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NASA Finds Interstellar Matter From Beyond Our Solar System
An anonymous reader writes "For the very first time, a NASA spacecraft has detected matter from outside our solar system — material that came from elsewhere in the galaxy. This so-called interstellar material was spotted by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), a spacecraft that is studying the edge of the solar system from its orbit about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) above Earth. 'This alien interstellar material is really the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of — it's really important to be measuring it,' said David McComas, IBEX principal investigator."
Interstellar matter found between stars!
What makes this material different from that of our solar system? It's got the same kind of atoms. And why do they say *that* material is what we're made from? As far as I'm aware, we're made from the material of *our* solar system, not that of another.
... so shoot it down.
...besides there being the possibility of molecules, in that stuff, we do not ( yet ) know. This stuff may, indeed, be more important than cynics deign to think.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Carl Sagan would be so happy!
So THAT is what interstellar means... is there an echo in the title?
better than moon rocks! are these also completely worthless, but we will spend billions, even trillions to get one?
Do you have a license for wielding that pleonasm?
Just look up on a clear night. See all those stars? Every single one of them is outside the solar system!
You just blew my freakin' mind dude!
How could it be interstellar? You know, "inter" as in "between"...
This is not the first time matter from outside the solar system is sampled. Here's what NASA said in the press release:
"...Previous spacecraft have already provided some information about the way the galactic wind interacts with the heliosheath. Ulysses, for one, observed incoming helium as it traveled past Jupiter and measured it traveling at 59,000 miles per hour. IBEX's new information, however, shows the galactic wind traveling not only at a slower speed -- around 52,000 miles per hour -- but from a different direction, most likely offset by some four degrees from previous measurements. Such a difference may not initially seem significant, but it amounts to a full 20% difference in how much pressure the galactic wind exerts on the heliosphere."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/news/interstellar-difference.html
Where to start. First, go out at night - all those little dots in the sky ? They're called stars, and are all outside our solar system. (This has been known, depending on your point of view, for at least 400 years, and probably for 2 or more millennia.)
Second, it is pretty common for meteorites contain little inclusions of interstellar matter - organic matter, silica, and even (really tiny) diamonds. And, while we are at it, a certain fraction of the micro-meteors observed with radar (to get their orbits) turn out to be interstellar as well. (The fraction of interstellar micro-meteors suggests that there may be a few kg-sized interstellar meteorites waiting to be picked up out of the thousands in the Antarctic meteorite fields, which would be something.)
So, this is nice research, but it is only the first in its area, and it was silly of them to say "for the very first time."
Yes, it's between the Sun and some stars even farther back :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Nonsense. Genesis 1 clearly states
6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
[...]
14. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
So clearly the sky is a dome dividing the waters below from the water above, and the sun and the stars are set on/in it. All this talk of space and great distances and things outside our system is just you science-y servants of Satan trying to test our faith ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If it is from beyond our solar system, it is, by definition, interstellar.
High energy cosmic rays originate outside of the solar system, which has been known for many decades. Some of them are even intergalactic - having energies so high that the galactic magnetic field of the Milky Way cannot trap them.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
"the stuff that stars and planets and people are made of"
I think we have a word for it: "matter."
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Isn't it all really interstellar matter though? For the same reason that the population of the Universe is 0! If you divide the amount of matter in our solar system by the amount of matter NOT in our solar system, the number is close enough to be zero that it may as well actually be zero! That's also my reasoning for why everything must be an illusion since we all live on average for 0 years! Hah!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Cause we know for sure what Interstellar Matter looks like, right?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
And that was spoken like a man that fully believes that if you can feel good about it there is nothing wrong with just taking other peoples shit.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
You want a living wage and health insurance? then support science. All the tech jobs, every electron you command, ever ounce of fuel you consume, exists because of science.
So it's really important to do all kinds of science.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Including life extension?
TBH it's not those who worry me the most.
Sure, some people are stupid, and prefer to take an iron age fairy tale book for illiterate backwater tribes (even under the Romans, literacy in Palestine is estimated at 3%, and most of those in the cities) for 100% accurate, against all proof to the contrary. But at least they''re consistent about it, in their stupidity. They only have one premise they have to hang onto, to make that seem to make sense.
The ones I understand even less are those who are at least vaguely aware that some stuff isn't exactly true -- or needs some extensive editing and playing mad-libs with putting your own words into their sentence structure, under the guise of "what it REALLY meant" -- but still insist that the REST of it must be literally true and come from an omniscient source. Even though that source fucks up all over the place.
It seems to me like if some guy came at work to give one rules under the claimed authority of being the CEO's bestest buddy and knowing everything about him and the company, one would be at least a little skeptical. If the guy then gets the founding year (and even century) of the company wrong, and the position in the city wrong (or for that matter doesn't know there's a city around it at all), and generally gets a dozen things awfully wrong even in one sitting, then everyone would think "what a poser" and be at least vaguely aware that everything else he says might be wrong too.
But here we have a bunch of guys who had hallucinations... err... "visions" (no, really, Paul for example even says so, plus it's more than once in the OT that that's how God talks to prophets) and get a lot of stuff awfully wrong. Yet even people aware that it gets the timescale of creation wrong, and talks about events that blatantly didn't happen and nobody else heard about (e.g., Matthew's zombie invasion or the physically impossible 3 hour eclipse on a full moon), and stuff where you have to take some illiterate goat-herder's word that the proven and tested laws of physics got raped six ways to sunday over the guys who have evidence (e.g., the flood, the braking the Earth so the Sun stands still in the sky, etc), and the supposedly omniscient God doesn't know the basic biology of those he created (e.g., Jesus ranting that you don't have to wash your hands and dishes before eating, because everything that goes into your mouth is destroyed anyway, or his thinking that by worrying about your body and what you eat you can't add even an hour to your life)... still go basically "that was... err... metaphor. But the rest of it? It's all literally true."
Jesus Christ, how can one know that a text told lies in dozens of places and still take it on faith that, no, see, everything else is literally true? They say that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing ten times and expecting different results. Well here we have dozens of places where people tried to find unerring truth in a text, and it turned out to be a falsehood. How insane does one need to be to keep trying?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Stellar fusion produces elements up to lead, if I am not mistaken.