Giant 'Blob' Found in Outer Space

[Eticket]

just some shit on the lens

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.

[Altariel]

Say you look through a telescope and see a space ship heading toward you, but it's so far away that you're seeing the space ship as it was 1000 years ago. In reality, it's moved much closer since then (although still much slower than the light travels), but the light reaching your eyes was emitted 1000 years ago.

Say, you spend the next millions of years watching the space ship until it finally arrives. Since your visual of it might be delayed by 1000 years now, in a few million years, it'll be delayed by 500 years, and after a few more million years, it'll be delayed by 100 years, until finally the ship arrives.

Despite traveling a constant velocity the entire time, will your view of the ship make it look like it travels very slowly and gradually builds speed until it arrives? Moreso than just the usual illusion of perspective that stuff far away moves slower, that is.

Well there are some problems with the idea, chances are your spacecraft would not be sufficiently large and/or your telescope resolution insufficiently powerful to detect at these distances. And even if you had a vehicle or telescope large enough, you also need to consider that as the ship travels in interstellar space there is no significant source of light to reflect off of the craft until you came quite close enough to our Sun.

However I'll take a stab at what I think the answer would be if you were driving a colossal headlight through space... It's image would appear on earth as becoming increasingly blue as it approached. The wavelengths of the light become continually compressed to the stationary earth viewer (assuming we are stationary which we aren't). We percieve the shortened wavelengths as a shift in color. Incidentally our Sun would also appear bluer to the riders of the ship. This is actually no different that the perceived change of pitch of a train's horn as it approaches and recedes from you at a crossing. You probably know it as the Doppler effect.

[Dimmauk]

Tyson is probably one of the most fun people to listen to if you ask me, after seeing him on Colbert/Daily Show a few times he's just amazing.

Agreed, he is the returning champion on the Colbert report.

[Lordwafik]

more like Mizangosutra

Anyway , love articles like this. Deep space is amazing.

[Yuri-G]

is it too late to make a Starr Jones joke?

yes?

oh. well then. carry on.

those pillars of creation are pretty fuckawesome though. unbelievably beautiful.

[Crouchingllama]

I hope someone can get a better camera on that blob, that picture in the article looked like something out of Space Invaders on a really bad day at the arcade.

The more we find out, the more we realize we don't know.

[Mizango]

more like Mizangosutra

Anyway , love articles like this. Deep space is amazing.

Semantics dawg.


Yes I agree, deep space is such a lovely place. I wish I could explore it just once before I expired Have you seen the Hubble deep space field photo yet Wafik? Sheer magnificence right there.

is it too late to make a Starr joke?

It's never too late for that.

[Vandalhart]

I found a way to unblur the image folks!

[Crouchingllama]

lol it's a cosmic WHHAAZZZZUP!

[Mizango]

I hope someone can get a better camera on that blob, that picture in the article looked like something out of Space Invaders on a really bad day at the arcade.

The more we find out, the more we realize we don't know.

Exactly. Space has a way of reminding all of us how minute and insignificant we all in the grand scope of things. As far as that picture goes that is probably about as clear as it will get without some sort of artist rendering of what the image looks like. We encounter this problem frequently with exo-planets.

[Crouchingllama]

Yeah, but i just finished a 4 book sf series and am lingering on the hope of a "everyone does their best because it's the right thing to do, for real" universe ... someday. Which means I expect NASA/the astronomy community to produce bigger and badder telescopes/satellites nao.

Science

[Klaatu]

How can you look 800 million years into the past? (Not a serious question, obviously)

[Mizango]

That would indeed be awesome. We are working on Hubbles replacement so to speak as I am typing this. iirc it is named after James Webb one of NASA's old admins and should launch in 2011 or 2012 I think? With that said I hope they do repair Hubble as well and continue to use it to take snap shots of space.

I personally am excited about the Kepler finds out for us in regards to Earth like planets in the "habitable zones" outside of our solar system. I am completly enamored with exo-planets and what secrets they potentially hold. Especially considering that when I was younger there were only 9 planets and that was end of story. Now we are seeing that our Sun is not unique in any fashion nor is having a system of planets orbiting said star.

Unfortunately the 250+ other exo-planets we have discovered orbiting other Sun like stars have mostly all been gargantuan gas giants similar to and dwarfing Jupiter in some instances. I tell you what, the next 10-20 years will tell us more than we've ever known about the cosmos than we have ever known. I wish people like Carl Sagan, Galileo and Kepler were still around to see all this


Edit: Yes here is the link for the HQ Hubble http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6645179.stm

Yes, check out the mirror difference between Hubble and the Webb telescope. Holy shit that is going to be so awesome.

[Dimmauk]

That would indeed be awesome. We are working on Hubbles replacement so to speak as I am typing this. iirc it is named after James Webb one of NASA's old admins and should launch in 2011 or 2012 I think? With that said I hope they do repair Hubble as well and continue to use it to take snap shots of space.

I personally am excited about the Kepler finds out for us in regards to Earth like planets in the "habitable zones" outside of our solar system. I am completly enamored with exo-planets and what secrets they potentially hold. Especially considering that when I was younger there were only 9 planets and that was end of story. Now we are seeing that our Sun is not unique in any fashion nor is having a system of planets orbiting said star.

Unfortunately the 250+ other exo-planets we have discovered orbiting other Sun like stars have mostly all been gargantuan gas giants similar to and dwarfing Jupiter in some instances. I tell you what, the next 10-20 years will tell us more than we've ever known about the cosmos than we have ever known. I wish people like Carl Sagan, Galileo and Kepler were still around to see all this

Didnt they just recently find 2 new earth like planets? Yup found it.

New Earth-like Planet 'Habitable'
Irene Klotz, Discovery News


April 24, 2007 — Astronomers have found the first Earth-sized world circling its mother star at a distance suitable for life. It also has good prospects for liquid surface water — believed to be a key ingredient for life.

"This planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extra-terrestrial life," said Xavier Delfosse, with Grenoble University in France.


"It is not possible with current telescopes and instruments yet," Xavier Bonfils, an astronomer with the Lisbonne Observatory in Portugal, wrote in an e-mail to Discovery News. "But in the next decade, we may have the tools to answer this question."

The planet, which is about 50 percent larger than Earth, circles a star in the constellation Libra known as Gliese 581, about 20.5 light-years away. Light travels in a vacuum at about 187,000 miles per second.

Astronomers previously have found a Neptune-sized world circling Gliese 581, as well as strong evidence for a third planet about eight times the mass of Earth.

The new planet, which is the smallest planet beyond our solar system found to date, circles its star 14 times closer than Earth orbits the sun. But because Gliese 581 is smaller and colder than our sun, the system's so-called habitability zone, where liquid water and thus life is possible, is closer to the mother star than in our solar system.

[Crouchingllama]

Star Trek Will Be Real! HALLEJUAH!

[Mizango]

Good find Dimmy, I was meaning to post that one.

[LinktheDeme]

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/04/22/blob-zoom.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/__Xj7En3AJD...400/slimes.jpg
It ressembles the blue one or maybe they merged and made a purple one!

[Mizango]

Dragon warrior nostalgia is kicking in....

[Woozie]

Yep, we're all gonna die. This confirms it.

[Mizango]

My broham has arrived. Better late than never I suppose.