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Five New Neptunian moons
cyclop writes "It's a new time of discoveries in the Solar System. Just when Cassini discovered two news moons on Saturn, old Earth-based astronomy strikes back by revealing five small bodies around Neptune. The faint moons seem to have eccentric and inclined orbits, and to have been captured by Neptune."
Planetary scientists would LOVE a galileo/cassini type mission to neptune. The planet and its moons are just bizarre. It has normal looking full sized moons in retrograde orbit - which normally implies captured bodies...but they are usually irregularly shaped. It has goofy looking moons in normal orbits, which would normally imply a body formed with the planet...but those aren't usually irregularly shaped. And the big moon, Triton, is amazing...huge geyser/volcanic-like plumes of frozen black-stuff. There's theories as to what it is, but the underlying mechanisms aren't well understood. An amazing outer planet.
Moo.
Ground based astronomy isn't as sexy as space based astronomy, but has one big advantage -- light gathering power. We can build 8-meter (SUBARU and GEMINI), 10-meter (KECK), and in the near future 30 to 50-meter telescopes. The JWST, by comparison, is only 6.5 meters, and that's still 7 years away (at least). It's expensive to get telescopes into orbit, first off, and to send a probe up, well, you only get one look at the system with that! Additionally, launching anything drives the cost up by tens of millions of dollars. Ground based telescopes are easier to service, last virtually forever, and only have the disadvantage of having the atmosphere to fight with. Adaptive optics, and camera technology have significantly advanced in recent years, so that ground based telescopes with adaptive optics have huge advantages over those without it. They haven't caught the space telescopes yet, but the gap is closing. I'm a huge advocate of hubble, chandra and other space-based missions, but what can be accomplished on the ground (such as this) should NOT be overlooked!
well thats a valid argument, but it has a flaw. the money spent on science is unlikely, if pulled, to feed and clothe the poor. its more likely to be funneled into defense projects.
the other problem with the "money better spent" on feeding the hungry and clothing the poor argument is that its simply impossible to practically do that. there are too many hands the money and food must cross, and corruption is a given. Sure, we must try, but not at the expense of that which furthers other industries. And science isn't the biggest waste of money. What about the millions paid to sports stars? that should be given to the poor. How about the millions you spend on entertainment? surely you could sacrafice a little fun for someone to eat. maybe you should sacrafice all your fun. work hard and only keep what you need to live. not live comfortably, or happily, just live -- donate the rest to the unfortunate. It's a slippery slope. Sadly, feeding and clothing the poor is simply not an easy problem to fix -- diverting funds from science research is surely not the answer.
Moo.
I just hate that kind of reasoning.
Money spent on science is not wasted. And the less practical is the science, the more I'm sure that money is not wasted.
I work in science (molecular biology), and I don't do it to help people (although I love if my research can help,of course). I do it primarily because I want to understand the Universe. I do it primarily because I think one of the most important, amazing and noble things humankind can do is trying to understand the universe we have the luck to live within. It is at least as noble as helping the poorest. If not noblest, because we will all die (poor or not poor). But knowledge will last.
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If it wasn't for Casini? After all, who had imagined moons this size before?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Do you really think that the rich would allow money not spent on science to go to the poor? There's a real and profitable reason to keep people poor- and a real and profitable reason to gather money up into incredibly large bank accounts under a single person instead of sharing with everybody. Note, I didn't say they were good reasons- but as long as those reasons are allowed to exist, there is NO chance of money being saved from ending projects like this going to the poor. None at all.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So what exactly do you do to help the world's hungry?
Fortunately, we're talking about results from an American satellite and telescopes in Hawai'i and Chile. Since your country contributed nothing to any of this, you can rest easy and stand proud.
A lot of the money/food that already is earmarked to feed and clothe the poorest in the world never finds its way to them. In many cases, warlords in places such as Africa take the food/supplies for their own needs before it can be distributed to the needy.
Research always pays off. Always. Sometimes it just adds to the amazing amount of negative knowledged we have (i.e. well THAT doesn't work...) but more often than not even failed experiments pay big dividends (both financialy and scientifically) in the long run. Did you know that nylon was a failed experiment? It was poured down the drain 3 times before someone realized what they had. The adhesive on the back of Post-It notes is another failed experiment (i.e. an adhesive that didn't stick permenently), but with this one 3M kept the the info on the books and when somebody had the bright idea for the post it note that adhesive didn't have to be re-invented. I'm sure other examples abound.
Besides, charity is best left in the private sector. I prefer to see charities that are not administered with the compassion of the IRS or the Post Office.
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
A worthy sentiment, but incorrect. If, for example, we diverted all funds for NASA and gave that money to the poor of America, their incomes would only be raised by a few hundreds of dollars (i'm giving a guess). Rather than take money away from worthy research, it would be better if all of the super-rich gave all of their surpluss wealth away, and the same with the defense budget, which is overbloated.
Logic, macros, and more
But I really see research into moons as being a waste of money that could have been better spent feeding and clothing the poorest in the world.
a sc.html). So dividing that $5 billion amongst just the poor in the United States gives every poor person about $144.50 every year.
So we'll take the $5 billion dollars we spend annually on space exploration (most likely, a gross over-estimation) and distribution it evenly amongst the one billion people in the world who live in poverty and hunger (most likely, a gross under-estimation). So every poor person in the world gets an annual $5 gift courtesy of the US government.
Whoa. Huge dent in the poverty and hunger levels there.
So let's say that $5,000 USD is an acceptable living wage for most of the world. Now you can only help a million people.
Oh, by the way, in 2002 the number of people living in poverty in the US, as defined by the Census Bureau, was 34.6 million people (http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/income02/prs03
Again, whoa, huge dent in poverty and hunger levels. Twelve bucks a month is not going to make a difference in poverty levels.
Money is not the solution to feeding starving peoples. They don't need money, they need food. And there's already more than enough of that to go around. The reason why they don't have that food has very little to do with them not being able to afford it, and very much to do with their own leaders deciding that guns and palaces are a greater priority than food, roads, supplies. Look at China. It went from having some of the worst famines in history to being a net food exporter in just one generation. How? Not by handouts from the West, but by deciding it could no longer allow political ideology to rigidly get in the way commonsense economic policies.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Dammit, now Solarquest is even more out of date!
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
When will someone add those moons to orbiter?
Orbiter's home page
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Cassini discovered two news moons on Saturn,
Ah man, we get enough of news already here on Earth, it's all the same wherever you go, it's about time Cassini discovered some Enternainment Moons, that's what I'm talkin' about.
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