Space

He is a scientist and a kiwi to boot. Not surprising.

But what holds galaxies together then? There isnt enough mass to do what galaxies do.

Dark matter apparently holds stars at the outskirts of galaxies together.

The stars at the edge of galaxies travel faster than they do in the center of a galaxy. They should have enough escape velocity to escape the galaxy but don’t.

At this point in time, educated guess is that there is hidden and unmeasurable (dark) matter that exists at galaxy outskirts to keep the stars gravitationally bound preventing them from being flung out.

There are experimental findings to support dark matter including amount of bending of light around galaxies via gravitational lensing. The amount that light bends would only be possible if there was additional mass that we can’t measure.

Not sure the dark matter is at the edge. It would be fairly centralised. Remember we only feel the effect of dark matter. If it was on the outside what is holding the dark matter in place?

The galaxy and dark matter would gravitationally attract but angular velocity rates would keep it a certain distance (approximately).

Dark matter is throughout a galaxy, but its greatest concentration is at the edges. That’s the cosmologists story at least.

We could even have some in our solar system, but nothing has been detected to support that. Would be cool if the gravitational effects seen from the missing planet 9 is due to dark matter or even better a primordial (small) black hole/s even though the black hole has been excluded for various reasons.

1 Like

SpaceX is planning to do something ridiculous to be able to test version 2 starships given they destroyed a lot of the facility at the Masseys testing site when ship 36 exploded. Only place they can currently test version 2 ships.

They are going to modify a ship transport stand and weld it onto launch pad A and do a ship test static fire.

If this fails like ship 36 and blows up there will be no more flights until the new launch pad B is ready at the end of the year.

I kinda wish it does so they can get rid of the remaining version 2 ships that have all failed and they can rebuild launch pad A to support version 3 ships.

Currently working on the new version 3 ship with 5 in different stages of production.

3 Likes

Only the 3rd such interstellar object detected. Possibly.

2 Likes

“that’s not a comet”…

1 Like

“It’s our finals chances”

Amazing Space Fact for today:

  • Every night you travel 858,240kms around the sun, but also:
  • 6,256,000kms around the centre of the Milky Way.
3 Likes
3 Likes

has this factored in the 4-6pm traffic on the calder fwy between keilor road and the thunderdome?

2 Likes

The Euclid Telescope captured a photo of gravitational lensing around a galaxy 590 million light years away. The light ring is from a galaxy further out, estimated at 4.4 billion light years and has been warped into a circle by the gravity of the closer galaxy.

4 Likes

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-abandons-hunt-signal-cosmic-inflation?utm_campaign=Science&utm_source=Bluesky&utm_medium=ownedSocial

U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation

Now-canceled CMB-S4 project would have searched the afterglow of the Big Bang for signs of cosmic exponential growth spurt

The U.S. government has canceled a proposed $900 million project to study in unprecedented detail the afterglow of the Big Bang, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Known as CMB-S4, the project envisioned new arrays of ultrasensitive microwave telescopes at the South Pole and in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Their goal: to detect patterns in the ancient light that would prove the newborn universe expanded in an exponential growth spurt called cosmic inflation.

The project, which could have delivered smoking gun evidence for a key theory in cosmology, was supposed to be a joint venture between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE). However, yesterday, the agencies sent an unsigned statement to the leaders of the collaboration saying the project is off. “DOE and NSF have jointly decided that they can no longer support the CMB-S4 Project,” it reads.

The decision is a blow to scientists in multiple fields. In November 2021, CMB-S4 ranked second in U.S. astronomers’ latest decadal survey, the community’s effort to set priorities among projects proposed for the subsequent decade. In December 2023, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel ranked it as particle physics’ highest priority for new facilities to be initiated within a decade.

2 Likes