Planck Satellite Reveals Star Formation Processes

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Planck Satellite Reveals Star Formation Processes

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 26, 2010 @04:40AM from the watch-the-thumb-on-the-lens dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New images from the Planck Space Observatory reveal the gas and dust between the stars and isolate the physical processes at work in our galaxy. The new images are an eye-catching by-product of a spacecraft designed to look back at the earliest light in the universe. ... When observed at much longer wavelengths, where the cosmic microwave background can be seen, the picture is very different, as clearly demonstrated in new images from ESA's Planck mission. The dust is no longer a dark shroud, but shines out in its own right, and new aspects of our galaxy are revealed."

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Re:the motherfucking universe by FrostedWheat · 2010-04-26 04:46 · Score: 2, Funny

Pretty well so far.
Re:the motherfucking universe by clone53421 · 2010-04-26 04:53 · Score: 4, Funny

Hmph. By whose standards of measurement? By my estimation, any universe in which I don’t have a smoking-hot girlfriend and a fancy car is pretty much a failure as far as universes go.

--
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
To reach the stars by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-26 04:59 · Score: 1, Funny

Just walk the Planck
Re:the motherfucking universe by AnonymousClown · 2010-04-26 05:04 · Score: 1

Yeah! That's right!
I'm going to organize an angry mob to protest against the Universe. Who's with me!
OK, the crickets have answered - I take the chirping to be an affirmative. What about you guys?

--
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Awe by MonsterTrimble · 2010-04-26 05:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Seriously, I'm in awe of these pictures and how much is out there. Between these and the new hubble images, it really drives home two things:
1) I miss living in the country. The night skies on clear nights were awesome.
2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.

--
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
1. Re:Awe by Mindcontrolled · 2010-04-26 05:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  ad 1) Definitely. I used to live at the arse-end of nowhere, at the outskirts of town right at the forest's edge. The night sky was spectacular and you could spot a lot of things just with some binoculars. Middle of a large town now, the light pollution is so bad you can't usually even see the milky way. The most spectacular night sky I ever saw was when I traveled Iceland, though. I spent a night in a cabin in the middle of the highlands - no civilization around for at least 100 km in every direction. Absolutely breathtaking. No aurora, though, unfortunately. ad 2) Who knows? Scientific revolutions have a tendency to come unexpected and lead to a phase of rapid technological growth. My hopes aren't too high, either. We seem much too busy developing new cellphones and plasma TVs these days, though.
  
  --
  Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
2. Re:Awe by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-26 05:57 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  Seriously, I'm in awe of these pictures and how much is out there. Between these and the new hubble images, it really drives home two things:
  1) I miss living in the country. The night skies on clear nights were awesome.
  Isn't going to help you see stuff like this.
  
  2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.
  Isn't going to happen; not in your lifetime, or your son's lifetime, or the lifetime of this universe.
3. Re:Awe by pitchpipe · 2010-04-26 06:01 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.
  Alas not. But perhaps he'll see an a in 'than'.
  Hoep fully he'al liv longe enuf two sea da fynal dee-feet ov da grammer NAZI's.
  
  --
  Look where all this talking got us, baby.
4. Re:Awe by Nowhere.Men · 2010-04-26 08:09 · Score: 1
  
  I'm impressed that you can see microwaves. Warming up leftover should be very interesting.
  Unfortunately, I only saw the milky way on rare occasion. It is difficult to be far from civilization in Europe. Which may explain why I prefer satellite observation than looking at the sky directly.
  My wife made a Planck shaped cake with sugar mirror and marzipan detector. Unfortunately the talks were too long and the biscuit got soggy. At the same occasion, someone made ALMA.
5. Re:Awe by sznupi · 2010-04-26 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  If in 2) by "son" you mean, well, perhaps not biological species per se, but beings which undoubtedly are descendants of humanity...then (very) perhaps. Otherwise - I'm afraid you shouldn't count on it. We haven't really seen anything which might be an indication of FTL anywhere in the Universe, apart from inflation period, in a way (but if you are a being which can & wants to use that, I'm not sure we can notice any traces of humanity in you anymore). Our view of the world seems essentially correct, even if there are still some holes (similar to how Earth is not really a slightly flattened sphere or pear; but it's pretty damn close). Too many fundamental things in our Universe are related in one way or another to the speed of light; it almost looks that, no matter what value it would have, it would be of similar magnitude to other constants and hence essentially the same in practise...
  Now consider that we haven't really used advances in physics even from around a century ago as a means of propulsion of spacecraft.
  (and all of the above says somebody who toys around with possibly rather novel and as consistent as possible means of FTL...for a short story)
  
  --
  One that hath name thou can not otter
6. Re:Awe by Some1too · 2010-04-26 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  Seriously, I'm in awe of these pictures and how much is out there. Between these and the new hubble images, it really drives home two things:
  1) I miss living in the country. The night skies on clear nights were awesome. 2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.
  I certainly hope that my children will get the chance to travel our of orbit. I'm still holding out that i'll step foot on the moon or another planet before I leave this beautiful blue marble. (A man's gotta have his dreams right?)
  On a serious note faster than light travel by the next generation? We can always dream....
7. Re:Awe by Grishnakh · 2010-04-27 12:57 · Score: 1
  
  We haven't really seen anything which might be an indication of FTL anywhere in the Universe
  You're forgetting about quantum entanglement.
Re:Sounds to me like just another system to.... by Theuberelite · 2010-04-26 05:10 · Score: 2, Funny

I don't know about that - seems more like it will be used to predict a Dancing with the Stars winner.
First black holes... by Theuberelite · 2010-04-26 05:17 · Score: 1

Interesting discoveries, but the next thing you know we're going to have CERN using these discoveries to try to create a star.

In other news, I have a feeling this article isn't going to last very long. I already got a MySQL error of "Too many connections" going to the article.
real mature guys by Anonymous Coward · 2010-04-26 05:20 · Score: 0

I just asked how the motherfucking universe works and you mod me down?
Summary plagiarism by momerath2003 · 2010-04-26 05:21 · Score: 1

The summary is a verbatim copy of the article's first section. Shouldn't you give credit to the article's author rather than to "Anonymous"? Aren't reader-submitted summaries also supposed to be summarized by the reader?

--
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
1. Re:Summary plagiarism by clone53421 · 2010-04-26 05:34 · Score: 1
  
  You’re obviously not very new here, so you just must not have been paying attention.
  
  --
  Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Re:the motherfucking universe by clone53421 · 2010-04-26 05:31 · Score: 1

Actually, in quite a few of those universes (an infinite number, actually) I do have a hot girlfriend. Nobody asked me if I wanted to live in this one...

--
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
See inside Planck by ProdigyPuNk · 2010-04-26 05:45 · Score: 3, Informative

Here's an interesting look inside the Planck satellite, in case anyone is interested in where and how these pictures are obtained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqr3IX7Ufk
Re:the motherfucking universe by node+3 · 2010-04-26 06:12 · Score: 1

Sorry dude Even with an infinite number of dice rolls, you can never roll a 7.
Re:the motherfucking universe by AshtangiMan · 2010-04-26 06:17 · Score: 1

If that were true I'd never have lost the point at the craps table. Unfortunately it is not and I have.
Re:the motherfucking universe by clone53421 · 2010-04-26 06:24 · Score: 1

I beg to differ!

--
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Re:the motherfucking universe by node+3 · 2010-04-26 10:49 · Score: 1

Which brings us to the reason for your lack of a hot girlfriend in this universe...
Mysterious tracks? Image glitch? by hanschri · 2010-04-26 20:17 · Score: 1

What are those tracks in the Perseus view linked in the article? An intergalactic dust-swept highway? A slash and a dot?
http://www.uploadgeek.com/share-8FEE_4BD68D73.html