Astronomical Stargazer Thread

[Panzermann]

To the occasion of the detection of gravitational waves I open this thread for anything concerning astronomy, the universe and everything.

 

Press Release 16-015

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES DETECTED 100 YEARS AFTER EINSTEIN'S PREDICTION LIGO

 

opens new window on the universe with observation of gravitational waves from colliding black holes

 

February 11, 2016

For the first time, scientists have observed ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves, arriving at Earth from a cataclysmic event in the distant universe.

 

This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window to the cosmos.

Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot be obtained from elsewhere. Physicists have concluded that the detected gravitational waves were produced during the final fraction of a second of the merger of two black holes to produce a single, more massive spinning black hole. This collision of two black holes had been predicted but never observed.

 

The gravitational waves were detected on Sept. 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. EDT (09:51 UTC) by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington. The LIGO observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and were conceived, built and are operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters , was made by the LIGO SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors.

 

 

Based on the observed signals, LIGO scientists estimate that the black holes for this event were about 29 and 36 times the mass of the sun, and the event took place 1.3 billion years ago. About three times the mass of the sun was converted into gravitational waves in a fraction of a second -- with a peak power output about 50 times that of the whole visible universe. By looking at the time of arrival of the signals -- the detector in Livingston recorded the event 7 milliseconds before the detector in Hanford -- scientists can say that the source was located in the Southern Hemisphere.

According to general relativity, a pair of black holes orbiting around each other lose energy through the emission of gravitational waves, causing them to gradually approach each other over billions of years, and then much more quickly in the final minutes. During the final fraction of a second, the two black holes collide at nearly half the speed of light and form a single more massive black hole, converting a portion of the combined black holes' mass to energy, according to Einstein's formula E=mc2.

This energy is emitted as a final strong burst of gravitational waves. These are the gravitational waves that LIGO observed.

 

The existence of gravitational waves was first demonstrated in the 1970s and 1980s by Joseph Taylor, Jr., and colleagues. In 1974, Taylor and Russell Hulse discovered a binary system composed of a pulsar in orbit around a neutron star. Taylor and Joel M. Weisberg in 1982 found that the orbit of the pulsar was slowly shrinking over time because of the release of energy in the form of gravitational waves. For discovering the pulsar and showing that it would make possible this particular gravitational wave measurement, Hulse and Taylor were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics.

...

 

read the rest: http://www.aei.mpg.de/gwdetection (in englisch)

 

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=137628

 

http://www.aei.mpg.de/gwdetektion (in german)

Edited February 12, 2016 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

Gravitational waves: 6 cosmic questions they can tackle

The discovery of ripples in space-time has vindicated Einstein but it can also do so much more. (nature)

Edited February 11, 2016 by Panzermann

[toysoldier]

Yeah, it kinda brightened my day.

[FlyingCanOpener]

One of LIGO's two observatories is about 2 hours from my house. Flipping awesome place to go visit on public days.

[Panzermann]

pulled out my school books. Woah, that is half my life away now, that I have been to school.

 

 

m(sun) = 2*10^30kg, c = 3*10^8m/s, 1 ly = 10^16 m

 

3 sun masses of energy are 6*10^30 kg * c² = 5,4*10^47J, 1,3*10^9 ly = 1,3*10^25 m

 

 

What reached us was then:

 

5,4*10^47/(4*Pi*(1,3*10^25)²) J/m² = 0.0002542712 J/m²= 0,25 Millijoule/m²

 

 

Assuming I did not FUBAR the digits.

 

Had it been light we could have seen that "flash".

Edited February 12, 2016 by Panzermann

[Corinthian]

Now that the prediction has been proven, we can now start researching on the wave motion cannon.

 

[Panzermann]

Now that the prediction has been proven, we can now start researching on the wave motion cannon.

 

The finding is comparable to the first telescope built by Galileo. It opens a wholly new view into cosmos. We can now directly detect black holes for example. Maybe we find now the missing mass of the universe also known as dark matter. And whatever we may find along the way that is unknown now, but heavy enough to.produce gravitational waves.

 

Who cares for some Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card, when you can see the awesomeness of the cosmos?

 

 

edit: thinking about the relevance, this is maybe more comparable to Hertz finding proof for electro magnetic waves. Those had been predicted by theory as well.

Edited February 12, 2016 by Panzermann

[toysoldier]

Mankind does well after all.

[sunday]

Also, experimental proof of the existence of black holes.

[Ivanhoe]

Brrrr;

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3444633/What-happened-sun-Solar-activity-remains-quietest-century-trigger-mini-ice-age.html

 

[Corinthian]

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/557579/scitech/science/monster-volcano-gave-mars-extreme-makeover-study

 

 

Paris, France - A volcano on Mars half the size of France spewed so much lava 3.5 billion years ago that the weight displaced the Red Planet's outer layers, according to a study released Wednesday.

Mars' original north and south poles, in other words, are no longer where they once were.

The findings explain the unexpected location of dry river beds and underground reservoirs of water ice, as well as other Martian mysteries that have long perplexed scientists, the lead researcher told AFP.

"If a similar shift happened on Earth, Paris would be in the Polar Circle," said Sylvain Bouley, a geomorphologist at Universite Paris-Sud.

"We'd see Northern Lights in France, and wine grapes would be grown in Sudan."

The volcanic upheaval, which lasted a couple of hundred million years, tilted the surface of Mars 20 to 25 degrees, according to the study.

If they can link this to how Mars became the way it is now....

Edited March 3, 2016 by Corinthian

[Ivanhoe]

 

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/557579/scitech/science/monster-volcano-gave-mars-extreme-makeover-study

 

 

Paris, France - A volcano on Mars half the size of France spewed so much lava 3.5 billion years ago that the weight displaced the Red Planet's outer layers, according to a study released Wednesday.

Mars' original north and south poles, in other words, are no longer where they once were.

The findings explain the unexpected location of dry river beds and underground reservoirs of water ice, as well as other Martian mysteries that have long perplexed scientists, the lead researcher told AFP.

"If a similar shift happened on Earth, Paris would be in the Polar Circle," said Sylvain Bouley, a geomorphologist at Universite Paris-Sud.

"We'd see Northern Lights in France, and wine grapes would be grown in Sudan."

The volcanic upheaval, which lasted a couple of hundred million years, tilted the surface of Mars 20 to 25 degrees, according to the study.

If they can link this to how Mars became the way it is now....

 

 

More evidence that fracking is bad news;

 

[DB]

"according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova"

I'm expecting Ming the Merciless's female counterpart to appear shortly.

[JWB]

E.T. calling?

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/03/02/new-paper-adds-a-surprising-twist-to-the-cosmic-hunt-for-fast-radio-bursts/?wpisrc=nl_az_most

[Panzermann]

doublette

Edited March 4, 2016 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record

 

13.4 Gly that is far away and long ago. Shortly after the big hang.

[Corinthian]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-team-breaks-cosmic-distance-record

 

13.4 Gly that is far away and long ago. Shortly after the big hang.

The Big Hang - sounds like a Windows machine that was updating then restarted and it failed spectacularly it created a universe....

 

The BSOD is actually a blackhole that's blue shifted....

Edited March 4, 2016 by Corinthian

[Panzermann]

 

typos make for the most entertaining posts at times.

 

[BansheeOne]

Shadow of total sun eclipse on 9 March as seen by NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory.

 

[Panzermann]

Awesome Photo.

 

---

 

A fifth gas giant missing in our solar system?

 

 

 

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) 2011 News Release -

Giant planet ejected from the solar system

For immediate release

 

Boulder, Colo. Nov. 10, 2011 Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"We have all sorts of clues about the early evolution of the solar system," says author Dr. David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute ® (SwRI ® ). "They come from the analysis of the trans-Neptunian population of small bodies known as the Kuiper Belt, and from the lunar cratering record."

 

These clues suggest that the orbits of giant planets were

affected by a dynamical instability when the solar system was only about 600 million years old. As a result, the giant planets and smaller bodies scattered away from each other.

Some small bodies moved into the Kuiper Belt and others

traveled inward, producing impacts on the terrestrial planets and the Moon. The giant planets moved as well. Jupiter, for example, scattered most small bodies outward and moved inward.

This scenario presents a problem, however. Slow changes in Jupiter's orbit, such as the ones expected from interaction with small bodies, would have conveyed too much momentum to the orbits of the terrestrial planets, stirring up or disrupting the inner solar system and possibly causing the Earth to collide with Mars or Venus.

 

"Colleagues suggested a clever way around this problem," says Nesvorny. "They proposed that Jupiter's orbit quickly changed when Jupiter scattered off of Uranus or Neptune during the dynamical instability in the outer solar system." The "jumping-Jupiter" theory, as it is known, is less harmful to the inner solar system, because the orbital coupling between the terrestrial planets and Jupiter is weak if Jupiter jumps.

 

Nesvorny conducted thousands of computer simulations of the early solar system to test the jumping-Jupiter theory. He found that, as hoped for, Jupiter did in fact jump by scattering from Uranus or Neptune. When it jumped, however, Uranus or Neptune was knocked out of the solar system. "Something was clearly wrong," he says.

Motivated by these results, Nesvorny wondered whether the early solar system could have had five giant planets instead of four. By running the simulations with an additional giant planet with mass similar to that of Uranus or Neptune, things suddenly fell in place. One planet was ejected from the solar system by Jupiter, leaving four giant planets behind, and Jupiter jumped, leaving the terrestrial planets undisturbed.

 

"The possibility that the solar system had more than four giant planets initially, and ejected some, appears to be conceivable in view of the recent discovery of a large number of free-floating planets in interstellar space, indicating the planet ejection process could be a common occurrence," says Nesvorny.

 

This research was funded by the National Lunar Science Institute and the National Science Foundation. The paper, "Young Solar System's Fifth Giant Planet?" by Dr. David Nesvorny was published online by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

http://www.swri.org/9what/releases/2011/giant-planet.htm

[Panzermann]

article in the newscientist about the vagabundising planet: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20952-missing-planet-explains-solar-systems-structure/

[Ssnake]

Further confirmation of the first hints in 1999 and 2004 that Earth was showered by debris of a nearby (less than 300 lightyears) supernova (specifically, the 60FE isotope) some 2.6 million years ago.

[Panzermann]

we need a name for object 2007 OR10:

 

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/2007-or10-largest-unnamed-world-in-the-solar-system

 

 

New K2 results peg 2007 OR10 as the largest unnamed

body in our solar system and the third largest of the

current roster of about half a dozen dwarf planets. The

revised measurement of 2007 OR10's diameter, 955

miles (1,535 kilometers), is about 60 miles (100

kilometers) greater than the next largest dwarf planet,

Makemake, or about one-third smaller than Pluto.

Another dwarf planet, named Haumea, has an oblong

shape that is wider on its long axis than 2007 OR10,

but its overall volume is smaller

[Josh]

Awesome Photo.

 

---

 

A fifth gas giant missing in our solar system?

 

 

http://www.swri.org/9what/releases/2011/giant-planet.htm

 

Its like the 5th Beatle!

[Mobius]

OK, but they are also using the removing extra KE from Jupiter theory to explain the 9th planet. It was ejected out of a near Jupiter orbits to almost escape the solar system but stayed way out in the Kuiper belt.