Space the Final Frontier - Universe and Space Discussion

I figured with all the nerds and geeks and general knowledge hounds on here this thread would make sense. I am watching/listening to The Universe while cleaning and the show about the most dangerous things in the Universe are pretty cool.

Magnetar -

Black Hole -

I think everyone is familiar with a Black Hole in general and the Event Horizon. I had never heard of a Magnetar until I had watched that show. Just alittle info from the Wiki Article.

Magnetars are primarily characterized by their extremely powerful magnetic field, which can often reach the order of ten gigatesla. These magnetic fields are hundreds of thousands of times stronger than any man-made magnet, and quadrillions of times more powerful than the field surrounding Earth. As of 2010, they are the most magnetic objects ever detected in the universe.

When, in a supernova, a star collapses to a neutron star, its magnetic field increases dramatically in strength. Halving a linear dimension increases the magnetic field fourfold.

This thread is for discussion of any known space and or universe discussion. I am doing this as much for me as anything else for information gathering. BTW you can watch many episodes of The Universe on Hulu for free.

Supemassive black hole -

A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, on the order of hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most, if not all galaxies, including the Milky Way,[2] are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.[3][4]

Supermassive black holes have properties which distinguish them from lower-mass classifications:

* The average density of a supermassive black hole (measured as the mass of the black hole divided by its Schwarzschild volume) can be very low, and may actually be lower than the density of air. This is because the Schwarzschild radius is directly proportional to mass, while density is inversely proportional to the volume. Since the volume of a spherical object (such as the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole) is directly proportional to the cube of the radius, and mass merely increases linearly, the volume increases by a much greater factor than the mass as a black hole grows. Thus, average density decreases for increasingly larger radii of black holes (due to volume increasing much faster than mass).
* The tidal forces in the vicinity of the event horizon are significantly weaker. Since the central singularity is so far away from the horizon, a hypothetical astronaut travelling towards the black hole center would not experience significant tidal force until very deep into the black hole.

here are several models for the formation of black holes of this size. The most obvious is by slow accretion of matter starting from a black hole of stellar size. Another model[5] of supermassive black hole formation involves a large gas cloud collapsing into a relativistic star of perhaps a hundred thousand solar masses or larger. The star would then become unstable to radial perturbations due to electron-positron pair production in its core, and may collapse directly into a black hole without a supernova explosion, which would eject most of its mass and prevent it from leaving a supermassive black hole as a remnant. Yet another model[6] involves a dense stellar cluster undergoing core-collapse as the negative heat capacity of the system drives the velocity dispersion in the core to relativistic speeds. Finally, primordial black holes may have been produced directly from external pressure in the first instants after the Big Bang.

Yo fuck space. That shit is overrated.

imo.

A quasi-stellar radio source (quasar) is a very energetic and distant galaxy with an active galactic nucleus. Quasars were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that were point-like, similar to stars, rather than extended sources similar to galaxies.

While there was initially some controversy over the nature of these objects?as recently as the early 1980s, there was no clear consensus as to their nature?there is now a scientific consensus that a quasar is a compact region in the centre of a massive galaxy surrounding the central supermassive black hole. Its size is 10-10,000 times the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole. The quasar is powered by an accretion disc around the black hole.

Subscribed for future reading and what not.

Yey space! I <3 space.

I like that Mass Effect took place soley in the Milky Way. The game really leaves you with the impression that the Milky Way is that effing big and that there could be thousands of planets to explore.

I am currently watching Cosmos: The Complete Collection available on netflix instant. It’s from 1980something but there are updates from 1990 for each ep and the science is still good regardless. Highly recommended.

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i thought this was funny

Haha, that was great.

Subscribed for later.

PS: Obama killed my dreams :frowning:

Oh yeah, I love that show The Universe. One of the most interesting destructive things out there to me is the Gamma Ray Burst: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/bursts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst

^That would be one of the most badass ways for our world to end. It’s like the real life “PROTONNNN CANNON!” hypercombo finish…or an attack from a DBZ character for real. A star collapses in on itself and bam—a fat ass LASER beam tears through space, obliterating everything that was in the path. This isn’t something we could even hope to defend against either…it’s a fuckin laser beam…the guaranteed destruction at the speed of light. Game over man game over. If it happened and earth was in the path of that beam, our species goes extinct in the span of 1 second. One bright flash and it’s OVER…we’d all be fried…burned to nothing. Even if it wasn’t a direct hit, but the beam was reasonably close…the atmosphere would be stripped off, so then we’d have to deal with ridiculous amounts of radiation from the GRB that happened and the full dose of radiation from the sun since our protective atmosphere would be gone…along with who knows what kind of crazy, deadly weather situations that would set up…along with the flash itself that would most likely blind anyone who happened to be outside at the time. Heh, it’s not even like we could ever know it’s going to happen either, unless they figure out how to tell when a star is about to die, and what position earth is in relation to that star’s axis.


There’s also a fairly large asteroid named “Apophis” that is on its way. http://www.deepastronomy.com/apophis-asteroid-could-hit-earth.html Yeah, it’s on the way to visit us… this path determins whether or not it will hit when it returns later in 7 years.

-sidenote— there is a character in Unreal Championship 2 named “Apophis”… he was a bitchmade chump though, and I enjoyed killing him over and over.

^ Keep up to scratch and we can send you into space once we know if it’s gonna hit or not.

im runnin this monkey farm frankenstein

Dude, perfect timing, I’m taking an Astronomy class this semester. :lol:

I’m already learning things in the class that make me feel like a complete idiot. I learned yesterday that all of the light from the Sun takes 7 seconds to get to the Earth so if something were to happen to the Sun itself, there would be a small delay before we realized it. Also, if a match head sized piece of the Sun were placed on Earth, you would have to stand 90 miles away to not get burned by it.

Crazy little facts like that are so awesome IMO.

Carl Sagan /thread

Space isn’t so interesting when you realize any serious academic study of it is more math than cool pictures and factoids.

That said, light is amazing.

For people interested in this kind of thing thoug, the next time you turn on the tv and get static, realize that about 30% of this noise is actually waves from the big bang. IE, you’re coming in contact with the beginning of existence.

Holy shit I have let this thread die, need to start updating more often.

I’m going to post some lectures. If you haven’t had math up through differential equations this might be hard to understand. My main interest right now is cosmology.
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Some good names for future pokemon in this thread.

light takes about 8 minutes to reach earth iirc
you can thank me now for helping you pass :stuck_out_tongue:

What you got a time machine?

good shit (subscribed)