Currently watching this show.
Fun fact(s): Voyager 1 (launched in 1977) was originally sent out there to take pictures of Jupiter and Saturn but has exceeded NASA's expectations and is now hovering on the edge of our solar system. It still communicates with Earth, takes 13 hours for us to send it a signal and vice versa. As of March 2010, Voyager 1 was at a distance of 16.9 billion kilometers from the Sun and is currently moving at the rate of 17 kms/sec - it will enter interstellar space within the next 5 or so years. Included in the spacecraft is one of the two Voyager Golden Records. This phonograph record contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. It is intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, that may find it.
This Voyager 1 is 33 years old and the processor on my cell phone probably has more than 10 times the computing power than the microchip on that spacecraft.
Now compare this to life's everyday drama.
By Ker ThanStaff writer
updated 9:53 a.m. ET April 25, 2007An Earthlike planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced Tuesday.
Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the "Goldilocks" distance — not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.
And while astronomers are not yet able to look for signs of biology on the planet, the discovery is a milestone in planet detection and the search for extraterrestrial life, one with the potential to profoundly change our outlook on the uni
”The goal is to find life on a planet like the earth around a star like the sun. This is a step in that direction,” said study leader Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland. “Each time you go one step forward you are very happy.”
The new planet is about 50 percent bigger than Earth and about five times more massive. The new “super-Earth” is called Gliese 581 C, after its star, Gliese 581, a diminutive red dwarf star located 20.5 light-years away that is about one-third as massive as the sun.
Smallest to date
Gliese 581 C is the smallest extrasolar planet, or “exoplanet,” discovered to date. It is located about 15 times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun; one year on the planet is equal to 13 Earth days. Because red dwarfs, also known as M dwarfs, are about 50 times dimmer than the sun and much cooler, their planets can orbit much closer to them while still remaining within their habitable zones, the spherical region around a star within which a planet’s temperature can sustain liquid water on its surface.
Slideshow
Written by Steve Nerlich
Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history (Douglas Adams 1952-2001).
The way that we deal with time is central to a major current schism in physics. Under classic Newtonian physics and also quantum mechanics – time is absolute, a universal metronome allowing you determine whether events occur simultaneously or in sequence. Under Einstein's physics, time is not absolute – simultaneity and sequence depend on who's looking. For Einstein, the speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant and time changes in whatever way is required to keep the speed of light constant from all frames of reference.
Under general relativity (GR) you are able to experience living for three score and ten years regardless of where you are or how fast you’re moving, but other folk might measure that duration quite differently. But even under GR, we need to consider whether time only has meaning for sub-light speed consciousnesses such as us. Were a photon to have consciousness, it may not experience time – and, from its perspective, would cross the apparent 100,000 light year diameter of the Milky Way in an instant. Of course, that gets you wondering whether space is real either. Hmm…
Quantum mechanics does (well, sometimes) require absolute time – most obviously in regards to quantum entanglement where determining the spin of one particle, determines the spin of its entangled partner instantaneously and simultaneously. Leaving aside the baffling conundrums imposed by this instantaneous action over a distance – the simultaneous nature of the event implies the existence of absolute time.
In one attempt to reconcile GR and quantum mechanics, time disappears altogether – from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for quantum gravity – not that many regard this as a 100% successful attempt to reconcile GR and quantum mechanics. Nonetheless, this line of thinking highlights the ‘problem of time’ when trying to develop a Theory of Everything.
The winning entries for a 2008 essay competition on the nature of time run by the Fundamental Questions Institute could be roughly grouped into the themes ‘time is real’, 'no, it isn’t’ and ‘either way, it’s useful so you can cook dinner.’
The 'time isn't real' camp runs the line that time is just a by-product of what the universe does (anything from the Earth rotating to the transition of a Cesium atom – i.e. the things that we calibrate our clocks to).
![]()
How a return to equilibrium after a random downward fluctuation in entropy might appear. First there was light, then a whole bunch of stuff happened and then it started getting cold and dark and empty.
Time is the fire in which we burn (Soran, Star Trek bad guy, circa 24th century).
'Time isn't real' proponents also refer to Boltzmann's attempt to trivialise the arrow of time by proposing that we just live in a local pocket of the universe where there has been a random downward fluctuation of entropy – so that the perceived forward arrow of time is just a result of the universe returning to equilibrium – being a state of higher entropy where it's very cold and most of the transient matter that we live our lives upon has evaporated. It is conceivable that another different type of fluctuation somewhere else might just as easily result in the arrow pointing the other way.
Nearly everyone agrees that time probably doesn't exist outside our Big Bang universe and the people who just want to get on and cook dinner suggest we might concede that space-time could be an emergent property of quantum mechanics. With that settled, we just need to rejig the math – over coffee maybe.
I was prompted to write this after reading a Scientific American June 2010 article, Time Is An Illusion by Craig Callender.
Filed under: Astronomy, Cosmology
Tags: entropy, spacetime, time
FTA:
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has imaged this coiled galaxy with an eye-like object at its center. The 'eye' at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. In this color-coded infrared view from Spitzer, the area around the invisible black hole is blue and the ring of stars, white. The galaxy, called NGC 1097 and located 50 million light-years away, is spiral-shaped like our Milky Way, with long, spindly arms of stars.
NASA wants to put a picture of you on one of the two remaining space shuttle missions and launch it into orbit. To launch your face into space and become a part of history click http://faceinspace.nasa.gov
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37215817/ns/technology_and_science-space/
From the article:
Six men from Russia, Europe and China are preparing to spend 520 days together in a sealed-off warren to take a simulated trip to Mars to test how long isolation would affect humans.
If humans weren't complete dicks to one another, we would've been on Mars/completed our 2nd mission to the Moon/built a space elevator by now. Anyway, we're looking at history in the making here.