Rosseta and Comet P67

AskWazzup

AskWazzup

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Well, it's finally there, robotic space probe "Rosseta" has finally reached the the comet P67/Churyumov–Gerasimenko..... How cool is this?!?! I actually heard about it just a few weeks ago and it had been circling the solar system for 10 years trying to get near the comet and there are already some nice pictures of it:

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I think these pictures were made at a distance from about 300 to 120 km. So it's huge flying thing!

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The probe is circling the comet at 1m/s and getting nearer and nearer. After a few months they plan on landing this thing on it :

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There is a ton of information (and cool pictures) to be gathered. Am i the only who thinks this is super cool? Galileo would have cut his balls to see this, and now it seems that nobody really cares about such stuff. But i'm already fantasising about the opportunities.... What if a probe could follow a comet, or asteroid on a collision course too a planet like Jupiter? What kind of crazy pictures would that bring home. Now of course there are much more important things to be extracted from this, than pictures, but it's still so cool to see such unfamiliar object from that up close...
 
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I wish indeed that this wasn't ignored so by the media. It is a great achievement. It is crazy to be able to look at these pictures of a comet for the first time, fascinating stuff.
 
I hope they will take photos when they will land the robot... That would be breath taking. It's so weird that we can actually land a module on a huge chunk of material flying around the solar system at 55km/h. And these things can be older than some planets :shock:.
 
I never heard about this before. Pretty sweet.
I should read more about this, you got me interested.
 
well its not the Gaza and as long they dont find Ebola on the comet ... so no real news coverage.

It is a great leap for science so much for sure. I guess they will find a lot of new hints and possible answers for a lot of theories and questions, considering that a lot of comets are old, I mean really old, like begining of the Universe old, several billion years in most cases, particularly the comets in our solar system are still the same formations like 4-5 billion years ago. So that makes the structure of those rocks very interesting. Imagine if they really find something like proto-forms of something there, chemical compositions that could lead to life, eventually. The whole idea or Abiogenesis! Its just a theory today but some scientist believe that such comets carry eventually the basics for life with their water a lot of comets contain usually just ice and rocks. This would be eventually one of the greatest discoveries of our century in my opinion maybe even the greatest right after the first flight to the moon, because it makes the cration of "life" a lot more common in our Galaxie and the Universe in general, if comets really could be seen as the supporting factor. The question, how life really happend, what caused the process of life from non-living matter to form simple orcanic compounds, is billions of years old and probably impossible to verrify here on earth and other planets. But comets, asteroids, they have not really changed a lot in the last billions of years, when our Solar system started to form, most of the rock formations in our solar system are still left overs from planets, dust. So there is a chance to eventually find the answers for life there. Would be awesome. We can search for similar solar systems and planets out there all we want, but if we actually manage to find answers for the question how life started here we might find the proof that it can happen in other places as well. After all, was the creation of life spontaneous here? How rare is it actually in the Universe. Can it happen everywhere, is all you need water and some matter? Or is it actually a very rare and extreme case? Answers here could help us to better understand how common life might be.

AskWazzup said:
I hope they will take photos when they will land the robot... That would be breath taking. It's so weird that we can actually land a module on a huge chunk of material flying around the solar system at 55km/h. And these things can be older than some planets
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most usually are! A lot older then many planets. You should not forget, the gravitational pull of our sun is it what caused those particles to form around it, giving the planets in our solar system a chance to form. Some believe that there might be a few rock formations out there, mainly those that orbit the sun past neptun, which might be older then our sun even, most comets seem to come from the Kuiper Belt, formations that had not enough mass to form planets. Maybe with more research we might find with a lot of luck some left overs from the interstellar medium that gave birth to our sun. There are still many questions about planets and our solar system. The idea how planets where born is still just a theory for example with many not yet proven concepts, its simply difficult to find any proof, research on those rock formations out there might give us a much more clear picture about our own planets and their creation.

Would be kinda interesting though, and ironic. We have spend so much time thinking about possible life on other planets, maybe something like Mars, and what if we find traces of it on comets now? That would be awesome.
 
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Not trying to troll the topic guys, I do find this interesting.

* imagine the probe discovering the basics of life or even simple lifeforms! *

Leadership of the little lifeforms "The Earthlings have discovered us! We can not allow this to just go by unnoticed, redirect the comet... and set a course for Earth!" :P
 
There is also news about a comet that will fly 82000 miles short of mars (one third the distance between earth and moon) in October, the scientists have already changed the orbits of the satellites (it seems there are three of them - something i didn't know also!) around mars, so that the debris wouldn't hit all the precious equipment. With all that water and shit coming out of the comet at 35 miles per second, might be a pretty good shower.

... Anyone thinking what i'm thinking? We are at a point where we might actually be able to shove these comets to planets that we might want introduce more water too, for future terraforming ...

Also from what i understand this one is a solar system virgin from the Oort cloud. So two very interesting events with potential for vast new data :clap:.
 
Crni Vuk said:
well its not the Gaza and as long they dont find Ebola on the comet ... so no real news coverage.
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The modus operandi of news media coverage in a nutshell. Is it important? Yes. Is it frightening? No. Oh, well then let's go with this unimportant stuff that's inherently alarming. That'll get better viewing.

We've run out of landfill space? Air that story!
Killer bees in Africa? Run that story!
Y2K ending the world? Get on that and air that shit!
Topic-which-shan't-be-specified-because-it's-just-as-bullsht-now-but-people-haven't-realized-this-quite-yet-and-they-will-take-offense-if-you-publicly-call-it-bullshit? RUN THAT SHIT!!!

Anyway, back on topic...

I quite like hearing about these kinds of things, though it typically has to come from "tertiary sources" (such as here) due to aforementioned media's lack of interest in interesting things. It's always kinda amusing to me how ENTIRELY DIFFERENT groups of researchers often get to reap the benefits of studying from a project that came long before them, because so many probes take decades to reach their targets. At the same time, I'd think it rather saddening to be part of the team that constructs these things only to realize that, assuming it all goes well, you'll never get to experience the joy of finding out what discoveries its success leads to. Not always, of course, but with some, it's certainly the case. It's just an intriguing prospect to me.
 
Global warming gets sometimes news coverage. But its incredible difficult to seperate fact from fiction here, for a normal person that is.
 
Well that all depends on your definition of "normal person", I'd wager. If the only criteria for that, per this example, were to NOT be a weather scientist, geologist, astronomer, mathematician, or any scientist of any permutation in any field of study at all, I'd say no, it's actually quite easy... provided you're not stupid (but that's assuming intelligence isn't a qualifier). But if being a "normal person" means, again as per this example, those whose appeals to authority go soaring off the charts to the point that ALL they know is what they're told and thusly thinking for themselves is a taxing prospect, then yes, it can be very, very hard separating lies from truth.
 
I dont know. Because when I was geting actually into the subject of global warming, the more serious scientist - I mean those that dont run around behind some kind of lobby, which tried to be as objective as possible made it clear that the science behind it, is extremly complex, becaues it is not simply one field we are talking about here, but many.

I am afriad you do have to be at least educated above the average person to understand it, I mean to REALLY understand it, otherwise it would not spawn such a big controversy, you dont see the same issues with quantum physics, the big bang theory or lightspeed, because those are clear and proven concepts that dont allow for more then one answer really - as far as we dont go in to math here, quantum physics is used every day, the speed of light is the limitation of our real world etc.

I mean as far as such complex system goes we can not even predict the weather correctly. And there are still a lot of unsolved questions. Not to mention the whole global warming thing has developed into something that can be almost described as industry. There is science behind it, no doubts about that! And I am pretty sure some good science as well that speaks for global warming with us humans as source. But this is also alot about money. Who gets his research funded and who doesnt. So its also a lot about lobbyism. To collect data is one thing. To get the correct conclusion another. And this is the tricky part. I think if you explain someone that we are polluting the world and that we have to stop with that, then there is nothing wrong with this and frankly, what more do we really have to know? Carbondioxide? Plastic-garbage in the ocean? Nuclear Waste? Species Extinction? Destroying of natural habitats etc. doesnt matter. Its pretty clear that we destroy this planet and with increasing speed.

I remember this physicist who compared it with a frozen lake and a car with you and your family inside. Someone explains that driving over the frozen lake is very dangerous, because the ice could brake. He can not tell you where, why or how, just that its dangerous - logic, a wonderfull thing isnt it? Would you still decide to drive over it with your family inside? Or would you take the long way around it? I believe what he's trying to say is, it doesnt matter if the humans are the source for global warming or not, if you believe it or not. Because it is obvious. We have to go the long way anyway. We have to stop this extreme excess with carbon dioxide and other forms of pollution, like the garbage in the ocean. And we have to find solutions for it. The science behind global warming? Very difficult I am afraid. Without doing some serious science by your self, checking and double checking the data, getting the correct education etc. how would you ever know if the guy that gives you HIS opinion is actually the correct one, doesnt matter if for or against global warming. Like I said, everyone of us can look in to what some scientist or engineer is saying, but most of us dont have the expertise to actually validate his opinion, unless you are as well a scientist.

There are quite often situations that can be only understood if you have the knowledge and experience for it. Global warming is one of those. The moment you read an article for example, you are not just reading the data, you have already the conclussion. As non scientist we have no use for those data, spread sheets and charts. That is ismply how science works, I mean most of us simply dont have the mind and will to go trough all of it. There are people behind it that do these things for a living, working years if not centuries with it, and often enough they still can not give clear answers.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
I am afriad you do have to be at least educated above the average person to understand it
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Yes, but that was my point. The question of "what makes a 'normal human being'?" Being smart and educated is not the same thing as being a professor, or even holding a master's degree, or any degree at all. There are those who aren't very smart but very well educated, and those who are incredibly smart and not educated at all. So when it comes down to what makes a person "normal", is it their background or their capabilities? To me, it's a question of capability, because in my years of observation, a strong sense of individuality isn't something you can teach. You can illustrate the finer points of logos vs ethos vs pathos till you're blue in the face and some people will just always opt for the appeal to authority again and again, even if you succinctly explain why that's no good.
 
well, but there are things that you simply can not teach your self, and if you could, then you would be exceptional. Don't understimate the quality of academic education. There are to many self-thought professionals out there anyway, and I would say the number of self thought geologists, historians, doctors, engineers etc. is rather low. The succesfull ones I mean.

Not everyone is a Srinivasa Ramanujan - was an Indian mathematician and autodidact who, with almost no formal training in pure mathematics, made extraordinary contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions.

Something that makes global warming so peculiar is the fact that it's touching several scientific fields. I guess you could become knowledgeable in one field, just with your computer and books. But several of them? Like geology, astrophysicis, meteorology? And then you have the specialiced fields that come in to play, like the sun and the research around it. I always cringe when someone comes up with "clear" solutions or conclussions when there are many scientists out there coming up with new questions and data all the time ...

It pretty much boilds down to the questions, are humans the source for global warming or not? Some say yes, others say no. And who's right? I dont have the expertise to answer that. I mean the only thing they all seem to agree for now, is that there is a climatic change. What is the cause? Well that still seems not to be clear.
 
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I'm pretty sure you're the cause, Crni. Posting nearly 16,000 brainfarts in less than six years has led to so much extra heat dissipation from servers worldwide, that all is lost. Thanks a lot.
 
alec said:
I'm pretty sure you're the cause, Crni. Posting nearly 16,000 brainfarts in less than six years has led to so much extra heat dissipation from servers worldwide, that all is lost. Thanks a lot.
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To be fair, you contributed a lot too, though not in the recent years :lol:. Is it possible that you were that one butterfly effect that started it all?
 
naw, the real offender here is Brother None. If post counts would make you an action hero, then he would be the Chuck Norris of posters.
 
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