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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.
The *Terrible* *Secret* *of* *Space*!!!
(First post? Perhaps... Maybe...)
"Can we survive 2003?"
I wonder how long it will take to find that one out? I bet a dollar to a donut that we know how that works out before we find out what's going on in the middle of the galaxy, though. any takers?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
the answer to all of it is 42
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
Why are explosions in space circular and not spherical?
and just for fun why do space captains always take off their shirts?
sad thing is I wouldn't be suprised if he gets modded to +5 Funny or Insightful
10. Why is it so expensive?
9. What was SciFi channel thinking when they cancelled it?
8. What's the easiest way to rationalize putting weapons up there?
7. When will people stop trying to take each others'?
6. Why do I take up so much of it?
5. Why are *you* taking up so much of it?
4. Will adding a loft give me more?
3. Is an illegal apartment a good way to make money off the excess?
2. Is there a downside to replacing all of it with asphalt?
and the #1 mystery about space:
1. Where the hell do I put all this porn??
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.
1. Dark Energy It's energy. And its dark. Think Star Trek glowy thing but looking at negatives.
2. Water on Mars. Nope. Only chocolate, toffee, and some sort fo nougatish stuff.
3. The Murky, Mediocre Middle of the Milky Way - A more important question - What is it with chocolate and space?
4. The Origin of Life - Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much....
5. Lunar Secrets - As any fan of classic Trolls knows, the moon is a ridiculous liberal myth. It doesn't exist. That's the secret.
6. Are We Alone? - I was talking about this to Glarg - my venusian friend. He said that he felt that life on other planets was impossible. I'm not so sure
7. The Enigmatic Sun - Enigmatic? the things a bloomin exhibitionist!
8. Age of the Universe - I have the universes Birth Certificate right here. I think its rude to ask a univeses age though.
9. Missing planet - Obviously, the planets are wrong, not the theory. Planets are stupid after all. They just go round and round in circles. Whatr do they know? Anyway, to solve this problem, we plan to destroy Uranus and Neptune.
10. Can We Survive 2003? - I have a theory on this. The ramifications will take a while to work out. Can I tell you in 369 days time?
It's obvious! Didn't those scientists watch X-Files?
--
Government denies knowledge
Be sure that, everything remaining the same, it is more likely that we will kill ourselves making war, rather than being smashed by an asteroid.
Engage!
I do not think a scientist is rejecting God when they try to look at something like the origin of life. I think a scientist is not asking who did it as much as they are asking how it was done. The agent is not relevent to the scientist; only the method matters.
I think, personally, that God is plain simply too elegant to make the creation of life something which would require the temporary changing of the laws of physics to accomplish. God created the laws of nature also; why not make them ones which make life possible (the gravitation constant, for example, has to be very finely tuned to make life possible).
My God is a God of surprises which does not put answers to all of life's problems in simple, small packages. To me creationism is a form of denial; no worse than the denial of a chronic alcholic who says they don't really have a drinking problem.
Thinking about the immensity of the universe gives me a profound sense of wonder; I really enjoyed reading this list.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Well. We still have Bruce Willis to fix the problem with mystery number 10, "can we survive 2003"... Or would his actions violate the DMCA?
I demand the Cone of Silence!
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
1. Captain Dylan Hunt of the starship Andromeda. Always fights in full body armor.
2. Janeway, unfortunately. >:-(
Oh, and mystery number 13: Why do ship computers add sound effects to explosions?
something thats always had me puzzled when pondering how dead bits of matter could become living organisms -
What exactly is the physical difference between living and dead cells?
surely the fact that they absorb chemicals and reproduce cant be the only difference, these are more charactistics of actually living rather than evidence itself. Is there an actual quantifiable physical difference? i mean whats stopping all dead cells coming back to life etc?
What is dark matter, you ask? God needs to defrag the universe. It's little bits of discarded matter from ages past... just think, random garbled bits of your grandfather could be floating somewhere!
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
I've recently activated the space.com slashbox and I recommend you do too. I like the stories there (tho' i refused to go there back in my pre-phoenix days due to there liberal use of pop-ups), but they don't post news very frequently. I was wondering if some slashdotter knew of a better site that offered a more comprehensive look at all news related to astronomy/spaceflight/etc.?
The real question is "Can we survive 2002?".
Do we have a chance of getting through 2003??
Blow the space rocks.. I want to know if the world superpowers/organisations will let us live through 2003...
come to think of it.. does anyone know what the official odds are on that??
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
If the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, surely that would imply the chances of an asteroid colliding into us are decreasing as all matter gets further apart and in turn empty space becomes larger.
Maybe that would explain the long period of cosmic peace humans have flourished under.
Whaddya mean my disk is full? Again? /*
But it hasn't been a week since I last did
sudo rm -r
the AC
"The steady state of disks is full." -- Ken Thompson Ahhh, that 'splains it!
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I'm not the same person who posted the invictive, but I do agree with it. Your post was not funny at all. You might not be an idiot, but you are definetly unfunny.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I think the people who take Creation literally is failing to see that God (if we assume there is one) was explaining this to people 2000 years ago. They didn't have any chance to understand the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The one-page intro is the abrigded and simplified version that men 2000 years ago could in some way phantom.
It's like trying to explain about having a baby to a kid. You don't start off with the ribonucleic acid (RNA) in a sperm cell and an egg cell joining together and forming deoxynucleic acid (DNA), and how cell division works, and how hormones activate processes and whatever else small details are involved. You keep to the "important" parts and results (like that it takes 9 months and mom will have a big belly).
In the same way, if you are to believe Genisis, God created the earth, the stars and all life on it. Now if he did that by Big Bang, or by snapping his fingers in 4004 BC, is that really "important" in that sense? I don't think so. Guess someone does, though...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So sure nothing of import happens between dec 27 and 31 2003.
Hrm, I wonder if we'll survive 2002....
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We don't know exactly how life on earth started, and we never will. All we can do is come up with resonable theories that don't have any holes. They may be right, or maybe not.
Since we can't go back in time, there is no true way to figure out which theory is 'right'. You can only elimnate some theories by disproving them.
The search for the origin of life is really nothing more for the search for the condition of the earth when life began. Once you know what the conditions were, you can create models that will work under those conditions.
Finaly, scientests have been able to create life from nothing in labs for decades, its just that we don't know if the conditions were exactly the same as those of the primordial earth.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Here's a real mystery which we still can't figure out: Anomalous Acceleration of Pioneer space probes. This one, like the dark energy problem, hints at fundamental problems with our view of the universe.
That "one degree of separation" keeps growing and growing and growing and ...
I know it's an out there idea, but it's still a plausible explaination.
--
Power to the Peaceful
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.
1) Dark Energy: Does anyone else believe that perhaps dark energy simply does not exist, and our laws of physics and what-not are just totally untrue anywhere except on Earth?
2)Water on Mars: My vote is yes. There is ice on Mars. Some parts of Mars can get up to 80F. If there was ice in such a place, it would be in liquid form. AKA water. :)
3)The Murky, Mediocre Middle of the Milky Way: Yeah, well, the center of the galaxy is a wee bit far away. Perhaps it would be easier to figure out if we went there. Problem is, even if we could travel as fast or faster than light, BILLIONS of years would pass on Earth in less than a year's time on the starship.
4)The Origin of Life: Oh, so this is up to astronomers to solve now? Like they don't have enough to do... ;)
5)Lunar Secrets: The moon is great. We can learn things from it that we probably don't even know we can learn from it. Yet we haven't been back since the 70s... Isn't that depressing?
6)Are We Alone: No. I would tell you more, but I'd have to kill you. But no. We are not alone.
7)The Enigmatic Sun: Let's build a Dyson's sphere around the sun. Not like the one in TNG, a solid one is not really possible to make. It's more like a lot of somewhat connected space stations orbiting a star.
8)Age of the Universe: Age of the universe would imply that time exists. There are some that believe space-time is really just space, and that time is only something humans perceive.
9)Missing Planets: Well the, the "standard model" is not exactly the most accurate one, now is it? ;)
10)Can We Survive 2003: If you think that the risk of being hit is low, glace at the moon sometime. The Earth wouldn't look much different without any forms of erosion to cover up the scars.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Dark Energy - Nobody knows what the heck it is, but it is officially repulsive.
Well, it IS three-eyed alien poop. Of course it's repulsive.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It's actually a product of the chili dinner I had last night. Talk about repulsive. Bodies in the vicinity move away at a very rapid rate due to its effects.
OK, quiz time, gumbysworld. What fields are determined by Maxwell's scalar and vector potentials? What are the MKS units of these potentials? What are the units of the fields? What other forces are involved in radioactive decay?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
actually, gravity is the weakest force.
Fleur de Sel
The list definitely included some good topics, but the mystery that I found most interesting in 2002 is the 'mystery force' that caused course deflections in the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft. Here there is hard evidence that something is acting differently or in addition to what we expect (i.e. gravity, additional planet, etc.), but NASA is unable to explain it.
See this story from last May.
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.
No, he just has a memleak and needs to free() the malloc()s
They never agreed on the colour of the universe, either. Is the cosmic spectrum turquoise? Or is it beige? These guys reckon they know, but I think this is another mystery - albeit a lot less important - that various groups will be disproving eachother over for a while.
- Stormcaller
http://www.stormcaller.net
If I had the ability to mod my own comments I would burn all 50 points in the hope that just one more person would read this book.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
But from the article, I think that they're saying that we have a couple planets too many (not actually missing one), if our computer simulations are to be correct. Computer simulations using the theories of Solar System formation are saying that a couple of the outer planets should not be there, which implies that our current theories are wrong (or slightly off).
Seriously, Don't take anything I say seriously.
"What does God need with a Starship?"
I would comment on this story, but it was obscured from my vision by a thick haze of pop-ups and flash ads. Oh well, I guess it can wait until I get home.
||:|::
the Langoliers are for? Aren't they supposed to eat all that stuff up? Including Balki?
then maybe it wouldn't be expanding at an ever increasing rate. And some exercise wouldn't hurt either.
In the last two or three I have not followed very closely.
OK, are these guys making this stuff up? The discovery that the universe is expanding is a given. Just now someone put it together that it is expanding at an accelerating rate?
Come on! This story gives me doubt.
If being struck by a large astroid is such a great concern then maybe we should work at deflecting/destroying smaller ones. Maybe we could learn some lessons while the stakes are relatively low?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
And even if that's what happened, where did it happen? On Earth? On Mars and then some of it accidently rubbed off onto Earth after a meteor incident? On the Vorlon homeworld, and then it evolved into intelligent beings who decided to build probes to spread microbes all over the universe to seed it with life, two billion years ago?
If we find other life even here in this solar system, it'll be interesting to see if it's somehow related to us. Does it use the same genetic code and ribosomes to transcribe genes to proteins? Does it even use DNA at all, or something else?
We haven't found any unrelated life on Earth, so we think life only appeared once here, or if it popped up more than once, the others were eaten for their delicious energy-concentrating molecules (yum!). But if life happens as easy as some people think, then alien life will be unrelated and show us some amazing stuff. It'll also help (somewhat) to corroborate your theory and suggest that our life started here.
OTOH, if it is related, that'll be amazing as well. And that'll probably make it even harder to track down origins, since it will probably not have started here (but still could have). You'll have new professions like "astropaleobiologist." ;-)
Or is it simply not out there, because life developed on Earth first and hasn't spread anywhere else yet?
No, the question of origin is mostly still unanswered. There is still a lot of room for research, unfortunately very expensive.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
When they explain that one I will be satisfied. All other mysterys pale, except maybe the one about CmdrTaco, like why we ever see him post before 5pm est?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
"The age of the universe has been put at 12 billion to 15 billion years for some time now, but every few months a revision or refinement is announced. Hubble Telescope observations yielded in April an estimate of 13-14 billion years."
So.. what was there before? just black? , nothing? Think about it.
[alk]
So you're saying that you believe God didn't create the universe, and instead created a set of rules that caused it to be created? Isn't that the same as creating it, albeit indirectly? You're not making any sense, sir.
You've missed the point entirely.
The poster is not saying that God did not create the universe. He is saying that "Perhaps God did create the universe, and Physics is how he chose to do it!"
There remain a large number of rabid creationists who say "The Physicists are all blasphemous buffoons! GOD created the universe, not some pile of gravity and chemicals and suns!"
The poster is trying to say that given the complexity of a universe that many people assert that God has created, it would not be uncharacteristic of such a God if he were to create the universe not by waving a magic God-Wand, but rather by creating a set of simple, elegant physical laws (i.e. Physics) by which his universe, the planets, and life could arise. This would not, as the rabid creationists seem to think, defile God in any way; rather, it supposes that God is of such awesome intelligence that he foresaw a way to create laws of the universe which would not only lead to the creation of life, but whose selfsame boundaries would also govern such life through the end of time.
It is not an argument against God; it is an argument that God has better taste than to do showy wave-of-the-hand parlor tricks when creating life, the universe, and everything.
If there is a view of "scientific creationism" that I can accept, this is it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
How about this question of space: are there any planets outside our solar system?
When I was a kid everything I learned in school took it for granted that of course there are. It wasn't until I was probably in highschool or maybe college that I learned for myself that none had actually been found. Yet another one of the times that I felt ripped off by weak teaching.
In recent few years there have been all kinds of stories of wobbles and such, but to date...still no planets!
Personally, I figure there are many planets out there, sure. But it would be nice if teachers mentioned the complete lack of actual knowledge, or evidence, when mindlessly repeating random words out of random books to a classroom full of glazed young'ins.
In fact, this question of the existence of planets outside our solar system... might be a good question to ask... long before any ridiculous speculation on the existence of aliens.
Personally, I figure there are no aliens out there. Unless you count the Kennedys.
Job 9:8 "[God] stretches out the heavens"
Psalm 104:2"stretching out heaven like a tent curtain"
Isaiah 40:22"He
Isaiah 42:5 "Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out"
Isaiah 44:24"I, the Lord, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself."
Isaiah 45:12"It is I who made the earth and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands"
Isaiah 48:13"Surely My hand founded the earth and My right hand spread out the heavens."
Isaiah 51:13"the Lord your Maker, Who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth"
Jer 10:12 "He has stretched out the heavens"
Jer 51:15 "He stretched out the heavens"
Zech 12:1 "the Lord who stretches out the heavens"
Got Wisdom?
Here is the details on the first one... The eventual plan, as far as I've heard, is to put a pair (or more) out at the orbit of Jupiter, on opposite sides (maybe near the Jovian L4 and L5 points... though watch out for the Trojans!) of the solar system.
-T http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/future/sim.html
Sorry to be nitpicky, but I'm a biology major taking biochemistry right now. The genetic information in sperm and egg cells is encoded as DNA, not RNA. Genetic material in long-term storage is always DNA. The chromosomes that seperate during meiosis (gamete production) are DNA.
RNA is used for transcribing the information in DNA into "machine-readable" form that the cell uses to make proteins and such.
When two RNA molecules come together, they do not form DNA. The main difference between DNA and RNA is that DNA has a hydroxly (-OH) group removed from the ribose unit. That's why it's called "Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid." The absence of the -OH group is what allows for the double helix structure of DNA.
There are theories that early life in the primordial soup used RNA as its genetic storage molecule. It also has catalytic properties, so it is believed that RNA also catalyzed most of the reactions in early biochemical pathways. As life evolved the storage functions of RNA were taken over by the more stable DNA molecule and the catalytic functions were taken over by the more chemically diverse protein molecules. RNA was left as the middle man between DNA and proteins.
The double helix structure of DNA is amazingly stable and allows for easy manipulations, like replication and transcription. When Watson and Crick proposed the double helix structure in 1953, they said, "It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material."
RNA is typically single-stranded and forms irregular structures that depend on the sequence of nucleotides. It will loop back on itself and form stem-loop structures and such.
Anyway, that's your biochem lecture for today.
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?
[TMB]
Actually color perception is only loosely related to wavelength. What you were taught in highschool was an oversimplification that borders on a lie (as is much of high school science!). Color is really a spatial attribute, not a point one (Google for Edward Land's "Retinex" theory of color preception), and perception of color is not absolute - it depends on the spatially adjacent colors; this isn't an optical illusion - it's the nature of color perception. It doesn't even stop there because color is a compatative attribute - things look "leaf green" because they stimulate your visual cortex in the same say as a leaf, but that is still true if you wear red goggles, and experiments have shown that normal color vision returns after a couple of weeks of wearing colored goggles!
You should also note that humans can only see a fraction of the possible colors (combinations of wavelengths of light) even in the visual part of the spectrum), and there is therefore nothing absolute about what we perceive - it's just what we can differentiate. If instead of having 3 differently tuned color cones in our eye (the cones have bell-curve-like light wavelength response that peak around R/G/B) we had more, then we would be able to differentiate more wavelength combinations. With our eyes the way they are you can differentially stimulate our color cones with only three wavelengths of light, but if we had 4 (peak tuned to R/G/B/Yellow say, or ANY different wavelengths) then you would need 4. Some people in fact do have 4 types of color cones and can therefore differentiate colors that you cannot. Your "red" surface is someone else's patterned one!
That absolute "red" that you are worrying about therefore isn't an irreducible gestalt experience/quale - it's a differential surface attribute detection that a machine will be able to duplicate just fine.
Incidently note also that what you see a color as isn't going to be precisely what I see it as - we may agree on things like "green's a bit like blue and a bit like yellow" that are based on the underlying transducers and brain architecture, but what the color actually looks/feels like is going to be as personal as any other experiental phenomena.
You know, there's nothing in your whole religious tirade that says anything about acceleration, which is what you purport to be explaining.
And you wonder why people think biblical literalists are idiots.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Of course there's water on Mars! There are already cats and mice chasing each other up there!
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Well, I don't know if this makes any sence, but after I read the questions, I noticed that two of them kind of explain each other.
1. What is dark energy and why is our universe expanding faster than anticipated.
2. Are there other universes out there.
Sorry for my simplistic view of things, I only took 4 astronomy courses but could it be that existence of other universes explains the dark energy problem? Could it be that in some weird way masses of other universes attract masses of ours?
On the other hand if that is not true, then imagine the following: a bubble bath. You know, where bubbles squeeze each other, they can grow due to air diffusing into them but they can squeeze each other. Is it possible that other universes are squeezing our universe and that the rate of growth is not equal to all sides of the universe but is proportional to the forces and vectors pushing our universe through such a bath full of bubbles?
Screw this, I want to go get myself a bubble bath!
You can't handle the truth.
You might suppose that, but how would you know? You could check the behavior... but what does the behavior tell you? Nothing more than mimicked version.
:)
AFAICT.
-l
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Of course not. The magical number is two numbers that locate what is called the triple point, where solid, liquid, and vapor phases of a substance can coexist. A triple point is commonly defined by pressure and temperature.
If your pressure is higher than the pressure at the triple point, then you can have solid, liquid, or vapor. What you have is dependent on temperature. If the pressure is equal to the pressure at the triple point, you can have solid, vapor, or a mixture of solid, vapor, and liquid.
If the pressure is lower, you can only have solid or vapor. No liquid phase. Sublimation.
Now, just to put a rest to this, I'm digging up the actual numbers. The triple point of water occurs at 0.6113 kPa and 0.01 C. Atmospheric pressure on Mars is a bit variable, but is perilously close to the magic 0.6113 kPa. Now, according to NASA, Mars Pathfinder reported a minimum pressure of 0.67 kPa. This means that liquid water could exist at the Pathfinder site today, but would be restricted to a very narrow temperature range.
However, this assumes that the atmospheric pressure on Mars has never dropped below 0.6113 kPa, which is unlikely given that its current pressure is so close to that number. As soon as the pressure drops below that value, all your liquid water goes to vapor. I'm not qualified to say exactly what happens next, but it's probably much easier for a planet to lose water vapor than liquid water.
So, while you could take a cup of ice water outside your Mars habitat without losing all the liquid (and a good deal of the ice), you are unlikely to find any liquid water on Mars's surface today after several billion years of climate variation.
Because wishful thinking cannae change the laws of physics!
(Hooray, I'm getting some use out of my thermodynamics class!)
But then again, I could be wrong.
If you look up Informative in the Slashdot Dictionary, there's a picture of this post... :) Thanks a lot, Captain Nitpick!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Hi, I'm logged in.
And yes, you are an idiot.
HTH
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
spacedaily.com is actually having a small holiday over Xmas/New Year I like the daily email - by section - mil, satellite, launches, etc - with url so you can easily pick what you want to read. Also at bottom is a list of last weeks stories so if you miss or delete an email you can find it sort of easy in the next week. Some popups to keep them alive but that is life.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Don't go to the site.
They're getting money from that intrusive type of Flash ad that sits over what you're trying to read. These have been far too common recently. If you go to the site and see the ad, you'll only encourage their use.
(They also rub it in by having an onClose popup ad, too. They're just as bad as a porn site!)
And yes, I know, "use Mozilla". If I were on my own computer, I would.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Space Quest 4.
I never could finish that game.
As the site says: "The repulsive force dominates the universe, comprising 65 percent of its makeup." Yup, sounds like Microsoft.
Teenager Acretion model?
I don't think it will work as well as the planetary model.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
You can go out and make measurements yourself that demonstrate in a very accurate way how the theories work. It's amazing how much science you can see around you (and measure!) every day, with no equipment except your own body. Science can predict what is possible, and what will happen in certain circumstances, with incredible accuracy. That's not to say that religion has no value, but from a purely pragmatic viewpoint, applying logic and scientific investigation gets you results time after time. Religion may not. What you get out of it depends on how much faith you put into it, and even then, society may discover something the next day which will show beyond reasonable doubt that you were actually wrong about certain beliefs.
One further nitpick: the Big Bang doesn't mean an explosion in the normal sense. Time and space themselves were created. There was no matter at that stage, only energy. There was no sound. Even light, a manifestation of the electromagnetic force, wasn't in the form that we know it today. Yes, there are very specific observations that are extremely hard to explain without such a theory. You won't see detailed explanations for the composition of matter and the way it interacts with itself in most religion's theories of creation. But you'll need to spend years leaning about physics to even understand the big bang theory as it currently stands.
An explanation of why the universe is, is not something that mainstream science claims to have a definate answer to. There's lots of ideas, such as the many-universe theories (which I don't really subscribe to personally) that say something like, "Well, one of the tickets (universes) in the lottery has to win." Or the anthropomorphic ones: "If the universe didn't have intelligent life, then I wouldn't be around to know if I lost." Or a myriad of other ideas that aren't based around a God per se. So in summary, just because it's improbable that a universe would be this way by chance, it doesn't mean that it's impossible, ever.
The one true question:
What is REALLY in hot dogs?
I'd like to see them solve THAT one.
I'm on a chair.