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[Incandenza]

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Gravitational waves detected for the first time.

The article and accompanying video are a great introduction to the significance as well as the background of LIGO, the experiment that detected the waves. Well done to the NSF and the international collaborators for keeping the funding going.

[Various Artist]

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Oh, this is beautiful. 100 years on from general relativity, Einstein would be delighted with these results. Kudos to the New York Times for laying it all out very comprehensively and clearly there, and also for their laudable use of the adjectives "Brobdingnagian" to describe the collision of black holes, and "galumphing" to describe the possible size of gigantic early-universe stars from before the time of heavier-than-helium elements. Thanks for linking Inca, fabulous stuff.

[Incandenza]

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This New Yorker article was also very good (and makes me wonder how many people knew that this announcement was coming...I understand rumors going around among researchers, seeing two really comprehensive articles published today makes me wonder how early on reporters were let in on it).

The first four paragraphs of the New Yorker article are beautiful. And thinking about the lives of the people involved in this endeavor for so long, it's very sad to read that Drever, one of the original people involved with conceiving of an experiment at Caltech, is now in a nursing home in Scotland and has dementia, and won't ever know that his work was vindicated.

[San Bernardhinault]

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I'm not necessarily sure that this is exactly what NASA should be spending research money on, but good lord these are pretty.

NASA's Modernist Style Travel Posters

[Wouter D]

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San Bernardhinault wrote: I'm not necessarily sure that this is exactly what NASA should be spending research money on, but good lord these are pretty.

NASA's Modernist Style Travel Posters

Those are very nice indeed. I'm going to spend a fortune on printing them.

[Ginger Yellow]

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A double dose of astronomy news for you today.

The biggest: Kepler has observed two incipient supernovae for the first time.

The two supernovae matched up well with mathematical models of Type II explosions reinforcing existing theories. But they also revealed what could turn out to be an unexpected variety in the individual details of these cataclysmic stellar events.

While both explosions delivered a similar energetic punch, no shock breakout was seen in the smaller of the supergiants. Scientists think that is likely due to the smaller star being surrounded by gas, perhaps enough to mask the shockwave when it reached the star's surface.

Less dramatic but still very interesting, NASA has produced high res images of the bright spots on Ceres, and they're more intriguing than ever.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

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New estimates of early Solar System asteroid impacts from study of the moon's craters

All fascinating stuff. I've got a question through. How did what must have been a massive crater apparently fill up again with dust on a world with no wind?

[Gerontophile]

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Gravity and spin, I would think.

[hobbes]

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Alien farts.

[SouthdownRebel]

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Exo-planet discovered orbiting Proxima Centauri.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37167390

As an aside, I despise the way that science is dumbed down when it's reported. I mean, using the phrase 'Goldilocks Zone' is a fairly inane example of this but in other situations it is massively irresponsible. Stop patting us all on the head!

[hobbes]

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I agree in principle, but the Goldilocks Zone is a generally accepted description of the liquid water orbital zone.

[SouthdownRebel]

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Is it full of porridge?

The fact it's generally accepted is entirely the point - bad reporting leads to wild inaccuracies becoming generally accepted. Example: we only use 10% of our brains.

[Various Artist]

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In the case of this article, my main beef would be with the 'map' showing the Earth, Sun, Alpha and Proxima Centauri systems, which is so far out of scale it makes the latter look only about as distant as Mars. If the terminology is to be aimed at the uninitiated that's fine, but the BBC's reporters/artists aren't doing neophytes any favours by chucking something like that at them at the same time.

That aside, wow – this is astonishing news. If the flyby of Pluto and the resulting photos were like seeing a new baby brother for the first time, truly this news is the cosmic equivalent of meeting the neighbours.

[SouthdownRebel]

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Thankfully they seem to have removed the map.

What's incredible to me is that the science and technology are now good enough that minute changes to the light from the star can be detected and, what's more, understood. For example, the light travelling from a star through the atmosphere of a transiting planet can tell us something about the composition of the planet's atmosphere.

According to Astronomy.com, this new planet has an orbit tighter than that of Mercury, so the differences between our Sun and Proxima Centauri are crucial.

[hobbes]

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The fact it's generally accepted is entirely the point - bad reporting leads to wild inaccuracies becoming generally accepted. Example: we only use 10% of our brains.

Well again, I disagree in this case. The 10% of the brain thing is a terrible analogy because that's simply a mistruth that has become widely known. There are loads of these of course* and they're rightfully infuriating.

However, the term "Goldilocks Zone" is simply a description for the place where it's neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water.
It's a brilliantly apposite and I would argue, rather elegant shorthand, rather than a misreporting of fact. It instantly conveys the idea without having to explain it in absolute detail every time.
it's so good in fact that it's also used in cognitive science and developmental psychology (Goldilocks Pricnicpal or Effect) Economics (Goldilocks Economy) and in medicine too.
It's a great piece of cultural shorthand.

*Dog's actually CAN actually look up, for example.

[evilC]

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Back in February, NASA released these to the public. Now, they need to add another one to the series, I feel.

[evilC]

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There's never been a better time to say - if only to yourself - "I want to be an astronaut".

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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That exoplanet news is awesome. Especially after looking such immense distances and identifying "habitable zone" exoplanets around stars hundreds of light years away, to find one in the closest star system to the sun.

Mind you, the more you read about the astronomical pre-conditions for life, the more you realise what an awesome combination of factors were needed for life on earth. I mean, the two most obvious ones are (a) being in the "habitable zone" in respect of the planet's star, i.e. liquid water zone, (b) being of a size which generates enough gravity to retain an atmosphere but not so much as to crush things. But there's so much more stuff, some of it really complex. Apart from the whole thing about having the right chemicals to start biochemistry, there's the need to have a strong magnetic field from a molten iron core in order to fend off lethal radiation from the star, and shed loads more.

I read this book recently on the Drake equation:

https://www.amazon.com/Drake-Equation-Estimating-Extraterrestrial-Astrobiology/dp/1107073650

It was fascinating, but for all the learned, sophisticated and fascinating detail, the honest and firm conclusion was that we have, and are likely always to have, absolutely no sodding idea about the probable existence or numbers of other planets in our galaxy with intelligent life. For numerous independent reasons indeed, one of which is the insuperable obstacle of our evidence [edit: for some elements in the equation, e.g. evolution from simple life into intelligent life] being a sample size of one with observer bias.

[tee rex]

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Various Artist wrote: In the case of this article, my main beef would be with the 'map' showing the Earth, Sun, Alpha and Proxima Centauri systems, which is so far out of scale it makes the latter look only about as distant as Mars. If the terminology is to be aimed at the uninitiated that's fine, but the BBC's reporters/artists aren't doing neophytes any favours by chucking something like that at them at the same time.

If I were World Science Dictator, I would ban all those lying illustrations of the solar system in kids' books and posters. The ones that show all the planets on a page, suggesting you can hop from Saturn's rings to Pluto in an afternoon. The only time that [our tiny bit of] space is ever shown to something like proper scale is those popular science shows where the presenter says "Let's imagine the studio is the sun", and then goes for a walk down a corridor to Mars & co before going on a very long and edited car journey to the edge of the solar system.

So kids, chuck out the books, watch more telly.

[hobbes]

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Like thsi, you mean?

[tee rex]

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Yes, except that's a whole lot classier than the kind of thing I remember. Production values have clearly improved since James Burke was playing with tennis balls.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

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There's a similar "real solar system" scale walk in Astley Park in Chorley. All the inner planets are still in the car park, and Neptune's about a mile away.

I like the concept of this new planet being locked into a tidal orbit, raising the possibility that while it is in the "Goldilocks zone", that zone in itself might be just around a narrow strip where it is perpetually either "dawn" or "dusk" - as everything on the side where the sun is always up will be too hot, and everything on the side where it's always night will be dark and frozen. What particularly fascinates me is, if life has evolved in the temperate zone, what it has evolved into if it has crept off into the other zones.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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The biggest scaled representation of the Solar Syatem is presumably the Swedish one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System

[Patrick Thistle]

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The thing about the 'goldilocks' zone is that it's true for life forms like us. But there might be other kinds of sentience that doesn't have the same needs we do.

The Drake equation is good fun but if any number in that equation is actually zero then the whole equation computes to zero. As far as we know sentient life may be unique to our planet. That seems highly unlikely given the vastness of the universe but even if it weren;t true it's unlikely we will ever know if there is other life out there. I feel this has implications for how we treat one another / regard life from an ethical perspective. It might be incredibly rare and precious.

[hobbes]

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The thing about the 'goldilocks' zone is that it's true for life forms like us. But there might be other kinds of sentience that doesn't have the same needs we do.

Well no. It says nothing about life. It merely describes the part of a solar system where liquid water is possible.