Large Hardon Collider

[BaneTheBrawler]

also, i would imagine they're doing this at the very, very edge of Jupiter's "sphere of influence," or the area in which it can capture something with the probe's mass. doing things there requires a LOT less thrust, but also much, much more refined calculations.

Say you're holding a piece of thread between your fingers. It sticks out a few inches. It takes very little effort for you to drastically change the path that thread takes: all you have to do is give it a little twist, and suddenly the thread spins through a whole cone of possible directions. Now choke up on the thread, so there's only maybe a centimeter sticking out past your fingers. You can still spin it, but the cone of possibilities is much smaller.

Now imagine threading a needle. It's much easier to thread a needle when choked up on the thread, but if the needle is outside your little cone, you'll need to move your whole hand. Pull back your grip on the thread, and you can reach the needle without moving your hand... but it's much, much more difficult. You need to be very precise.

Moving your hand is the equivalent of high-thrust maneuvering, something i would imagine the probe can't do. Whenever you're maneuvering in space, the effort required to make any given orbit adjustment gets smaller the further away you are, but precision becomes increasingly difficult, as well.

Kerbal Space Program may be ass for learning real orbital mechanics, but it is a good tool to pick up the general concepts! :D

[BerenTebogo]

also, i would imagine they're doing this at the very, very edge of Jupiter's "sphere of influence," or the area in which it can capture something with the probe's mass. doing things there requires a LOT less thrust, but also much, much more refined calculations.

Say you're holding a piece of thread between your fingers. It sticks out a few inches. It takes very little effort for you to drastically change the path that thread takes: all you have to do is give it a little twist, and suddenly the thread spins through a whole cone of possible directions. Now choke up on the thread, so there's only maybe a centimeter sticking out past your fingers. You can still spin it, but the cone of possibilities is much smaller.

Now imagine threading a needle. It's much easier to thread a needle when choked up on the thread, but if the needle is outside your little cone, you'll need to move your whole hand. Pull back your grip on the thread, and you can reach the needle without moving your hand... but it's much, much more difficult. You need to be very precise.

Moving your hand is the equivalent of high-thrust maneuvering, something i would imagine the probe can't do. Whenever you're maneuvering in space, the effort required to make any given orbit adjustment gets smaller the further away you are, but precision becomes increasingly difficult, as well.

Kerbal Space Program may be ass for learning real orbital mechanics, but it is a good tool to pick up the general concepts! :D

Implying there are non-ass ways to learn real orbital mechanics

HOPE YOU LIKE EULER ANGLES

[Coren]

While I feel very certain getting this thing in orbit was a giant pain in the ass... humans are pretty good at this whole rocket science thing. As the orbits/masses/etc of all these objects are known, we can plan these missions extremely precisely, mostly with computers (to my knowledge). This isn't really to take away anything, but it's not quite like "hitting a bullet with another bullet" either.

[Cantih]

I was just using the best quote I had on hand. As Sath elaborated, it's was an even more precise and finicky thing than is usually dealt with.
http://xkcd.com/681_large/
The deepest gravity well in the system besides the Sun, and unlike the sun, it's crowded with other non-insignificant gravity wells in the immediate vicinity.
And getting it to there in the first place wasn't the most straightforward thing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft) watch the trajectory animation, then look at the orbit and radiation belt picture just below it.

[BerenTebogo]

The reality is definitely somewhere between Coren and Cantih's summary. It is true that all this shit is planned out 10,000+ times beforehand on computers to amazing accuracy by people who have spent years and years doing pretty much only that sort of stuff, so to that end, it's roughly the same as a someone who has done roofing their entire life just doing another roof, but on a really really nice house that they don't want to screw up. It's just another day at the office, but the stakes are definitely higher.

On the other hand, all of the assumptions in the above hold true specifically to the < 1000 people on the planet qualified to do such things. I literally writing this post from my office at the SAO where I work on the mission planning team for a space telescope, which in the grand scheme of things, is a direct neighbor to the people mentioned above. That said, it would take even me years to fill in the gaps in my knowledge before I could even be a trainee on the Juno team.

So it's all relative. In the grand scheme of the average human, this should inspire awe and surprise that we can do this. This involves levels of understanding of math and physics that less than .00001% of the people currently alive on the planet can even comprehend. In the grand scheme of rocket science? It's just the newest "thing we thought we could do but weren't sure until we did it" until the next "hey we think we can do this let's do it, please give us money."

[myreality]

[Outlaw]

If proven true this could possibly be the greatest scientific discovery of our lifetime. If you don't know anything about physics the fundamental forces are basically what control everything that happens in the universe. They are: Gravity, Electromagnetism, The Strong interaction (the energy that binds protons and neutrons together inside the nucleus of a atom) and the Weak interaction (radiation). The last two sometimes referred to as the Strong and Weak Nuclear forces. More testing needs to be done to confirm the findings but if they are it will change the way we understand the universe.

http://www.space.com/33750-fifth-for...rk-matter.html

[BerenTebogo]

http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...ett.116.042501
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.01527v1

Disclaimer time:

Notaparticlephysicist.jpg

This is so far out of my area that the difference between my knowledge about this and the average BG poster's knowledge is much smaller than the difference between my knowledge of this and the knowledge I'd need to have to comment deeply on the paper. With that out of the way...

So pair production / pair decay transitions observed produce an energy which deviates from prediction by 1.10 MeV at high striking angles (this is particle-particle collisions being done for pair production) of ~140 degrees. This deviation is significant to almost 7 sigma, which is p. good. The PROPOSED explanation for this by the submitters of the paper is that an unknown boson particle of some calculated mass must have been created in this process.

Things to note:
This is only one possible explanation of the missing energy
Results need to be replicated and corroborated
Other possible explanations for the energy deviation need to be explored
Existence of an unknown boson does not imply a fifth fundamental force in any way - it is only a possibility
We have known for quite a while that the standard model might be wrong, many have thought it PROBABLY is wrong
Any reference to a fifth fundamental force is only suggested as an offhand comment even by the authors - most likely for media attention
It is much more likely to be a gauge boson, based on our current understanding of particle physics

No scientist cited on the paper in any way believes they have discovered a fifth fundamental force.
tl;dr: Scientists rapes reporter.

[BerenTebogo]

Double posting for emphasis:

The physicist quoted in the space.com article posted is in no way whatsoever involved in the published results, lol. It's just an interview with a random physicist who has worked in the past with 1-2 members of the team.

God damn reporters.

The second-hand physicist even insulates himself in the article:

"The experimentalists weren’t able to claim that it was a new force," Feng said. "They simply saw an excess of events that indicated a new particle, but it was not clear to them whether it was a matter particle or a force-carrying particle."

[BerenTebogo]

Triple posting:

Can we just make it a rule that any time someone thinks they are posting an article about the laws of physics being rewritten, or time travel, or anything like that it has to go in the LHC thread? At least that way we can keep a nice collection of me shitting on science reporting all in one place.

This should honestly be merged into LHC or something.

[Rhyis.]

Scientists need to keep up.

[Cantih]

After he posted it, I checked science/askscience on reddit for the past months major links, nothing on it. I fed the link itself, three pmuch dead posts in dead subs.

I figure if reddit can't even be bothered to jerk itself on a "this is bullshit and let me tell you why" for something, then it's a guaranteed non-event.

[BerenTebogo]

After he posted it, I checked science/askscience on reddit for the past months major links, nothing on it. I fed the link itself, three pmuch dead posts in dead subs.

I figure if reddit can't even be bothered to jerk itself on a "this is bullshit and let me tell you why" for something, then it's a guaranteed non-event.

Lmao

I've actually never gone to reddit for physics stuff just because of my experience with reddit on other stuff. 100% sure I will see people who failed out of Calc 1 arguing with people with PhDs and the failouts getting thumbs up from people who dont know wtf.

[Outlaw]

So I guess all science related posted get rolled into the LHC thread now. I had a feeling people were going to tear this apart. I knew when I posted this that it was not a definite that's why I started my post with, "If proven true this could possibly". I guess I should have typed, "If" and, "possibly" in caps and bolded to make sure you got my meaning. >.> I just thought it was interesting and wanted to share it with other people on this forum who I know are knowledgeable about particle physics.

[BerenTebogo]

So I guess all science related posted get rolled into the LHC thread now. I had a feeling people were going to tear this apart. I knew when I posted this that it was not a definite that's why I started my post with, "If proven true this could possibly". I guess I should have typed, "If" and, "possibly" in caps and bolded to make sure you got my meaning. >.> I just thought it was interesting and wanted to share it with other people on this forum who I know are knowledgeable about particle physics.

It's fine, but yeah roll "POSSIBLE" stuff into LHC or general gets cluttered and people who aren't knowledgeable enough to think critically about this stuff read headlines and believe it. Nothing against you for posting it, just tearing apart the article because it's dumb af.

I get ornery because headlines like this are why people with English degrees argue with me about why "time travel is possible you just don't understand, man". Science reporting gets me fucking triggered.

[BaneTheBrawler]

but sath


time travel IS possible.


we are currently time traveling at the rate of 60 minutes per hour. it's bonkers how far science has come, man.

[BerenTebogo]

but sath


time travel IS possible.


we are currently time traveling at the rate of 60 minutes per hour. it's bonkers how far science has come, man.

[Ksandra]

I get ornery because headlines like this are why people with English degrees argue with me about why "time travel is possible you just don't understand, man". Science reporting gets me fucking triggered.

Don't you take "All You Zombies" away from me, man.

[myreality]

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-impo...ested-in-space

An actual EM Drive is about to be launched into space for the first time, so scientists can finally figure out - once and for all - if it really is possible for a rocket engine to generate thrust without any kind of exhaust or propellant.

Built by American inventor and chemical engineer, Guido Fetta, the EM Drive is as controversial as it gets, because while certain experiments have suggested that such an engine could work, it also goes against one of the most fundamental laws of physics we have.

[Drai]

That is potentially amazing news, looking forward to seeing how this turns out, because in addition to being useable in space exploration, could this engine also not potentially remove the need for any form of traditional fuels, I mean, way far in the future, but even so?