity. Thusly, inside the event horizon, time has flowed at much slower rate than outside of it, from the moment of the forming of the said hole. Thusly, is it not possible that 'in' the black hole, it is year 1600 ad or something, earth time, if the black hole had formed in, say 1500 ad So, if we popped in the black hole mentioned above, surely we would be back in year 1600..? And so, when we popped back out, we would then be in the past. So, is this possible? Using black holes to travel back in time? Or have I just misunderstood time and the way it bends in black holes?