This Week in Science

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Cackalacky

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Hey hoss aren't you an engineer?

Thank you!! Haha i am. I cant embed videos from my device.
 

DomeX2 eNVy

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This is pretty cool if true and stable. A brand new metal from Hydrogen. Could be a game changer.

Advance in high-pressure physics | Harvard Gazette
A room temperature superconductor, Dias said, could change our transportation system, making magnetic levitation of high-speed trains possible, as well as making electric cars more efficient and improving the performance of many electronic devices. The material could also provide major improvements in energy production and storage. Because superconductors have zero resistance, superconducting coils could be used to store excess energy, which could then be used whenever it is needed.
 

woolybug25

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If we could definitively know that one of these planets has water, it would be a huge gamechanger for science. We would be all systems go for trying to figure out how to reach planets that far away. Today's technology would take millions of years to get to any of these planets. But I find it incredibly interesting that the sun in this system will have trillions of years left after our sun dies. This literally may be the next stop for humanity.

Incredibly interesting. I tried recruiting OMM over here in another thread. Hopefully he wanders in here and gives us some thoughts.
 

IrishLion

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I just watched Interstellar the other day.

They basically found the Interstellar solar system, but with more options.

Now, about that worm hole...
 

BleedBlueGold

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If we could definitively know that one of these planets has water, it would be a huge gamechanger for science. We would be all systems go for trying to figure out how to reach planets that far away. Today's technology would take millions of years to get to any of these planets. But I find it incredibly interesting that the sun in this system will have trillions of years left after our sun dies. This literally may be the next stop for humanity.

Incredibly interesting. I tried recruiting OMM over here in another thread. Hopefully he wanders in here and gives us some thoughts.

40 LY away --> approx 700,000 years to get there if I read it correctly. So yea...in need of some advancements (or worm holes).

I just watched Interstellar the other day.

They basically found the Interstellar solar system, but with more options.

Now, about that worm hole...

F'n love that movie. I work in a physics department and after I watched it the first time, I had a sit down with my boss for an hour. My head exploded when he told me that there's sci-fi and then there's this stuff...and this stuff isn't that far fetched considering quantum physics theories that are out there. Unattainable in our lifetime, sure, but what about future generations? Insanely fascinating.

But yea, lets drop NASA. What a waste of a program. Bad.
 

IrishLion

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F'n love that movie. I work in a physics department and after I watched it the first time, I had a sit down with my boss for an hour. My head exploded when he told me that there's sci-fi and then there's this stuff...and this stuff isn't that far fetched considering quantum physics theories that are out there. Unattainable in our lifetime, sure, but what about future generations? Insanely fascinating.

But yea, lets drop NASA. What a waste of a program. Bad.

The only thing that I didn't really follow that well (never took any physics classes) was the whole "relativity" thing.

So, the closer they were to the super massive black hole, the quicker time would "move" for them relative to time on Earth.

Explain that one to me lol
 

BleedBlueGold

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The only thing that I didn't really follow that well (never took any physics classes) was the whole "relativity" thing.

So, the closer they were to the super massive black hole, the quicker time would "move" for them relative to time on Earth.

Explain that one to me lol

Easy:

97645d531998034c57efc18e80f90e2fffb86b9a0efc3a005648225440b9559e.jpg
 

tussin

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Now I have a headache...

It's mind blowing to think there is an Earth close millions of years away just floating in space.
 

BleedBlueGold

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To answer your question, I believe it had to do with the theory on the effects gravity from black holes has on time. Closer you get to the black hole, the slower time goes. So your present time (near the black hole) is moving way slower than it is back home on earth. One hour on Miller's Planet was 7 years on earth.

Someone directed me to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

TIFWIW. That stuff is way over my head too.
 
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Old Man Mike

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Ummm .... very complicated subject.

A few inadequate remarks just for the imagination:
A). The system is centered by a Red Dwarf star. That means that its star will burn very cool (as stars go) and last incredibly long (Bigger stars like our Sun "crush" down in their cores --- I'm using street words, but not terribly poor for the imagery --- creating higher core temperatures, fiercer nuclear fusion, and much faster use-up rates, giving you the paradox of much more to burn/fuse but shorter lives.)

B). Burning "cool" means that planets must huddle up very close to the dwarf to be warm enough for water in liquid form. Sometimes a close orbit will lock the planet gravitationally so that one side always faces the star, therefore water boils away on one side, freezing on the dark side.

The "Goldilocks Zone" for Life evolution in these systems is pretty narrow. To cram multiple planets into a Red Dwarf Habitability Zone is tight. One worries about long term orbital stability vs some rogue billiard ball issues over millions of years --- and even Red Dwarves change temperature a little over their lifetimes, which moves the habitable zone.

This, and more, is why the cosmic life-seekers feel that Red Dwarf planets might evolve unicellular life, but perhaps not stable enough for advanced life. The real key will be whenever we are able to get spectra for the atmospheres. Free Oxygen will mean Life, but probably only primitive forms. If we see something like fluorine or chlorine-containing organic molecules (or nuclear fission decay products, or some other such things), then that's somebody polluting themselves --- which for sure would be THE game-changer.

C). The Alpha Centauri system has some Goldilocks and Planetary possibilities. Since that is the closest neighbor, even Oxygen in an atmosphere would ascend to High-Motivation status.

D). Regarding "getting there", both the British Interplanetary Society's Daedalus Project and the Microwave Sail concepts of Robert Forward would seem to say that at least in theory "we" could build something which could arrive at an extrasolar system in a period equalling "Power-up" plus light year distance times some small factor plus "Power down". For Alpha Century this sort of calculation comes to about a 50 year trip, maybe less. This would take an All-Earth effort of many years building in Space (probably at an Earth/Moon Lagrangian point).

Having bored everyone to comas, and subtracted from the knowledge content of the Universe relatively benignly, I'll quit.
 

Bishop2b5

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40 LY away --> approx 700,000 years to get there if I read it correctly. So yea...in need of some advancements (or worm holes).[/I]

https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3

The Starshot Initiative has been getting a lot of press recently. Basically an extremely light, highly reflective sail with a chip that will be accelerated to about 25% of the speed of light by hitting it with ground-based lasers for a few minutes. Can travel to the nearest star system in about 20 years and take pics, gather info, then transmit it back to us. Most of the technology is doable within a generation or so.

Granted, it's not sending people to another star, but it's a huge leap in that direction. With the pace of science and technology, I'd think we should be able to send people within the next 1000 years.
 

woolybug25

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https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3

The Starshot Initiative has been getting a lot of press recently. Basically an extremely light, highly reflective sail with a chip that will be accelerated to about 25% of the speed of light by hitting it with ground-based lasers for a few minutes. Can travel to the nearest star system in about 20 years and take pics, gather info, then transmit it back to us. Most of the technology is doable within a generation or so.

Granted, it's not sending people to another star, but it's a huge leap in that direction. With the pace of science and technology, I'd think we should be able to send people within the next 1000 years.

With a projected 3017 population of 90,920,905,889,691... we better do it faster than that...
 
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Cackalacky

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The only thing that I didn't really follow that well (never took any physics classes) was the whole "relativity" thing.

So, the closer they were to the super massive black hole, the quicker time would "move" for them relative to time on Earth.

Explain that one to me lol
The simple answer is that is a phenomenon called time dilation which is a function of your speed relative to the speed of light. Consequently if two people are moving at different speeds relative to each other they have a difference time dilation relative to each other.

2183.jpg


So say a stationary person's V=0 ( not moving), your V=0.5 speed of light and my V =0.8 speed of light. Doing the math....numbers numbers numbers....

Relative to someone who is stationary watching a singular event... what they would see would take "t" minutes, what you would see would take 0.866t minutes and what I would see would take 0.6t minutes.

So in essence my time that event would pass faster for me because I am moving faster relative to the stationary person and you would experience it faster than the stationary person, just not as fast as me.

This is much more complicated than this but essentially it holds in the more extreme cases right outside the event horizon. Once someone crosses the event horizon, no light can escape and if you were to watch someone cross the event horizon you they would get to the edge and you would see that but no more as after they cross it, no light would ever reach you and time effectively stops. This is very simple I know and OMM probably can and should correct me.
 
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Irish#1

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Ummm .... very complicated subject.

A few inadequate remarks just for the imagination:
A). The system is centered by a Red Dwarf star. That means that its star will burn very cool (as stars go) and last incredibly long (Bigger stars like our Sun "crush" down in their cores --- I'm using street words, but not terribly poor for the imagery --- creating higher core temperatures, fiercer nuclear fusion, and much faster use-up rates, giving you the paradox of much more to burn/fuse but shorter lives.)

B). Burning "cool" means that planets must huddle up very close to the dwarf to be warm enough for water in liquid form. Sometimes a close orbit will lock the planet gravitationally so that one side always faces the star, therefore water boils away on one side, freezing on the dark side.

The "Goldilocks Zone" for Life evolution in these systems is pretty narrow. To cram multiple planets into a Red Dwarf Habitability Zone is tight. One worries about long term orbital stability vs some rogue billiard ball issues over millions of years --- and even Red Dwarves change temperature a little over their lifetimes, which moves the habitable zone.

This, and more, is why the cosmic life-seekers feel that Red Dwarf planets might evolve unicellular life, but perhaps not stable enough for advanced life. The real key will be whenever we are able to get spectra for the atmospheres. Free Oxygen will mean Life, but probably only primitive forms. If we see something like fluorine or chlorine-containing organic molecules (or nuclear fission decay products, or some other such things), then that's somebody polluting themselves --- which for sure would be THE game-changer.

C). The Alpha Centauri system has some Goldilocks and Planetary possibilities. Since that is the closest neighbor, even Oxygen in an atmosphere would ascend to High-Motivation status.

D). Regarding "getting there", both the British Interplanetary Society's Daedalus Project and the Microwave Sail concepts of Robert Forward would seem to say that at least in theory "we" could build something which could arrive at an extrasolar system in a period equalling "Power-up" plus light year distance times some small factor plus "Power down". For Alpha Century this sort of calculation comes to about a 50 year trip, maybe less. This would take an All-Earth effort of many years building in Space (probably at an Earth/Moon Lagrangian point).

Having bored everyone to comas, and subtracted from the knowledge content of the Universe relatively benignly, I'll quit.

I was going to say that, but OMM beat me to it. lol

Great post OMM. I'd rep ya, but need to spread the love first.
 

Bishop2b5

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With a projected 3017 population of 90,920,905,889,691... we better do it faster than that...

Actually, the idea of solving our future overpopulation problems by colonizing other planets doesn't work, surprisingly. Assume we have the technology to easily reach every star in the galaxy and transport people to them in a short time period. Even if every one of the 100 or so billion stars in the galaxy has a habitable planet (which is probably FAR from the truth), we'd fill them up rather quickly. If our population doubles every 100 years, we'd fill up every one of those planets in just under 4000 years... all 100 billion of them.
 

woolybug25

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Actually, the idea of solving our future overpopulation problems by colonizing other planets doesn't work, surprisingly. Assume we have the technology to easily reach every star in the galaxy and transport people to them in a short time period. Even if every one of the 100 or so billion stars in the galaxy has a habitable planet (which is probably FAR from the truth), we'd fill them up rather quickly. If our population doubles every 100 years, we'd fill up every one of those planets in just under 4000 years... all 100 billion of them.

This makes zero sense.
 

Bishop2b5

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This makes zero sense.

The math is simple enough to do in your head. If you double a number 10 times, the result is 1024 times the original number, but we'll round it down to 1000 to make it easy.

Let's say the human population = X and it doubles every 100 years, which means it doubles 10 times every 1000 years. 100 years from now it's 2X, 200 years from now it's 4X, and so on until 1000 years from now it's 1000X. It keeps doubling every 100 years until 2000 years from now it's 1000x1000X or 1 million X. In 3000 years it's 1000 times that number, or 1 billion X. Every thousand years, it goes up by a factor of 1000 if it continues to double every 100 years. In 3700 years it's 128 billion X, or about 1.28 times our current population for every one of the 100 billion planets. By 4000 years from now, there would be about 10 times our current population (or 65 billion people) on each of those 100 billion planets.

We gotta slow population growth because exponential growth adds up.
 
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Old Man Mike

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.... a REALLY big one, yes.

Those don't happen until the Sun gets to the Red Giant stage in a few billion years, so we're good.

In the meantime, hope that the magnetic poles don't flip on us --- won't destroy life as we know it if the magnetosphere has to restrengthen, but your computers might fry, and a few genes might go cancerous for some people.
 
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