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Mission Complete! WMAP In 'Graveyard Orbit'
astroengine writes "The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has, quite literally, changed our view of the Universe. And after nine years of mapping the slight temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, its job is done and NASA has commanded the probe to fire itself into a 'graveyard orbit' around the sun. WMAP measured the most precise age of the universe (13.75 billion years), discovered more evidence supporting dark energy and dark matter theories, and found one or two mysteries along the way."
into the Sun?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
That project was supposed to go on for a few more months I thought... The cooling system exhausted prematurely, didn't it?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
So Dark Matter was a theory invented to explain why stars orbit a galaxy's core like they were on spokes around the hub of a wheel ...instead of how we observe the motion of object orbiting our sun. So if Dark Matter exerts such a huge force to keep huge objects (stars) moving in such a manner, how come that same force doesn't affect the objects going around the star? Or, in other words, if it's powerful enough to keep the outer-most stars in a galaxy moving in the same period as inner stars, how come we can't detect it here? Or have we detected such tidal forces already?
What if the cosmic background "warmth" which hovers just above 2 Kelvin isn't the remnants of the Big Bang but rather a physical phenomenon produced by some more general aspect of our universe. Like goldfish in a bowl, the limits of our experience are defined by our universe, so the phenomena we experience define and are defined within that framework. But like a human outside the goldfish bowl, we can understand why certain phenomena (such as bending of light through the glass) occurs at a simpler, more general level than the goldfish within could grasp.
Our bowl tells us that there is a background radiation permeating the universe, that unknown and unobservable matter and energy are pulling the universe this way and that, and that time and space exist. We send our tools out to study and measure this bowl. We come away with a great deal of understanding of our bowl, but for some reason things don't all fit together.
Outside this bowl of ours there is probably a simple and elegant description of the phenomena we experience here. But for the time being, I'm glad to see us working so hard to learn about this little bowl we live in.
..... and thanks.
So we need the "dark" energy to explain the "apparent" repulsion of galaxies,
and at the same time we need the "dark" matter to account for gathering of stars to form galaxies!!
Dark energy can not dissociate starts of galaxies
Dark matter is not able to join galaxies together.
May I know why we put so much emphasis on normal matter? Why we are so fond of interactions of normal matter with dark energy and matter?
What about interactions of dark energy and matter?
I mean why nobody talks about "expansion" of those huge void bubbles among galaxies?
Maybe they are also "something" with their own dynamics?
Why the discrimination?
Why you call the aggregation of normal matter (due to gravity) the obvious reason for creation of those huge void spaces?
Maybe it is the expansion of those huge bulbs which causes normal matter to absorb each other and form stars and galaxies?
> Abulolo , the sodomite killer
Yea I know its failing, but instead of sending it on a death mission couldnt it just float around till it crapped out? maybe get every single last ounce out of it, and besides what is it going to hit?
of course my wife picks on me about how clean my plates are after eating so I am just that way
Now it can go hang out with Veejer and taunt alien races.
Table-ized A.I.
Ever since Bush, people say mission "complete" instead of "accomplished". Then again, the word "stimulus" is tainted also, replaced with "recovery program".
Table-ized A.I.
Based on all the band-aides on the map, I'd say God is a clumsy shaver. I hope he doesn't try to create a sentient being.......oh
Table-ized A.I.
This stupid thing would have accurately reported the age of the universe as 6,000 years (give or take a little) if only they hadn't launched it with a rocket (Satan's Gravity Sled).
Obviously shooting it off into space like that wrecked its sensors. They should have done it the way god said...by having Jesus throw it toward the dinosaur Adam and Eve were riding to church and letting it use its tail to blast it on its way like Babe Ruth done with them baseballs.
Who says us Creation Science people don't know what we're talking about!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Does this mean we are going to another darker universe, were the weak forces are strong?
dark matter is dark
Obvious tautology is obvious. But is dark matter darker than Longcat is long?
They’re the new big fad on 4chan.
(Not that they’re new... just that they recently seem newly popular for some reason.)
I'm absolutely not a physicist. At all.
But from what I basically understand :
- we're shooting from our Earth location.
- before shooting it, it's more or less following earth around the sun.
- so, relatively to the sun, both Earth and the satelite have the same orbital velocity around the sun (because both follow earth's orbit, instead of plunging into the sun).
- this velocity comes for free as we launched the satelite from Earth.
- to plunge the satelite into the sun, we have to decelerate it well under the orbital velocity of earth.
- that deceleration doesn't come free because we have to slow down something which currently travels at 30 kilometer pro second and has quite a mass: 840kg.
- (Quick napkin estimation tells that's 378 Terajoules (= 90 kilo tons of TNT) (= 5x Little Boy nuke) worth of kinetic energy)
- instead of slowing it almost completely down, so it gets into the sun, it's much cheaper and pragmatic - energy wise - to accelerate it a little bit up and move it to another orbit farther to the Sun, away from us so it doesn't pose collision risks where we are.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]