Science General Discussion

Started by Legend, Sep 02, 2014, 07:17 PM

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Legend

Breakdown of the Newton–Einstein Standard Gravity at Low Acceleration in Internal Dynamics of Wide Binary Stars - IOPscience

Great study. I was initially thrown off since the article talking about it was so bad, but the paper itself is very reasonable.


The theory called MOND is that gravity does not work like Newton and Einstein predicted. It's been around for decades as an alternative way to explain galaxy rotation.

This paper looks at 26 thousand wide binary stars near Earth and finds that their motions likely match MOND predictions. His statistical modelling proves it with an incredibly high degree of certainty, but it's always possible that there's a systemic error with his approach. The dataset he used is by far the best available but it's still lacking. I've personally used it here and there and star motions can change significantly with each update. Would be interesting to see if his analysis still holds up using new data in 2026.

Legend



They're promoting quackery, what the fudge!?

Some traditional medicine is legit but they're defending their inclusion of easily debunked snake oil.

the-pi-guy


Legend




Legend



In 10 years this might be the mission that gets NASA in a huge amount of trouble.

Returning samples from Mars will be super awesome but they're using it as a jobs/politics program instead of just an engineering goal. For example they are spending billions extra so that the European Space Program can be included.

Other programs will be cancelled to free up money and there's a good chance this mission won't even be used as designed. Starship will potentially have made Mars landings "mundane" before its even ready to go.

the-pi-guy

I want to rant about something silly.  


I saw a video where Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about how it doesn't make sense to go to Mars to terraform Mars, because if you have that technology, then you can just terraform Earth back into Earth.

1.) This largely conflates terraforming as if it would be a single thing, and there's no room for certain kinds of terraforming to be easier than others. Removing a pollutant from an atmosphere could be harder than adding something else to another atmosphere.

2.) There may be non-technological reasons why it would be harder to terraform on Earth such as political factors. Convincing a large enough chunk of countries to fight climate change for example might be harder than a focused effort for NASA to go somewhere else. (not saying that it is. I am just saying it could be the case.)

Legend

You could nuke Mars a whole bunch of times to terraform it, at least partially. Don't think we'd want to do the same here haha.

You're second point is also true but man that'd be depressing. Only realistic one I can imagine is a political movement that wants Earth to stay destroyed, maybe as punishment for our hubris or something stupid.


Thing that gets me with Mars and space in general is that people have a romanticized perspective of living there thanks to movies. Absolutely no one involved thinks escaping to space is a thing since life on Earth will almost always be better.


Legend

I watched a partial solar eclipse today. Was cold outside so it wasn't as fun as the last one.

Always fun to see all shadows turn into crescents though.

Legend

CERN proposes $17 billion particle smasher that would be 3 times bigger than the Large Hadron Collider | Live Science

Wow, this might be the first time my own mortality has ever hit me like this. Project would take 50 years (or 100 years with delays) to get fully set up and generational projects like that are so incredibly rare nowadays. It feels like the common sci fi story of scientists trying to finish a project before doomsday. Sci fi puts thousands of years between the death of the scientists and the fruit of their labor, but its all the same thing: no rewards during your lifetime but hopefully future strangers benefit from it.

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