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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.
"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.
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?
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!
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, somehow, without internal nuclear fusion processes, like stars -- still manage to radiate more energy out into space than they receive directly from the Sun.
It's called 'cooling down', anything that you put in a relatively cold place, such as (for example) 'space', will do it.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
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
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 thought it was 7.5 million years?
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
Yes we will. And I offer a full refund if I'm wrong.
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.
Let's ignore that the parent was surely refering to the absurdity of SciFi in space in general.
Assuming that the force is uniform in all directions, there is no reason that the lower density material escapes in planar direction (what tells the material in which plane it has to escape, so to speak).
My totally uneducated guess is the following:
Stars rotate around one axis. This angular momentum has to be preserved. If memory serves right a supernova occurs, when the equlibrium of gravitational contraction force and the thermonuclar repulsion force collapses, until a certain pressure is reached which leads to a final explosive fusion process. Now think of figure skating, rotating and a contracting diameter.
The outmost material will be hurled back into space, the rest contributes to a white dwarf, neutron star, black hole, or whatever.
But the critical part (for our question at hand) is that the star in it latest moments is not spherical, but eliptical. The material in the rotational plane has a higher momentum, so it will be more likely hurled back into space.
As I said, this is a fairly uneducated guess. The question is, does the centrifugal force matter anything, considering strength the gravitational force and the thermonuclear explosion?
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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]
> High School physics teacher
Centrifugal force does "exist". It is a byproduct of being situated in an accelerating system, where Newtons phyics doesn't apply. Prime requisit of Newtons law. You have to be in a inertial reference frame. Well, the laws of physics still apply, you just have to observe it from a stationary system and then transpose it into the accelerated system.
Calculating in an accelerated system gives you all the non-existant forces or pseudo-forces like centrifugal-force and Coriolis-force.
OTOH, those forces do not exists as they are only a byproduct of calculating in a rotating frame and not a real force which are the result of exchanging particles like photons, gravitons and the like.
Speaking of centrifugal force is inaccurate at worst. So, for educational reasons, one should speak of centrifual effect, or Coriolis effect.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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?
Uh... right. Which is why stellar processes conform to known laws of physics. Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, et. al. didn't invent basic orbital mechanics from watching things on Earth.
The inaccuracies we're finding are largely in the tiny percentages, although apparantly just large enough to not be thrown away as statistical error. The universe accelerating bit is, to my knowledge, still controversial.
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
As has been pointed out repeatedly, you fail to take vapor pressure into account. If there is liquid water on Mars, it's certainly nowhere near the surface and hasn't been for eons.
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
No it wouldn't. If you manage to go at nearly light speed then yes, longer periods of time pass outside than inside, but it still won't be more than ~30,000 years (as one poster pointed out). If you go FTL then your logic is completely incorrect -- current tachyon theory (last I heard) was that you'd actually move backwards in time relative to an outside observer. You'd literally get there before you left. Of course, to the observer you'd appear at some point after you left, because the light is still moving at, yup, light speed.
Of course, other theoretical space-time constructs like wormholes would allow instantaneous travel.
Let's build a Dyson's sphere around the sun
Before you know exactly how a stellar system works? That's a bad idea. Tremendously bad. Oh, and there's no theoretical reason that a solid Dyson sphere wouldn't be possible, but then again we don't know enough theory to actually do it.
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
Yes, and there are some that believe that mankind is descended from aliens who visited in 1973 on the top of a volcano in France.
Regardless of whether space-time exists as a cohesive whole or if time and space are independant dimensions, we are inherently limited by how we view them. And we have loads of actual data to back up our theories.
Well the, the "standard model" is not exactly the most accurate one, now is it?
Actually, yes it is. That doesn't mean it's the final model or entirely correct. Which is why there are always theories about how to further refine it.
If you think that the risk of being hit is low, glace at the moon sometime
And when was the last significant lunar impact? Heck, the last significant impact in our solar system was Shoemaker-Levy, and that was a one-in-a-million occurrence. The odds of something hitting Earth is even lower, since we have gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn sweeping the outer solar system of most large asteroids. Even the space.com article admits it's mostly media hype.
Oh, and as for everyone slamming on you - it's because a post full of factual errors got modded up. Welcome to slashdot. The only reason you found entrager's post "tactful" was because it was largely a "me too" post that was equally full of errors.
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.
What do you get when you multiply six by nine?
(Thereby proving that hyperintelligent pandimensional beings also known as white mice use base 13).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.