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Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures
sighted writes "The New Horizons probe, on its way to Pluto and beyond, is now speeding toward Jupiter. Today the team released some of the early data and pictures, which are the first close-range shots of the giant planet since the robotic Cassini spacecraft passed that way in 2001."
Nasa has discovered Jupiters gas was produced by CowboyNeal.
Does anybody know how long does it take for the photo data to be transmitted from that far away (Both Jupiter and Pluto)? Hours or days? I am still pretty amazed that we can send a probe into space and receive pictures from Jupiter.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'm glad to see some of Nasa's deep space work getting publicity; most people seem to just focus on stuff like the ISS which has been a disaster from start to finish, when there is much succesful work being done at the outer reaches of the solar system.
One of the main problems, however, is communication at these distances is extremley problomatic; it takes 8 minutes to send a signal as far as mars and 4 years to send one to Alpha Centuri, which Voyager 1 is predicted to reach in later 2009. here in the lab, however, we are working on some technology that should help alleviate this problem.
The solution relies on one of the properties of gravitons. Now as you keen physicists will be aware, the four forces (electromagnetism, gravity, strong, weak) are all caused by force carrying particles. For the electromagnetic force, for example the force carrying particle is the photon; particles under the influence of the electromagnetic force will emit and absorb photons thus changing their momentum and energy. Gravity uses the same mechanism and we call the force carrying particle the graviton.
Now gravity is different from the other forces in that it can be felt over long distances, a quality that tells us a great deal about the nature of gravitons. If 2 particles are 10 light minutes from each other, then any change in the gravity of one particle will not be felt by the other for 10 minutes. The traditional explanation for this is that the graviton can only travel at the speed of light and as such will take 10 minutes to travel from one particle to the other, so far so good. Unfortunately the situation breaks down if one of the particles is moving. As it won't be in the same position in 10 minutes time, the graviton should miss it and no gravity should be felt. As we know, however, gravity is always felt by moving bodies so the graviton must intercept the moving particle in order for the force to be expressed. By conventional theory the graviton must 'know' where the particle will be in ten minutes time.
Now perhaps that doesn't seem unreasonable but if you move the particles 10 light years apart then things get a bit more tenuous. As the graviton would take 10 years to travel the distance, this means that the particles must 'know' where each other are going to be in 10 years time. This is quite frankly ridiculous!
The explanation is in fact that the gravitons do not move at the speed of light but instead are exchanged instantaneously with their effects not being felt until a time equal to the distance between the 2 particles divided by the speed of light. In this way the rule limiting the exchange of information is kept intact and the rules of physics remain unchanged. We can however use this quality to solve our problem of communicating with deep space probes. Think of it as follows.
Here in the lab we have a massive ball which emits a large number of gravitons. As previously mentioned these gravitons will instantly arrive at our deep space probe regardless of how distant it actually is, but will not act on it until some time later. The key part is that we have a graviton detector on our probe which measures the number of gravitons received. By changing the mass of the ball (simple enough to do with a powerful laser) we can cause the number of gravitons detected by the probe to fluctuate and thus transmit a signal. As gravitons travel instantaneously the signal travels instantaneously and we have faster than light communication. Although the system is never going to carry gigabits (changing the mass of the ball is difficult to do on a picosecond time interval) it should be enough to perform simple operations such as steering the probe or powering on systems, thus revolutionising space travel.
-- physicsExpert
Just another big waste of money. We should be spending the money on actually going there. Not Pluto or Jupiter specifically but anywhere out there, starting with the moon.
We've spent billions over the past 40 years looking for a stinking microbe (alive or dead) on any rock they can find, give me a break, we could've had a moon base by now.
.. that pluto isn't a planet any more???
I certainly hope so, otherwise it could get really embarrassed when it tries to ask for directions!!
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
Except Europa. Attempt no landings there.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
... as you suspected.
Seriously, great photo. I can't wait to see what they find at the PLANET Pluto. cbmeeks http://www.codershangout.com/ - Slashdot this....I DARE YOU!!! hahaha
Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.
their exact position today can be found in the JPL Horizons database
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi
so using Sol as Origin [0,0,0], with distance in km and km/s velocity measures:
XYZ position and velocity in Km and Km/sec
V prefix = velocity,
Jupiter
A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
X =-3.523007925524937E+08 Y =-7.203651223053448E+08 Z = 1.087397270750013E+07
VX= 1.158611696091788E+01 VY=-5.127849980674650E+00 VZ=-2.378734986696975E-01
Earth
A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
X =-7.005151113800500E+07 Y = 1.294518808525130E+08 Z =-1.647040773451328E+03
VX=-2.669513206382950E+01 VY=-1.429493892074527E+01 VZ=-5.052885705412180E-04
And the Horizons probe itself is here:
A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
X =-3.141011231236297E+08 Y =-6.673772181265557E+08 Z = 9.200702373118341E+06
VX= 1.154291925552546E-01 VY=-1.978644188955009E+01 VZ= 1.493924692614632E-01
However it's too early to work out the times taken for signals to travel based on these positions. I need more coffee.
Would anyone with mod points please mod parent as troll, offtopic or if generous perhaps funny.
As the other replies have pointed out he is spouting nonsense (voyager may leave our solar system 2009, but its a a few tens or thousands of years away from any other and I think its pretty unlikely its vector will take it to Alpha Centauri - I'll be honest I haven't checked)
I'll admit its plausable sounding nonsense, but as barnum said....
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
As I understand it, the speed of light applies not only to physical objects, but also information itself. No-one knows any way to move information faster than light. If you've found a way, that's truly revolutionary, but in the meantime your post sounds a bit like a "free energy" claim. Can you back it up with some citations?
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
it takes 8 minutes to send a signal as far as mars and 4 years to send one to Alpha Centuri, which Voyager 1 is predicted to reach in later 2009.
Voyager 1 will take on the order of several hundred thousand years to reach Alpha Centauri.
The traditional explanation for this is that the graviton can only travel at the speed of light and as such will take 10 minutes to travel from one particle to the other, so far so good.
The 'traditional' explanation? Gravitons are hypothetical at best, and currently mathematically useless. Quantized force mediators do not need to "intercept" a moving particle at a distance; they are virtual, and there are infinitely many of them in all directions.
By changing the mass of the ball (simple enough to do with a powerful laser)
This is all nonsense. Even if this were true, your probe is also receiving gravitons from every other atom in the universe. The effect of varying a "ball of mass" would not even be measurable. Just because a sizable block of text with "sciency words" is posted doesn't mean it's meaningful, and certainly doesn't deserve mod points. Please mod parent down, and please read things before giving points!
And the signature is physicsExpert?! Man, he has NO understanding of particle physics, and his post is completely misguiding.
empire in decline, task. Research has brought upon Spot when done For GAY NIGGERS FROM That supports A8ybody's guess NIGGER ASSOCIATION fanatic known see... The number GNAA (GAY NIGGER www.anti-slash.org Disgust, or been code.' Don't this post up. forwards we must fucking market to the crowd in Are looking very users of NetBSD something cool We'll be able to Distended. All I For all practical of the warring they want you to officers. Others Clearly become members' creative to them...then survival prospects can no longer be demise. You don't endless conflict I won't bore you serves to reinforce were compounded goodbye...she had The future of the suffering *BSD just yet, but I'm for a living got FreeBSD at about 80 about 700 users bulk of the FreeBSD When I stood for of the old going Do, or indeed what
A year already?! I remember the launch, but why is it so easy to forget these awesome achievements. Some, perhaps, take for granted what it takes to get something so fragile as 'New Horizons' to get into space...Very impressive picture too. What an age we live in!
ilovegeorgebush
By the way, do you know any good papers that try to extend the SM into gravity without using the concept of graviton? I.e. is there a model which attempts to describe gravitational effects not as an interaction of its own kind, but rather as some correction coefficient to the strong and electroweak interactions? Thank you.
Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures
Doctor Manhatten Outraged!
Oh wait... It already is +5 funny... Must be all that gas getting to me
the gay niigers would you like to Join GNNA (GAY to get some eye
...this means that the particles must 'know' where each other are going to be in 10 years time. This is quite frankly ridiculous!
You're still thinking in three spatial dimensions plus one of time. Start adding extra dimensions to Einstein's 4D & things aren't so ridiculous - extra dimensions will discount, not time itself but, the effect of time. Why do you think 10D & 11D Superstring/M theories have been postulated?
In this way the rule limiting the exchange of information is kept intact and the rules of physics remain unchanged.
Only in Euclidean space. In quantised spacetime, the data is there instantaneously & exchangeable. Any data that isn't exchanged until via Euclidean space is in a superposition, until viewed, and is available for exchange in methods not reliant on Euclidean space.
Good post, and its always nice to see someone who has real science's back, but as far as I know in no theory of gravitons are there an infinite amount in all directions, unless of course we take the universe to be infinite, in which case there is an infinite amount of everything in all directions (assuming no strange emergence of uniformity that we are unaware of). Anyhow, like I said, way to torture to death someone that knows less than you :D.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
when does it get to probe Uranus?
Thankyou, thankyou. I'll be here all week. Try the chopped liver.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Wait till you see the probe on Uranus.
but I couldn't find it.
:
"Voyager 1 is not heading towards any particular star, but in 40,000 years it will be within 1.7 light years of the star AC+793888 in the Camelopardis constellation."
From http://www.daviddarling.info/
"An earlier planned route past Neptune would have resulted in the probe coming within 0.8 light-years of Sirius in just under 500,000 years from now - easily the closest and most interesting foreseeable stellar encounter of the four escaping probes. However, the Neptune flyby trajectory actually chosen (the "polar crown" trajectory) means that the nearest Voyager 2 will come to any star in the next million years is 1.65 light-years when it passes Ross 248 in about 40,000 years."
From that quote it looks like it was originally planned to fly by a star. The same site has this to say about Voyager 1: "Thereafter, it will have a journey lasting almost 40,000 years before it passes the M4 red dwarf AC +79 3888 at the remote distance of 1.64 light-years (0.50 parsec)."
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
New Horizons will be soon exactly 4,000,000,000,000 meters away from 134340 Pluto at 2007-01-19 18:49:08 UTC.
http://www.yaohua2000.org/cgi-bin/New%20Horizons.p l
Mac widget for tracking New Horizons: http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/ma gicnumber.html
So it was sent out to take Pluto pictures & they get Jupiter photos back ? I used to get that problem when I sent my films away to be developed, always getting back snaps of people I didn't take ! If your a fat sunbather in red trunks, I've probably got your photos. ;-)
No, really !
What is this APL, and why are they named after a programming language with its own character set?
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Just to give you a sense of scale for Jupiter, the Earth would fit nicely into the Great Red Spot (N/S dims of red spot are almost exactly the same as the diameter of Earth).
-Styopa
Why don't we probe uranus?
FRA: STFU GTFO
One of the more useful things I have learned from Slashdot is that this is not actually true. Reach behind your nuts and press up and forward (you'll feel the base of your urethra under the skin). After that, one more squeeze and it's really all empty.
I'm really excited about New Horizons. It's a really exciting mission that almost didn't get the support it needed. If you do some Googling you can find out the full story about it.
:)
Hell, I know Pluto isn't considered a planet... but that to me makes NH even more exciting. Pluto is a large KBO (Kuiper Belt Object) and as such has the potential to be a very early remnant of the formation of our solar system. As such, investigating this object and Charon, it's "moon" has the potential to teach us far more about the early existence of the solar system than investigating many other objects. To be honest, I'm MORE excited about a trip to a relatively unknown and uncharted object such as a KBO than I would be over the exploration of another planet (despite the fact that these are arbitrary designations at best)
The NEAR mission was fascinating for the same reason. It was investigation of a relatively unknown object and we learned far more about the nature of asteroids and other deep space objects during that mission than we ever thought possible. If NH even returns half of the information about Pluto that NEAR returned about the asteroid Eros then we will learn an incredible amount about our solar system, and maybe change a few models about solar system formation that might just change some minds.
Good show, NASA. Sometimes you're the butt of a lot of jokes, but there are times you manage some truly remarkable missions (the mars rovers for one) that increase our understanding of the universe and just really excite science geeks like me
I still think Jupiter looks like a giant wood chip.
The linked picture is here.
Have you read my journal today?
t takes 8 minutes to send a signal as far as mars and 4 years to send one to Alpha Centuri, which Voyager 1 is predicted to reach in later 2009.
If Voyager 1 is covering a million miles a day, that means an AU roughly every 90 days, a little less than 4 AU's a year. Being over 277,000 AU's to Alpha Centauri you'd be looking at close to 80,000 years. I'm too lazy to pull out a calculator and run the exact numbers.
Unless you physics experts invented some way to bend the time/space continuum or you've got a prototype for a working warp drive in your car, that trip will take a bit beyond 2009.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The headline made me think of a Mitch Hedburg type joke...
"Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures"
Well then they F***ed up.
you stole rucs-hacks coffee? that's just mean
+1 fashionably cynical
"Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures"
Holy crap, they made another metric/imperial conversion error!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
...and they forgot to load the cameras up with colour film.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Damn, it's still there!
:-(
Those Jovians sure are persistent.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!