The Big Space Exploration Topic [21-08-2017: Total Solar Eclipse in the USA!]

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  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,184
    The molecular species found on the comet's surface, are relatively simple organic compounds that are but an inch away from turning into amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Once you have those, life is but a matter of chance. Proteins, unlike lipids or carbohydrates, are in many cases "smart" molecules. Some have the unique ability to 'endorse' selected chemical reactions and coordinate the storage and release of energy via compounds. From there on, it's only a matter of (a lot of) time before such molecules organize into more complicated structures such as mitochondria, the starting point for living cells. Prokaryotic cells are the next step, then eukaryotic cells. Eventually they might feel the necessity to cluster together and form multicellular organisms. And if somehow natural selection demands them to evolve into mammals, well, who knows?

    The 'creation' of life as explained via a billion years of reaching an ever increasing structural complexity is actually rather simple. It has to take such a long time because chemistry doesn't come with a 'plan', it's based on chance encounters. (If you have a good plan for a bank robbery, you can get rich soon. If you're waiting for chance, say the lottery, you're statistically going to have to wait much - much longer.) Furthermore, since a higher level of organisation decreases entropy, it makes perfect sense to start with proteins and then mitochondria before getting to, say, bacteria or people. You see, nature desires an increase in entropy (chaos) and life appears to defy that desire. That's OK, however, as long as you 'pay' the bill (like paying a fine when you have broken the law). The cosmic equivalent of money is energy. Thus, when sufficient energy is invested, a higher level of organisation is perfectly feasible. And so the tools for energy transfer are built first. Mitochondria are considered the oldest structures within a living cell.

    With the molecular precursors for life now found in space (on the surface of comets and asteroids but also in interstellar clouds), there's even more of a reason for Creationism to lose ground fast. Personally, I find it neither insulting nor "unromantic" to accept that life wasn't guided into existence by a deity, rather I think the very facts of chemical chance, natural selection, evolution... enhance the beauty of it all. A computer built in a factory is nothing unique. A computer that would slowly evolve into existence in nature, now THAT would be AWESOME!

    I wish that one day we'd find living bacteria on comets and asteroids. (In fact, haven't we already?) The FED's (Flat-Earth-Dummies) - which is what I call Creationists - will then have to agree that Earth is nothing special in the cosmos. Of course they would refute the evidence because a) many of them are insufficiently educated to grasp the evidence and b) they'd probably call it another conspiracy of science folk and a cheat. Like the Apollo missions. Some say we never went to the Moon, that it's all a hoax. By the way, there ARE mirrors on the Moon via which we constantly measure the distance between Earth and the Moon with lasers. Who put them there? The Phantom Villains? HA!

    Anyway, I'm loving this. Organic molecules other than methane on a comet? Life is a cosmic game of chance, folks. I'm fine with calling it a divine gift. Just don't give me any of that six-days-from-zero-to-Adamo crap. Incidentally, is life a gift? Perhaps life elsewhere will take care of its host with more deference and respect than we are.
  • Here's a wonderful video made by JPL at NASA. It's completely realistic:

  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,184
    Beautiful, @Gustav_Graves! Thanks!!
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    Anyway, I'm loving this. Organic molecules other than methane on a comet? Life is a cosmic game of chance, folks. I'm fine with calling it a divine gift.
    God is a scientist.
  • Amazing new images of Pluto:

    lor_0299175241_0x630_sci_4.jpg
    lor_0299174713_0x632_sci_5.jpg
    lor_0299174809_0x630_sci_4.jpg
    lor_0299175097_0x632_sci_3.jpg
    lor_0299175145_0x632_sci_7.jpg
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,184
    I desire to know what it feels like to walk on that dwarf planet...
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    What? No colour? Is it the 60's?
  • Well it is pretty far away ;)
    Honestly I think it's just similar to the moon- colorless
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    That's planetary racism!
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Currently watching the BBC series WONDERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. Saw it in 2010, and recently found it on blu-ray, just had to have it. One of the better in its genre, and recommended to those who haven t seen it, if you are into physics and astronomy.
  • Posts: 12,526
    Always makes me think how insignificant we all are in terms of our place in the Universe.
  • edited September 2015 Posts: 11,119
    Well it is pretty far away ;)
    Honestly I think it's just similar to the moon- colorless

    I'm sorry, but did you actually read the report on these pictures? The surface of Pluto is by far not similar to Luna...or, our Moon in common language:
    NEW PLUTO IMAGES FROM NEW HORIZONS: IT'S COMPLICATED

    New close-up images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft reveal a bewildering variety of surface features that have scientists reeling because of their range and complexity.


    Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we’ve seen in the solar system,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado. “If an artist had painted this Pluto before our flyby, I probably would have called it over the top — but that’s what is actually there.

    New Horizons began its yearlong download of new images and other data over the Labor Day weekend. Images downlinked in the past few days have more than doubled the amount of Pluto’s surface seen at resolutions as good as 400 meters (440 yards) per pixel. They reveal new features as diverse as possible dunes, nitrogen ice flows that apparently oozed out of mountainous regions onto plains, and even networks of valleys that may have been carved by material flowing over Pluto’s surface. They also show large regions that display chaotically jumbled mountains reminiscent of disrupted terrains on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

    The surface of Pluto is every bit as complex as that of Mars,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “The randomly jumbled mountains might be huge blocks of hard water ice floating within a vast, denser, softer deposit of frozen nitrogen within the region informally named Sputnik Planum.

    New images also show the most heavily cratered -- and thus oldest -- terrain yet seen by New Horizons on Pluto next to the youngest, most crater-free icy plains. There might even be a field of dark wind-blown dunes, among other possibilities.

    Seeing dunes on Pluto -- if that is what they are -- would be completely wild, because Pluto’s atmosphere today is so thin,” said William B. McKinnon, a GGI deputy lead from Washington University, St. Louis. “Either Pluto had a thicker atmosphere in the past, or some process we haven’t figured out is at work. It’s a head-scratcher.

    Discoveries being made from the new imagery are not limited to Pluto’s surface. Better images of Pluto’s moons Charon, Nix, and Hydra will be released Friday at the raw images site for New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), revealing that each moon is unique and that big moon Charon’s geological past was a tortured one.

    Images returned in the past days have also revealed that Pluto’s global atmospheric haze has many more layers than scientists realized, and that the haze actually creates a twilight effect that softly illuminates nightside terrain near sunset, making them visible to the cameras aboard New Horizons.

    This bonus twilight view is a wonderful gift that Pluto has handed to us,” said John Spencer, a GGI deputy lead from SwRI. “Now we can study geology in terrain that we never expected to see.

    The New Horizons spacecraft is now more than 3 billion miles (about 5 billion kilometers) from Earth, and more than 43 million miles (69 million kilometers) beyond Pluto. The spacecraft is healthy and all systems are operating normally.

    Spherical-Mosaic-9-10-15.jpg
    Surface-Features-Callouts-9-10-15.jpg
    Chaos-Region-9-10-15.jpg
    Dark-Areas-9-10-15.jpg
    charon-9-10-15.jpg
    Composite-Haze-Image-9-10-15.jpg

    Follow the mission at www.nasa.gov/newhorizons and http://pluto.jhuapl.edu.

  • I'm sorry, but did you actually read the report on these pictures?
    No I didn't-- and you should be sorry ;)

    I'll definitely go back and read though- interesting stuff!
  • edited September 2015 Posts: 11,119
    CERES' BRIGHT SPOTS SEEN IN STRIKING NEW DETAIL

    The brightest spots on the dwarf planet Ceres gleam with mystery in new views delivered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. These closest-yet views of Occator crater, with a resolution of 450 feet (140 meters) per pixel, give scientists a deeper perspective on these very unusual features.


    The new up-close view of Occator crater from Dawn's current vantage point reveals better-defined shapes of the brightest, central spot and features on the crater floor. Because these spots are so much brighter than the rest of Ceres' surface, the Dawn team combined two different images into a single composite view -- one properly exposed for the bright spots, and one for the surrounding surface.

    PIA19889-1920x1200.jpg
    PIA19890-1920x1200.jpg

    Scientists also have produced animations that provide a virtual fly-around of the crater, including a colorful topographic map.


    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19890
    http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19891

    Dawn scientists note the rim of Occator crater is almost vertical in some places, where it rises steeply for 1 mile (nearly 2 kilometers).

    Views from Dawn's current orbit, taken at an altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers), have about three times better resolution than the images the spacecraft delivered from its previous orbit in June, and nearly 10 times better than in the spacecraft's first orbit at Ceres in April and May.

    "Dawn has transformed what was so recently a few bright dots into a complex and beautiful, gleaming landscape," said Marc Rayman, Dawn's chief engineer and mission director based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Soon, the scientific analysis will reveal the geological and chemical nature of this mysterious and mesmerizing extraterrestrial scenery."

    The spacecraft has already completed two 11-day cycles of mapping the surface of Ceres from its current altitude, and began the third on Sept. 9. Dawn will map all of Ceres six times over the next two months. Each cycle consists of 14 orbits. By imaging Ceres at a slightly different angle in each mapping cycle, Dawn scientists will be able to assemble stereo views and construct 3-D maps.

    Dawn is the first mission to visit a dwarf planet, and the first to orbit two distinct solar system targets. It orbited protoplanet Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, and arrived at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

    Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

    For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

    More information about Dawn is available at the following sites: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov & http://www.nasa.gov/dawn
  • Anyone??
  • edited September 2015 Posts: 11,119
    Guys. Just....just...have a look at these new pictures from Pluto. It really shows that Pluto has an atmosphere. The fog is even creating longer shadows on the high ice mountains of the dwarf planet. ASTONISHING!!



    Pluto-Low-Haze-9-17-15-FINAL-USE.jpg
    In this small section of the larger crescent image of Pluto, the setting sun illuminates a fog or near-surface haze, which is cut by the parallel shadows of many local hills and small mountains.






    Pluto-Mountains-Plains%209-17-15.jpg
    Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured a near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto's horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto's tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 230 miles (380 kilometers) across.






    Pluto-Wide-FINAL-9-17-15.jpg
    Just 15 minutes after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto's horizon. The smooth expanse of the informally named icy plain Sputnik Planum (right) is flanked to the west (left) by rugged mountains up to 11,000 feet (3,500 meters) high, including the informally named Norgay Montes in the foreground and Hillary Montes on the skyline. To the right, east of Sputnik, rougher terrain is cut by apparent glaciers. The backlighting highlights more than a dozen layers of haze in Pluto’s tenuous but distended atmosphere. The image was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto; the scene is 780 miles (1,250 kilometers) wide.






    Flow-Detail-Annotated-9-17-15.jpg
    Ice (probably frozen nitrogen) that appears to have accumulated on the uplands on the right side of this 390-mile (630-kilometer) wide image is draining from Pluto's mountains onto the informally named Sputnik Planum through the 2- to 5-mile (3- to 8- kilometer) wide valleys indicated by the red arrows. The flow front of the ice moving into Sputnik Planum is outlined by the blue arrows. The origin of the ridges and pits on the right side of the image remains uncertain.






    Overview_reduced-9-17-15.jpg
    Sputnik Planum is the informal name of the smooth, light-bulb shaped region on the left of this composite of several New Horizons images of Pluto. The brilliantly white upland region to the right may be coated by nitrogen ice that has been transported through the atmosphere from the surface of Sputnik Planum, and deposited on these uplands.
  • Posts: 11,119
    Isn't Pluto's brother lovely too? Look at him! Charon's wearing a brown whig :-D!
    Charon-Neutral-Bright-Release.jpg
    Charon-Detail-(with-connecting-lines)-9-29-15.jpg

    And this amazing shot is not a Photoshop edited composite. THIS is what New Horizons really saw. This shows how close Pluto and Charon are 'dancing' with each other. Also notice Pluto's blue atmosphere again:
    Pluto-Charon-v2-10-1-15.jpg

    And now you can see Pluto's atmosphere in color. And be astonished, because it has the same color as Earth's atmosphere:
    Blue-Skies-on-Pluto-FINAL.jpg

    And yesterday it has been made official. Pluto's has water ice...lots of it!
    context_map3-FINAL.jpg
  • Posts: 11,119
    Come on forummembers! This is the perfect topic for a Saturday afternoon :-D! Especially if you want to enjoy some non-Bond-stuff :-D!
  • jake24jake24 Sitting at your desk, kissing your lover, eating supper with your familyModerator
    Posts: 10,591
    All my focus will be on Bond for at least another two months ;), but those are some truly amazing pictures.
  • Posts: 11,119
    jake24 wrote: »
    All my focus will be on Bond for at least another two months ;), but those are some truly amazing pictures.

    They literally stunn me. Seeing/reading all that negative news about immigrants, makes me wonder why we don't let ourselves astonish and awe anymore with these kind of discoveries. Those discoveries are from a human perspective truly good and inspirational.
  • Pluto astonishes us again!:

    MountainousShorline.jpg
    PlutosBadlands.jpg
    CratersandPlains.jpg
    Very-Best-View-of-Pluto.png
    Very-best-view-of-Pluto-(mosaic).jpg
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Colour me blown away....
  • Posts: 1,296
    This post is more like it this gives me big ideas for my fanfic..... Gets the imagination going.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    IGUANNA wrote: »
    This post is more like it this gives me big ideas for my fanfic..... Gets the imagination going.

    Would love to see Bond going to Pluto.
  • Posts: 1,296
    I have bookmarked this thread for extended research. :)
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,184
    @Thunderfinger

    Albert R. Broccoli's EON productions Limited presents

    PIERCE BROSNAN

    as Ian Fleming's James Bond 007

    in

    S T R I C T L Y
    P L U T O N I C

    ?
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    Too bad that film didn t happen. For DAD, that is.
  • Now this is a cool image! The moon passed between Nasa’s Deep Space Climate Observatory and the Earth

    12645048_10100842060096991_463422532856201461_n.jpg?oh=ea8c33ed7788626621e74157ab0933da&oe=5728B020
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 24,184
    @Master_Dahark

    I must admit it looks like a photoshop image. ;-) But indeed, looks good. :)
  • edited June 2016 Posts: 11,119
    New pictures for today, 09.06.2016:

    From Mars Rover Curiosity and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter:
    Frost on the North Pole Region of Mars:
    PIA20731.jpg
    PIA15881.jpg
    Northern rim of Gale Crater on planet Mars:
    PIA20333.jpg
    Looking at Mount Sharp, inside Gale Crater, planet Mars:
    PIA20319.jpg
    A dune near Mount Sharp:
    PIA20284.jpg


    From the New Horizons probe at Pluto:
    Close-up of Pluto's 'heart':
    PIA20726.jpg
    PIA20732.jpg


    From the Dawn probe at Ceres:
    Best view yet of the mysterious 'white spots' inside Occator Crater:
    PIA20355.jpg
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