Carnival of Space 536

1. Universe Today -Triton’s Arrival was Chaos for the Rest of Neptune’s Moons

A recent study offers a possible explanation as to why Neptune’s system of satellites differs from those of other gas giants; it also indicates that Neptune’s proximity to the Kuiper Belt is what is responsible. At one time, Neptune may have had a system of moons that were very much like those of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. But since it is well-situated to pick up dwarf planet-sized objects that were kicked out of the Kuiper Belt.

Above – Artist representation of the moon Triton.

2. Universe Today – Dinosaur Killing Asteroid hit Earth in Exactly the Wrong Spot

3. Universe Today -When James Webb Finally Reaches Space, Here’s What it’ll be Hunting

4. Universe Today -Antarctica has a Huge Mantle Plume Beneath it, Which Might Explain Why its Ice Sheet is so Unstable

5. NASA’s Regional Planetary Image Facility Network has a Facebook page.

6. Cosmoquest – CQ Science – Post 5: Crater Confusion

7. Futurism -Newly Discovered Earth-Sized Exoplanet May Be Best Candidate Yet For Alien Life

8. Futurism – Getting Closer to Earth 2.0: Astronomers Discover 20 New Potentially Habitable Exoplanets

9. NASA designs advanced new SELFI instrument to help search for life on Enceladus

10. Chandra X-ray space telescope blog- A New Stellar X-ray “Reality” Show Debuts

11. Nextbigfuture – Space Expansion makes observable universe over triple the age of the universe.

The limit on our observation universe is not the age of the universe and the speed of light which would be 13.799 billion light-years for two reasons.

1. Space itself is expanding, so we can actually detect light from objects that were once close, but are now up to around 45.7 billion light years away (rather than up to 13.799 billion light years away as might be expected).

2. before the recombination epoch, about 378,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with a plasma that was opaque to light, and photons were quickly re-absorbed by other particles, so we cannot see objects from before that time using light or any other electromagnetic radiation. Gravitational waves and neutrino background would have been unaffected by this, and may be detectable from earlier times.

12. Nextbigfuture – Spacex BFR could rapidly and affordably build interplanetary photonic railway by the 2030s.

The Lubin UCSB laser propulsion system efforts have been funded by Breakthrough Starshot for $100 million. They are working working to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled nanocrafts.

A large scale network of several 70 Gigawatt lasers on Earth, Earth Orbits, the moon Mars and asteroids is not as distant as one might think because of several converging systems and technological shortcuts.

A laser power of 70GW (without photon recycling) can send a 100 kg craft can be propelled to 1AU in approximately 3 days achieving a speed of 0.4% the speed of light, and a 10,000 kg craft in approximately 30 days.

The full scale DE-STAR 4 (50-70 GW) will propel a wafer scale spacecraft with a 1 meter laser sail to about 26% the speed of light in about 10 minutes (20 kgo accel), reach Mars (1 AU) in 30 minutes, pass Voyager I in less than 3 days, pass 1,000 AU in 12 days and reach Alpha Centauri in about 20 years. The same directed energy driver (DE-STAR 4) can also propel a 100 kg payload to about 2% c and a 10,000 kg payload to more than 1,000 km/s. While such missions would be truly remarkable, the system is scalable to any level of power and array size where the tradeoff is between the desired mass and speed of the spacecraft.

13. Nextbigfuture – Laser arrays for propelling spaceships can also be used like nuclear cannon weapons

A powerful 70 gigawatt laser propulsion system that could accelerate an 100 kilogram object over 122 seconds to 2% of light speed (6000 kilometers per second) would also be able to fire kinetic projectiles at nuclear weapon power.

The goal of the Breakthrough Starshot program (which has $100 million in funding) is to send wafer chip spacecraft to 20% of lightspeed to probe exoplanets and other star systems. The initial $100 million would not reach that goal but a follow on program for a few tens of billions of dollar could achieve it.

A 100 kilogram object accelerated to 2% of light speed (6000 kilometers per second) would have a kinetic impact of 430 kilotons of TNT.

1 thought on “Carnival of Space 536”

  1. There might be a whole lot of shaking going on the next few years…

    Scientists have noticed that when the Earth’s rotation slows (only a little, but that little apparently is signficant), large (mag 7 plus) earthquakes increase. A lot. Generally, the slowdown takes about 5 years before earthquakes ramp up.

    Problem: The Earth’s rotation slowed 4 years ago. If the pattern holds, we may see far more major earthquakes — and tsunamis? — in the next few years ahead.

    Another reason to move from California, aside from the taxes, regulations, traffic, and astronomical home prices.

    https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/11/21/earthquakes-could-get-worse-in-2018-due-to-earths-slowing-rotation/23284171/

Comments are closed.