The Astronomy Thread

Cybsled said:

I think they indicated that this red dwarf is relatively quiet compared to other ones which have more coronal ejections/etc, which improves the chances of a more stable environment.

.

Click to expand...

No, I believe what they said is that these type of stars (including this one) are very active when they are young and it would have been rough on the planets at that time. But if they survived that active period ok, the star is now and will basically forever be quiet.

Using the fastest spacecraft we're researchign now it will only take 700,000 years to get there.

Aaron said:

This is awesome! I had given up hope for hyped up NASA press conferences after that shitty one a few years back with that annoying, self-absorbed chick with the phosphorus research.

And fuck I hope Webb deploys correctly and works! So much that could go wrong with that launch and deployment.

Click to expand...

If Webb deploys properly I will be completely stunned. I used to work on that project and the thing is pretty much a goddamn Transformer.

As far as propulsion systems : yeah anything remotely conventional is not gonna cut it. Best bet is something like an EMDrive that 'violates' physics and may push off vacuum energy or something equally exotic. Of course even if you could get up to 5% the speed of light and reach Trappist-1 in ~800 years there's the slight issue of what to do about clearing the path in front of you.

Interstellar dust grains are very small and have very low mass...but when you are trucking along at 3E+07 m/s even a dust grain is bad news. Now you have to worry about constructing and artificial magnetosphere as a 'shield' and even that doesn't do jack against neutrally charged dust... Best bet there is to scoop it up and use it... probably have to have a pillow of charged plasma to soften the blow as it comes in.

Space travel is a real bitch. We should do more to protect the blue marble we have now.

Could you elaborate why you would be stunned if it deploys properly? I was already concerned because of how much it needs to unfold, but having someone that worked on the project to have some doubt frightens me. I need this project to be successful.

Watch it be a teenage nerd that figures out SOL space travel thinking outside the box of reality.

Brad2770 said:

Could you elaborate why you would be stunned if it deploys properly? I was already concerned because of how much it needs to unfold, but having someone that worked on the project to have some doubt frightens me. I need this project to be successful.

Click to expand...

All about the unfolding. While the overall reliability of nearly everything that goes into space is as close to infallible as you can be, there are no guarantees in life especially since the mechanisms in question cannot be tested in a null-gravity environment.

Consider this video :


That is a LOT of moving parts, especially when you consider that we have a little celebratory dance when a satellite manages to do something like open its one door or deploy a small antenna properly. Having JWST do its irish jig at L2 is roughly the equivalent of every Mars mission to date going off without a hitch...

Haven't they pretty much put the thing through the worst possible launch scenarios? How often do they unfold it to test it? Do they take it apart and examine the moving parts after grueling tests?

I think a very long pointed nose made of ice would be good for high speed ships. Like in the uhhh revelation space was it? Or just build em super thick at the front with Adrian Newey as the designer.

Qhue In that space telescope unfolding.... what is the purpose of the multilayered triangular "base" under the actual telescope?

Cybsled said:

One of the biggest things to remember, though, is I think they said the star is only 500 million years old. Considering how long it took for life to develop on Earth, it somewhat diminishes the chances of life existing there yet.

Click to expand...

Actually, during the announcement they said they couldn't figure out its age because red dwarves are very slow burning or something.

Well then, game on! Get those spectrometers working!

Lenas said:

Actually, during the announcement they said they couldn't figure out its age because red dwarves are very slow burning or something.

Click to expand...

Yup, so far as main-sequence stars go M-class (red dwarves) last exponentially longer than their larger (and hotter) counterparts. Generally speaking a star like this might be expected to produce stable energy for ~10 trillion years (with a T). The sun will make it another 5 to around 10 billion years. Then you have on the other extreme hyper giants like UY Scuti are already fusing Helium as their main energy source and live millions of years.

Because of this, it does make dwarfs a nice candidate for life (although the habitable zone is much closer).

I also have a hard time wrapping my brain around how big things like UY Scuti really are though; same with a lot of astronomical numbers. Super cool that things like this do process so "fast" though (and end their life in a supernova) else we would not have the heavy elements in our own solar system for us to exist.