Comments on: September 16, 2024 Quick space links

By: wayne

wayne — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:40:43 +0000

Mark–
Not sure how ‘pushed’ is being used in this exact instance but look up “radiation pressure.”
All EM radiation transports momentum & energy and when it hits a surface, it produces pressure. Not a whole lot but continuously, and ‘gas’ is easily pushed around
(This is the whole idea of solar sails.)

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 21:02:36 +0000

For anyone interested, Eric Berger, second best guy on the space beat after our host, is in the Space Show tonight.

https://x.com/spaceshow/status/1836062992179581241?s=46

By: Mark Sizer

Mark Sizer — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 20:43:27 +0000

Michael McNeil, they also use the word “quenched”, which I rather like. I clicked-thru hoping to a see my postulated donut galaxy.

I don’t understand how the black hole ‘pushed’ the gas out of the galaxy. They also scare-quote “pushed”, so it seems clear that there isn’t any actual pushing involved.

I’ll speculate that it has something to do with the incoming gas spinning faster and faster and some of it flying off as the spin rate exceeds the (at this point far away) black hole’s escape velocity. But that doesn’t explain an entire galaxy’s worth of dust. Maybe something really big was sucked in and there was a titanic explosion as it was spaghettified? But a galaxy-effecting explosion would be insanely large.

By: James Street

James Street — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 20:04:39 +0000

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
“I hope we never find life on other planets because there’s no doubt that the U.S. Government will start sending them money!”
6:59 AM · Jun 4, 2014
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/474188805541748736

By: Tom D

Tom D — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:46:03 +0000

It sounds like Blue Origin plans on a surprisingly small 8 to 16 launches per year. Is that enough launches to achieve much economy of scale? I suppose that it is probably enough to compete with Falcon 9, but it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes them to achieve regular operations.

By: wayne

wayne — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 16:21:17 +0000

Let’s talk about Ryan Wesley Routh for a minute….

When is he going to become deceased while in custody?
When will the body be cremated?
When will his parents be arrested?
What exactly is the make & model of the gun he used.
Where does this guy get all his money?

By: Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:33:11 +0000

The linked-to article talks about the indicated galaxy GS-10578 as being dead. For instance: “‘In the early universe, most galaxies are forming lots of stars, so it's interesting to see such a massive dead galaxy at this period in time,’ said co-author Professor Roberto Maiolino…” I think this is unfortunate nomenclature. As the foregoing piece observes, the galaxy in question includes some 200 billion stars—and thus is perhaps twice the size of the Milky Way—when the former was only 2 billion years old, as opposed to now (11.8 billion years later) for the Milky Way. Yet, even at that young an age, it's perfectly possible for there to be vast numbers of vibrant, terrestrial-type planets, quite capable of supporting (e.g.) earthly life. As one sees in the case of the star system Kepler-444 (a.k.a. BD+41°3306), which lies a mere 119 light years (36 parsecs) away from Sol, right here in the Milky Way, but dates (via the recent technique of asteroseismology) to 11.1 ± 1.0 billion years old [!]—that is, more than 80% of the age of the universe old—whereas Sol and its Earth are a mere 33% (1/3) of the age of the universe old. Yet, we know that the Kepler-444 system (though generally metal-poor) includes 5 rocky planets, all between the sizes of Mercury and Venus! Since galaxies in the predicament of GS-10578 might well thus be teeming with life—even now, more than 11 billion years after being stripped of most interstellar gas—therefore, I suggest that galaxies which either have or are undergoing such a phenomenon of supermassive black hole-powered wholesale interstellar-gas ejection, be termed as that galaxy becoming “infertile” rather than “dead.”