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Top 10 Unsolved Space Mysteries
Joe Jordan writes "Space.com is advertising the Top 10 Space Mysteries for 2003, and perhaps for all time, given the current rate of discovery." Some of them are obvious, like the origin of life, and the possibility of alien life forms, but the list is still a good compilation of space's greatest questions.
This list reads more like pop-movie script devices than astronomy.
Number 10 is "will be survive 2003" or will we be destroyed by an asteroid?
Also mentioned is SETI which is interesting to laymen, but not really at the forefront of most astronomers minds.
The whole of the list is just fuzzy headed gobbledygook a high school student turned in for a book report. "The Enigmatic Sun" indeed.
A lot of the things are based on theories which are tested on computer models. What I'd really like to know, is how these are programmed, that's the great mystery. Because they are all working on past events, and seem to only desire to do so. The quantum leap will happen when enough detailed data is gathered about actual events as they happen, which can then be extrapolated to the past. Now, maybe some of this happens already, but the issue I have with these sites is that they do not cross-link often enough to research papers that explain things to that %age of people who, like me, are thoroughly unsatisfied by the superficiality of such content.
Most of the models (follow the links in some sections) seem to have given incorrect output - so the real question is what they do then... it's a bit easy, really, to take your model and add a couple of new variables in there until they get it right. This doesn't really prove anything though, does it? e.g. There are a couple of planets missing but they are there, so let's bung in a bit of extra icy matter and UV radiation that will cause it to collapse into Uranus.
The moon creation simulation is the one that gets me. They seem still to be assuming that it's ONE impact that created the moon, and even give the analogy of a small car crashing into an SUV (follow links from moon story). I think it's much more chaotic than that, and is really a big highway pile-up, but where some cars could still run, and were driven away billions of years ago, some have degraded into other rocks and asteroids, and the big bit in the middle coalesced into the moon. But astronomers always simplify for a better comprehension. This is all very well, but then they go on to insist their model is somehow close to reality. I think it's way too complex for a computer to simulate; every atom has a /dev/random (OK it's more like a predictable Windows TCP/IP stack, but there's some entropy in there), and that's the real problem. How do you simulate all of those?
The real excitement comes when currently forming galaxies can be studied over a long enough period - perhaps by simultaneously studying several galaxies in enough detail to come up with decent fluid/gas dynamics in space.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I recently read in Discover magazine, that some astrophysicists are openly questioning whether we have the mental prowess to actually understand many of the mysteries in the universe.
For analogy, they talked about Apes. While it is clear that an Ape has intelligence, we do not expect them to start solving differential calculus any time soon. Their intelligence can't even conceive that such a thing exists.
Could it be, they asked, that perhaps some "secrets" of the universe are simply beyond our ability to even know what we don't know; and like the Apes, we are unable to even conceive their solutions?
Food for thought,
John
The drops of water don't know themselves to be a river; and yet the river flows.
The greatest question of all time is: "Are we alone?"
...and yes I know the dark side of the moon isn't always dark, but we'd want to cut down on earthshine too probably.
That's really the other ultimate goal of space exploration, isn't it? (The first goal is to find us a new place to live after the earth is used up).
But there is such a simple way to answer the question: Take all the cash we are using on rediculous stuff like the ISS and:
BUILD A GIANT TELESCOPE IN SPACE OR ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.
And I mean BIG.
One so Hugeomegagigantic that it can actually SEE the surface of extra solar earth sized planets in detail to pick out cities, roads, and lights.
And then, if we saw with our own eyes that there was another civilization -- imagine the space program we'd start to have then.
As a professional astronomer, that list is quite different from what I'd give... here's my go:
1. Dark matter - what the hell is it?
2. Dark energy - what is it and why is it the strength it is? (#1 in the article)
3. Short period gamma ray bursts - what the hell are they?
4. Long period gamma ray bursts - what the hell are they?
5. How prevalent is life and intelligent life in the universe? (#6 in the article)
6. Star formation - what determines where and when it happens?
7. Gravitational waves - can we detect them? what will they tell us?
8. Was the universe reionized by stars or quasars, and when?
9. How does solar activity couple to the Earth's climate?
10. How does the feedback from stellar winds and supernovae into the interstellar medium affect it?
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