Slowhand wrote:Just create a wormhole, guys. Sheesh!

WheelsFellOff wrote:

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:so we only have 46 years to invent the warp drive technology if Star Trek is correct

We're already 20 years late for the eugenics wars, but I'm sure our president can catch us up to speed there.

TenuredVulture wrote:

WheelsFellOff wrote:

The Crimson Cyclone wrote:so we only have 46 years to invent the warp drive technology if Star Trek is correct

We're already 20 years late for the eugenics wars, but I'm sure our president can catch us up to speed there.

I don't get it. They had warp drive, but no smart phones.

Bizarre flashes of cosmic light may actually be generated by advanced alien civilizations, as a way to accelerate interstellar spacecraft to tremendous speeds, a new study suggests.

The duo calculated that a solar-powered transmitter could indeed beam FRB-like signals across the cosmos — but it would require a sunlight-collecting area twice the size of Earth to generate the necessary power.

Why would aliens build such a structure? The most plausible explanation, according to the study team, is to blast interstellar spacecraft to incredible speeds. These craft would be equipped with light sails, which harness the momentum imparted by photons, much as regular ships' sails harness the wind. (Humanity has demonstrated light sails in space, and the technology is the backbone of Breakthrough Starshot, a project that aims to send tiny robotic probes to nearby star systems.)

Indeed, a transmitter capable of generating FRB-like signals could drive an interstellar spacecraft weighing 1 million tons or so, Lingam and Loeb calculated.

When it arrives at the sun, the Solar Probe Plus will make itself at home four million miles above the sun's surface. According to NASA, from there, the probe will "explore the sun's outer atmosphere and make critical observations." Scientists are already loading up the Solar Probe Plus with advanced tech. The Energetic Particle Instrument-Low Energy (EPI-Lo), is the first thing to get installed. It'll measure the low-energy particles that come off of the sun, but scientists are still adding more and more to the probe, so there's no telling just what information it'll send back when it's fully locked and loaded. Back in April, the probe got its cooling system installed, which is probably pretty important for something that's basically face-to-face with the sun itself.

NASA hopes that the Space Probe Plus will offer further insight into the sun's effect on space weather as well as the physics that happen within it. Plus, researchers are hoping to use information gathered by the probe to improve the conditions faced by astronauts and satellites in space, so this isn't just a fun jaunt to get some rays.

At roughly 750 million light years from Earth, the galaxy named 0402+379 and the supermassive black holes within it, are incredibly far away; but are also at the perfect distance from Earth and each other to be observed.

Bansal says these supermassive black holes have a combined mass of 15 billion times that of our sun, or 15 billion solar masses.

The unbelievable size of these black holes means their orbital period is around 24,000 years, so while the team has been observing them for over a decade, they've yet to see even the slightest curvature in their orbit.
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In early 2016, an international team of researchers, including a UNM alumnus, working on the LIGO project detected the existence of gravitational waves, confirming Albert Einstein's 100-year-old prediction and astonishing the scientific community.

These gravitational waves were the result two stellar mass black holes (~30 solar mass) colliding in space within the Hubble time.

Now, thanks to this latest research, scientists will be able to start to understand what leads up to the merger of supermassive black holes that creates ripples in the fabric of space-time and begin to learn more about the evolution of galaxies and the role these black holes play in it.

An icy thread measuring a mere 12 miles (20 kilometers) long is all that's anchoring a massive iceberg the size of Delaware to its home in West Antarctica, climate scientists report.

If the iceberg breaks away — an event known as calving — the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica will lose more than 10 percent of its area, which amounts to about 2,000 square miles (5,000 square km), according to Project MIDAS, an Antarctic research project based in the United Kingdom.
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The Larsen C Ice Shelf is the South Pole's fourth-largest ice shelf, and holds back the frozen land-based glaciers behind it, Live Science previously reported. If the iceberg breaks off, the slow-flowing glaciers will have one less barrier between them and the sea.

It's possible that Larsen C will follow in the same footsteps as Larsen B, which disintegrated in 2002 after a similar rifting event, according the Project MIDAS blog. The Larsen A Ice Shelf disintegrated in 1995.

If the Larsen C Ice Shelf does break off from Western Antarctica, it will be among the top 10 largest icebergs on record, the BBC reported.
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Once it breaks off, the iceberg isn't expected to raise sea levels, Luckman said. But if the shelf continues to fall apart, then the glaciers that flow off the land might have an impact on sea levels, he told the BCC.

Estimates show that if all of the ice held back by the Larsen C Ice Shelf were to enter the sea, global oceans could rise by 4 inches (10 centimeters), the BBC reported.