social.sokoll.com
The past is a foreign country indeed.
#Astronomy
#History
#Science
#EqualityFinding the missing world required maths — very complex maths, and that's where Williams and other mathematicians came on the scene. Before the invention of calculators, so-called human computers — often women, since it was unglamorous work — did all the complex math that astronomers required, by hand. For Lowell's research, Williams calculated where he should look for how large of a missing object, all based on the discrepancies in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.
Lowell never spotted Pluto, and the quest languished for a few years before Tombaugh picked up the work. And then, there it was: In 1930, those calculations paid off when Tombaugh caught sight of an object moving through the solar system. "There's a specific result that came of her calculations, so that's pretty exciting," Clark said.
But Williams wasn't there to see it, Clark said. In 1922, Williams had married and Lowell's widow had fired her because she felt it inappropriate to employ a married woman. The pair took jobs at a Harvard observatory in Jamaica. In 1935, Williams was widowed herself and moved to New Hampshire, where she died in poverty.Meet the unknown female mathematician whose calculations helped discover Pluto
Astronomers are rediscovering how calculations made by the 'human computer' Elizabeth Williams contributed to the first observations of Pluto 90 years ago.www.space.com
Finding the missing world required maths — very complex maths, and that's where Williams and other mathematicians came on the scene. Before the invention of calculators, so-called human computers — often women, since it was unglamorous work — did all the complex math that astronomers required, by hand. For Lowell's research, Williams calculated where he should look for how large of a missing object, all based on the discrepancies in the orbits of Neptune and Uranus.
Lowell never spotted Pluto, and the quest languished for a few years before Tombaugh picked up the work. And then, there it was: In 1930, those calculations paid off when Tombaugh caught sight of an object moving through the solar system. "There's a specific result that came of her calculations, so that's pretty exciting," Clark said.
But Williams wasn't there to see it, Clark said. In 1922, Williams had married and Lowell's widow had fired her because she felt it inappropriate to employ a married woman. The pair took jobs at a Harvard observatory in Jamaica. In 1935, Williams was widowed herself and moved to New Hampshire, where she died in poverty.
Astronomers are rediscovering how calculations made by the 'human computer' Elizabeth Williams contributed to the first observations of Pluto 90 years ago.www.space.com
"Don't you ever clean up around here? Some of this dust is older than the planet!"
SERIOUSLY.
Geoboffins find the oldest matter on Earth: Ancient stardust created before the Solar System formed • The Register
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/14/oldest_matter_on_earth/
Capsule summary: Experiments studying samples from the Murchison meteorite have found dust that had to have formed around a different star older than ours.
#science #astronomy #spaceGeoboffins find the oldest matter on Earth: Ancient stardust created before the Solar System formed
That's way, way, way older than the dust off your oldest PCwww.theregister.co.uk
That's way, way, way older than the dust off your oldest PCwww.theregister.co.uk
Just had my first rejection of a paper. I don't actually know why it was rejected, because the referee's lengthy comments contain basically no information besides, "I don't find this result convincing". That's extremely frustrating. We gave a clearly defined objective procedure explaining why our detections are real and not the result of noise. To then simply say, "I don't believe you" without giving any hint of a reason is extremely unprofessional and belittles the work that went into this. It also denies us any way to argue against it. Readers are of course always free to disagree for any reason, but a referee ought to justify their reasons - if they can't do this, then they should accept the importance of people publishing results they disagree with.
I have no idea why this result is in any way controversial. All it does is find a signature of galaxy evolution that's consistent with known processes, other observations, and theoretical models. Baffles the heck out of me. Not sure what we're gonna do next - expect more rants pending conversations with co-authors.
#Science
#Astronomy
Infrequent flyer
A question sent in to New Scientist reads,"My wife told me I should get out more. I replied that I am just about to celebrate my 66th free trip around the sun. Can anyone tell me how far I have traveled around the galaxy during that time?"All of the information required to answer this question to a ballpark level of accuracy — along with a little elementary arithmetic — can be found in the Galaxy Song from Monty Python's comedy film The Meaning Of Life."We're thirty thousand light-years from galactic central point,So the circumference of the Earth's orbit is (roughly) pi times two times thirty thousand light years. That's approximately 188,495 light years. And we take 200 million years to complete an orbit, which means each year we cover 188,495/200,000,000 light years, which is 0.00094 light years.
We go 'round every two hundred million years..."
So how far is a light-year?"As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,Twelve million is actually a bit high. C is precisely 299792458 meters per second¹, which is 186,282.4 miles per second, and that works out to 11,176,943 miles per minute. 186,282.4 miles times 86400 seconds per day times 365.24 days per year gives 5,878,464,425,192.5 miles to the light year. Each year we travel 0.00094 of those around the galaxy, which is 5,525,756,559.7 miles, or just over five and a half trillion miles. Multiply by 66 and you get 364,699,932,939 miles, give or take a few hundred yards.
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is"
So there's your galactic travel — call it 364.7 trillion miles over 66 years. I'm pretty certain that many frequent flyer miles upgrades you to a first-class seat.
#science #astronomy #MontyPython
¹ Yes, PRECISELY 299792458 meters per second. Because that's how we now define the meter: 1/299,792,458 of the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in free space in one second.
"My wife told me I should get out more. I replied that I am just about to celebrate my 66th free trip around the sun. Can anyone tell me how far I have traveled around the galaxy during that time?"All of the information required to answer this question to a ballpark level of accuracy — along with a little elementary arithmetic — can be found in the Galaxy Song from Monty Python's comedy film The Meaning Of Life.
"We're thirty thousand light-years from galactic central point,So the circumference of the Earth's orbit is (roughly) pi times two times thirty thousand light years. That's approximately 188,495 light years. And we take 200 million years to complete an orbit, which means each year we cover 188,495/200,000,000 light years, which is 0.00094 light years.
We go 'round every two hundred million years..."
"As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,Twelve million is actually a bit high. C is precisely 299792458 meters per second¹, which is 186,282.4 miles per second, and that works out to 11,176,943 miles per minute. 186,282.4 miles times 86400 seconds per day times 365.24 days per year gives 5,878,464,425,192.5 miles to the light year. Each year we travel 0.00094 of those around the galaxy, which is 5,525,756,559.7 miles, or just over five and a half trillion miles. Multiply by 66 and you get 364,699,932,939 miles, give or take a few hundred yards.
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is"
from the New Horizons flyby of 2014 MU69 are out, based on 10% of the data sent back by the probe so far.For many at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, January 1 this year didn't mean a New Year's celebration. Instead, it meant the first arrival of data from New Horizons' visit to a small Kuiper Belt object. But, like its earlier flyby of Pluto, the probe was instructed to grab all the data it could and deal with getting it back to Earth later. The full set of everything New Horizons captured won't be available for more than a year yet. But with 10 percent of the total cache in hand, researchers decided they had enough to do the first analysis of 2014 MU69.#Astronomy #Space #NewHorizons #Exploration #2014MU69 #UltimaThule #KuiperBeltObjects
[...]
Overall, 2014 MU69 looks exactly like what we'd hope for: a world that underwent some major changes immediately after its formation but has since become static, preserving its state largely as it was billions of years ago. Hopefully, more details on that state are sitting in storage on New Horizons. Because we're not likely to send something back to 2014 MU69 any time soon.First results from New Horizons’ time in the Kuiper Belt
Only about 10 percent of the data has been transmitted so far, but it says a lot.arstechnica.com
For many at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, January 1 this year didn't mean a New Year's celebration. Instead, it meant the first arrival of data from New Horizons' visit to a small Kuiper Belt object. But, like its earlier flyby of Pluto, the probe was instructed to grab all the data it could and deal with getting it back to Earth later. The full set of everything New Horizons captured won't be available for more than a year yet. But with 10 percent of the total cache in hand, researchers decided they had enough to do the first analysis of 2014 MU69.#Astronomy #Space #NewHorizons #Exploration #2014MU69 #UltimaThule #KuiperBeltObjects
[...]
Overall, 2014 MU69 looks exactly like what we'd hope for: a world that underwent some major changes immediately after its formation but has since become static, preserving its state largely as it was billions of years ago. Hopefully, more details on that state are sitting in storage on New Horizons. Because we're not likely to send something back to 2014 MU69 any time soon.
Only about 10 percent of the data has been transmitted so far, but it says a lot.arstechnica.com
#FalconHeavy #Launch Close Up
#Astronomy #Picture of the Day
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190420.html
#APOD
Ursprünglich geteilt von @(((chaospunk)))
Katie Bouman
Thanks, @@V. T. Eric Layton!
#space #astronomy #KatieBouman #blackhole #M87 #EventHorizonTelescope
Andrew Chael is one of the scientists who helped to produce the famous image of black hole M87. He has taken to twitter to defend Kate Bouman who for some reason has attracted the most attention from the media for her part in imaging the black hole.
A number of keyboard warriors have been bleating on about the fact that the media have been giving her rather too much credit for her role, although Bouman has, in all her comments so far, pointed out it was very much a team effort.
#m87 #astronomy #blackhole
Best #BlackHole photo
Meet Katie Bouman, the woman that rendered the image, as it appears on her screen.
#WomenInScence #Science #Astronomy
https://twitter.com/MIT_CSAIL/status/1116020858282180609
It's Official: Astronomers Just Unveiled The First-Ever Direct Image of a Black Hole
Very COOL! But I'm underwhelmed. Artists' views are ever-so-much better. :)
https://giant.gfycat.com/ZestyRawIvorybilledwoodpecker.webm
#physics #black holes #astrophysics #astronomy #cosmology #Einstein #HawkingIt's Official: Astronomers Just Unveiled The First-Ever Direct Image of a Black Hole
No. Stop. Scroll back up. Look at that picture. Stop scrolling down and look again. What you're looking at is history. That is the very first direct image, ever, of the event horizon of a black hole.www.sciencealert.com
No. Stop. Scroll back up. Look at that picture. Stop scrolling down and look again. What you're looking at is history. That is the very first direct image, ever, of the event horizon of a black hole.www.sciencealert.com
YORP effect apparently has made this asteroid spin so fast, it's breaking up.
"[S]unlight [i.e., the YORP effect] can spin up an asteroid, making it rotate faster. That's no big deal in the short term, but in the long run it spells disaster: At some point the rock is spinning so rapidly that the centrifugal force outward on its surface balances the gravitational force inward. If you're a rock sitting on the surface, over time as the asteroid spins faster you feel less and less gravity. You weigh less!
[...]
Is this what's happening to Gault? Observations from the ground indicate it has a rotation rate of about 2 hours, and it turns out that's almost exactly where you expect the rotational speed to start causing effects like this! Also, the dust is leaving the asteroid relatively slowly, at speeds of under a meter per second (less than walking speed). That's also about what you'd expect from dust launched into space by a landside (and the rotational speed of the asteroid on the surface near the equator is about 2 meters per second, which also gives the dust a kick).
[...]
It all adds up: Gault has been getting spun up by the ethereal breeze of light from the Sun, and is now very close to the point where it'll fly itself apart."
#Science #Space #Astronomy #Asteroids #Dynamics #YorpEffectHubble watches as an asteroid starts to tear itself apart
Out in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbits a rock called 6478 Gault. It's about 4–9 kilometers across (it can be hard to get the exact sizes of asteroids), which is pretty typical. It's orbit is a little unusual in that its more elliptical and tipped than for most asteroids, but that's no big deal. What is a big deal is that it appears to be tearing itself apart.www.syfy.com
Out in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter orbits a rock called 6478 Gault. It's about 4–9 kilometers across (it can be hard to get the exact sizes of asteroids), which is pretty typical. It's orbit is a little unusual in that its more elliptical and tipped than for most asteroids, but that's no big deal. What is a big deal is that it appears to be tearing itself apart.www.syfy.com
Highlights of the North Spring Sky
Image Credit & Copyright: Universe2go.com
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190313.html #APoD
The highest resolution image of MU69 taken by New Horizons is now available. Phil Plait explains what it shows and what it can tell us about the population of bodies out there.After the monumentally successful flyby of Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft continued on into the outer solar system. After traveling at more than a dozen kilometers per second out an additional billion kilometers or so, it shot past the odd little rocky iceball 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019, passing it by the razor-thin margin of just 3,500 kilometers … and that was after traveling for over 6.6 billion kilometers from Earth!#Space #Astronomy #Asteroids #NewHorizons #MU69 #UltimaThule #Exploration
New Horizons took a lot of data during this encounter, comparable to what it did at Pluto, and it'll be another year or more before it's all back on Earth. So the New Horizons team did a clever thing: They prioritized what images to send back first. Among the highest priorities was getting the highest-resolution image sent back from the closest encounter as quickly as possible.
And now that image is here.
[...]
You might think that being out there, exposed to space out past Neptune for billions of years, MU69 would be covered in craters. For Pluto that's not the case because we think its surface gets repaved, so to speak, from subsurface processes that bubble up liquid from the interior. However, MU69 is far too small for that, and is certainly solid throughout. So a dearth of craters means there must be a dearth of impactors.
Interestingly, some scientists actually predicted this! They used the number of small craters seen on Pluto and its huge moon Charon, together with measurements and estimates of sizes of small objects past Neptune (called trans-Neptunian objects [TNOs], or more specifically in this case the Kuiper Belt), first to try to figure out the size distribution of objects out there capable of hitting MU69, and then to predict the size distribution of craters on MU69. Keep in mind that this was all done before the MU69 encounter!Here it is: The most detailed full image of MU69 from New Horizons we'll ever see.
After the monumentally successful flyby of Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft continued on into the outer solar system. After traveling at more than a dozen kilometers per second out an additional billion kilometers or so, it shot past the odd little rocky iceball 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019, passing it by the razor-thin margin of just 3,500 kilometers … and that was after traveling for over 6.6 billion kilometers from Earth!www.syfy.com
After the monumentally successful flyby of Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft continued on into the outer solar system. After traveling at more than a dozen kilometers per second out an additional billion kilometers or so, it shot past the odd little rocky iceball 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019, passing it by the razor-thin margin of just 3,500 kilometers … and that was after traveling for over 6.6 billion kilometers from Earth!#Space #Astronomy #Asteroids #NewHorizons #MU69 #UltimaThule #Exploration
New Horizons took a lot of data during this encounter, comparable to what it did at Pluto, and it'll be another year or more before it's all back on Earth. So the New Horizons team did a clever thing: They prioritized what images to send back first. Among the highest priorities was getting the highest-resolution image sent back from the closest encounter as quickly as possible.
And now that image is here.
[...]
You might think that being out there, exposed to space out past Neptune for billions of years, MU69 would be covered in craters. For Pluto that's not the case because we think its surface gets repaved, so to speak, from subsurface processes that bubble up liquid from the interior. However, MU69 is far too small for that, and is certainly solid throughout. So a dearth of craters means there must be a dearth of impactors.
Interestingly, some scientists actually predicted this! They used the number of small craters seen on Pluto and its huge moon Charon, together with measurements and estimates of sizes of small objects past Neptune (called trans-Neptunian objects [TNOs], or more specifically in this case the Kuiper Belt), first to try to figure out the size distribution of objects out there capable of hitting MU69, and then to predict the size distribution of craters on MU69. Keep in mind that this was all done before the MU69 encounter!
After the monumentally successful flyby of Pluto in 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft continued on into the outer solar system. After traveling at more than a dozen kilometers per second out an additional billion kilometers or so, it shot past the odd little rocky iceball 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019, passing it by the razor-thin margin of just 3,500 kilometers … and that was after traveling for over 6.6 billion kilometers from Earth!www.syfy.com
