The Outer Space Thread

[Califan007 The Constipated]

 

Ok, we are now officially under attack lol...

 

 

 

[Gurgeh]

3 minutes ago, Califan007 The Constipated said:

 

Ok, we are now officially under attack lol...

 

 

 

 

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K...

But it's probably just more balloons.

 

[FootballZombie]

O' Canada.

 

 

World leaders don't want flak from playing the waiting game anymore. Were just blowing stuff outta the sky at the first oppo now.

 

 

F-22 is rackin' up the air kills lol

[CousinsCowgirl84]

1 hour ago, Califan007 The Constipated said:

 

Ok, we are now officially under attack lol...

 

 

 

We getting a little trigger happy. Turns out it was just a trash bag 😳

[Destino]

2 hours ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

We getting a little trigger happy. Turns out it was just a trash bag 😳

How does one shoot down a trash bag, wouldn’t the pieces just keep floating on the same air currents?  It’s not like it was powered by anything to begin with.  
 

seems odd that we keep shooting things down all of the sudden.  Imagine having a hot air balloon trip planned for tomorrow.  

Edited February 12, 2023 by Destino

[CousinsCowgirl84]

18 minutes ago, Destino said:

How does one shoot down a trash bag, wouldn’t the pieces just keep floating on the same air currents?  It’s not like it was powered by anything to big in with.  
 

seems odd that we keep shooting things down all of the sudden.  Imagine having a hot air balloon trip planned for tomorrow.  

I assume it would get vaporized but I’m no bag disposal technician.

[Jabbyrwock]

3 hours ago, Califan007 The Constipated said:

Canadian and American fighters responded to another UFO,

 

[Larry]

"Police officials are warning Los Angeles residents not to fire their guns at the alien spacecraft as this might be misinterpreted."  

[Mr. Sinister]

Where's that crazy guy Ken that ysed to post here? Probably off celebrating in the desert somewhere in his aluminum underpants

[TheGoodBits]

5 hours ago, Jabbyrwock said:

 

I will not stand for P51 slander

[Bang]

Canada flies the F-18. I will hear no slander of the aircraft I work with.

 

~Zoom

[China]

Americans still would rather use any unit of measure instead of the metric system:

 

Asteroid the size of 112 camels to pass Earth Wednesday - NASA

 

A massive asteroid the size of 112 Dromedary camels is set to pass by Earth on Wednesday, the holiday of Shushan Purim, according to NASA's asteroid tracker.

 

The asteroid in question has been designated 2023 DQ, having been discovered fairly recently this year, according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

 

Its arrival also coincides with Shushan Purim, which is when Purim is celebrated in a select few cities, such as Jerusalem.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Captain Wiggles]

Well we're all boned and on love day taboot. ☄️💝

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/09/nasa-asteroid-hitting-earth-2046-forecast/11434896002/

 

Quote

A recently discovered asteroid over 150 feet in diameter has a chance of hitting Earth on Valentine's Day in 2046.

 

[China]

On 9/26/2022 at 9:40 PM, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

@Captain Wiggles I wouldn't be concerned.  They just succeeded in their proof of concept for redirecting an asteroid.  They now have more than 20 years to improve and get ready to handle the one in 2046 (assuming it actually will directly target the earth which isn't confirmed yet).

[Larry]

1 hour ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Well we're all boned and on love day taboot. ☄️💝

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/09/nasa-asteroid-hitting-earth-2046-forecast/11434896002/

 

 

On "love day"?  
 

I think it's more "so there's a chance" day. 
 

 

[EmirOfShmo]

You'll Be Able to See 5 Planets in the Night Sky All at Once This Month

The best day to witness the next planetary alignment will be March 28.

 

This is a great month for space enthusiasts, and as a parting gift, March is giving sky watchers a gorgeous planetary alignment right before April swoops in.

According to astronomy app Star Walk, five planets within the solar system will be visible at the same time—a relatively rare sighting—at the end of the month. The best day to marvel at the celestial event will be Tuesday, March 28, but as Star Walk points out, the alignment will be visible several days before and after that, too.

Rather than a straight line, the planets will form an arc in the night sky, and stargazers will get the chance to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus. Some of them, though, will be more visible than others, and depending on your location, you might need some equipment to catch a glimpse of all five.

Venus will be the easiest one to spot thanks to its brightness, which flaunts a magnitude of -4.0. Jupiter (magnitude -2.1) and Mercury (magnitude -1.3) will also be pretty bright and fairly easy to see by the horizon, Star Walk reports. The game will get a little tougher when trying to spot Uranus, which will be much dimmer compared to the other planets (magnitude 5.8). According to Astronomy.com, it is advisable to use a pair of strong binoculars to try and see it, and it will be located near Venus nearly all month. Mars will be more visible (magnitude 0.9), and it will appear high in the sky surrounded by a signature orange hue.

 

https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/planetary-alignment-how-to-see-march-2023

[China]

There may have been a second Big Bang, new research suggests

 

The Big Bang may have been accompanied by a shadow, "Dark" Big Bang that flooded our cosmos with mysterious dark matter, cosmologists have proposed in a new study. And we may be able to see the evidence for that event by studying ripples in the fabric of space-time.

 

After the Big Bang, most cosmologists think, the universe underwent a period of rapid, remarkable expansion in its earliest moments, known as inflation. Nobody knows what triggered inflation, but it’s necessary to explain a variety of observations, like the extreme geometrical flatness of the universe at large scales.

 

Inflation was presumably driven by some exotic quantum field, which is a fundamental entity that soaks all of spacetime. At the end of inflation, that field decayed into a shower of particles and radiation, triggering the "Hot Big Bang" that physicists commonly associate with the beginning of the universe. Those particles would go on to coalesce into the first atoms when the cosmos was around 12 minutes old and — hundreds of millions of years later  — begin clumping into stars and galaxies.

 

But there's another ingredient to the cosmological mix: dark matter. Once again, cosmologists aren't sure what dark matter is, but they see the evidence for its existence through its gravitational influence on normal matter. 

 

In the simplest models, the end of inflation and the ensuing Hot Big Bang also flooded the universe with dark matter, which evolved along an independent track. But this assumption is made merely for the sake of simplicity, two cosmologists proposed in a paper appearing in February on the preprint database arXiv(opens in new tab). Scientists see no evidence for the existence of dark matter until far later in the evolution of the universe, after the elusive substance had enough time to exert gravitational influence, so there's no need for it to have filled the universe in the Hot Big Bang alongside normal matter. Plus, because dark matter does not interact with normal matter, it might have had its own "Dark" Big Bang, the researchers claim.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Bang]

I'll wait for the movie.

 

~BANG

[Cooked Crack]

 

[EmirOfShmo]

 

 

Returning Mars rocks to Earth

[China]

 

[China]

Lyrids meteor shower starts Saturday night, expected to peak on April 23

 

It's an eventful month up in space this April, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is sharing how to best witness the sights in the sky.

 

Over the course of April, there will be noteworthy movements visible in the sky, such as the planet Mercury rising to its highest point for the year, Moon and mars meeting up, and the Lyrid meteor shower.

 

Back on the evening of April 11, the planet Mercury was at its most visible and highest point in the sky. This was special as Mercury is only visible in the sky for a few weeks about three to four times a year, and as it orbits so close to the sun it is often not visible due to the bright glare.

 

In a few days, on April 15 and 16, you can look low in the southeastern sky a few hours before sunrise to see three bright planets in the sky near the moon.

 

Come the 23rd of the month, the slim crescent moon will hang five degrees above the planet Venus in the west following sunset.

 

Two days later, Mars and the moon are close together high up in the west when the darkness settles in the sky and the moon moves towards the planet.

 

NASA suggests pulling out the binoculars on the 26th and 27th of April, when a half moon will be visible. NASA says those who look up will be able to see craters and mountains along the terminator, which is the line between light and dark.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Live Updates: SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Explodes After Launch

 

SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded above the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, minutes after lifting off from a launchpad in South Texas. The spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but it was not a fatal failure.

 

Before the launch, Elon Musk, the company’s founder, had tamped down expectations, saying it might take several tries before Starship succeeds at this test flight, which was to reach speeds fast enough to enter orbit before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

 

The launchpad looks largely intact. SpaceX engineers will have a trove of data to sift through to understand what did not quite work and what they can do better for the next Starship launch.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

I'm seriously "WTF-ing" at this. I mean, did he hire 200 people to cheer madly, no matter what happens?  
 

Countdown gets to -15 seconds, and the crowd goes wild. 
 

Rocket begins tumbling out of control, the cheering intensifies. 
 

Rocket explodes, and the crowd acts like it was a fireworks show. 
 

Cut to our broadcast crew explaining that the rocket experienced what we here technically call a "rapid unexpected deconstruction ". 
 

Me, I even saw that part of the thing, live. And they're cheerfully explaining that hey, all of the connectors on the launch pad successfully disconnected. And it even cleared the tower, and anything after that was just a bonus. 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

That met minimum mission objectives.

 

26 minutes ago, Larry said:

I'm seriously "WTF-ing" at this. I mean, did he hire 200 people to cheer madly, no matter what happens?  
 

 

 

if the crowd was on the ground they likely couldn’t see what what happening, the rocket was many miles down range and miles above earth when it failed.

 

plus this is the first time starship has launched so they might not have immediately recognized it as an anomaly even if they did see it.