15 kiloseconds with 2 follow-up 15 kilosecond observations at different phases to get more area coverage. Waiting for approval from director though. I laid out a timeline starting september 5 that could fit 3-4 observations in before it goes into sunblock in november, but her response was evaluate over 1-2 weeks. P. much fucks my timelines so who knows what is gonna happen.
idt it's high priority since we are x-ray telescope and it is mainly to get overlapping observation with non x-ray telescopes. X-ray scope prob not gonna see anything relevant to exoplanet transit.
Not sure if anyone has posted but OSIRIS-REX is set to launch on the 8th, the patches are pretty badass, picked up some while at lunch (A T-Rex grabbing an asteroid with it's teeth lol). Need to make some contacts with people over on that mission so I can get look around at some point.
Sath, please explain the CNN home page saying the Russians found an interesting signal that indicates extraterrestrial life in 2015 and why I shouldn't start building a starship right now.
Also I haven't heard about what you're talking about which is pretty much all the explanation /I/ would need for knowing it is nothing. Anytime something important happens, if I don't already know about it, there are ~100 other physicists waiting to tell me about it,
I believe the Russians failed protocol by not getting the signal verified so it got swept under the table and now the signal appeared again.
Edit: Looks like it was sent for verification but the methods used to measure the signal made it look unimpressive (data showed signal wasn't persistant, signal was gone in re-observations, and various sources of interference were present) and they didn't look into it further. Because the media got a hold of this story it's most likely going to be checked again.
By the way, it's pretty fucking cool we have scientist peeps with Astro-related backgrounds to explain this stuff. One of the real highlights of BG at the moment.
I'll try...
Basically the EM drive is a theoretical reactionless engine that does not use propelleant to propell an object. From what I can recall, it was controversial because the idea defied Newtons 3rd law of motion (for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction). In normal engines, the ignition of the fuel source in which the exhaust flow pushes in one direction and the opposite and equal reaction is the rocket propelling forward. With the EM drive, it uses a magnetron to create microwaves which bounce around inside of a closed cone and the microwaves would push against the back end of the cone and propel a craft forward. Basically in the link the scientist are going to release information about the EM Drive and that they have achieved thrust in the form of 1.2 millinewtons per 1 kW of energy.
Awesome. That's a better explanation than I could find.
For anyone in the boston area who wanted more info on the exoplanet. This is open to the public.
Aw man work hours. I'm not close enough to go for lunch.
There is pre-print and technically I really shouldn't be doing this but I love you guys so... I'm not gonna mention author names, paper title, or copy the abstract exactly, but I'll give you a tl;dr. The exoplanet around ProxCen is not going to be a habitable candidate. Too bad, so sad.
Some excerpts from the paper that is going to ApJ:
For all the parameter space explored, the planet is subject to stellar wind pressures of more than 2000 times the one experience by Earth from the solar wind. During an orbit, Proxima b is also subject to pressure changes of 1 to 3 orders of magnitude on timescales of a day. Its magnetopause standoff distance consequently undergoes sudden and periodic changes by a factor of 2 to 5. Proxima b will traverse the interplanetary current sheet twice each orbit, and likely crosses into regions of subsonic wind quite frequently.
One with not much atmosphere as well if it's getting that much stellar wind.