Science thread [merged]

[mightytiges]

The first close up images of Pluto from the New Horizon spacecraft  ...

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/nasa-teams-instagram-debut-pluto-surface-photo/

[dwaino]

How good are they. Actually looking forward to some close ups of Charon and seeing what those bright spots are.

[🏅Dooks]

Amazing

[cub]

This is cool

[Stalin]

In this day and age how could we not know exactly how big it was until yesterday??

[Stalin]

If we are wrong about how big Pluto is, until we send a space ship right up to it

How can we really ask the more grand questions like

1.  Where did water come from?
2. How did life on earth start?
3. Is there a god?
4. Why does troy Chaplin turn like a boat

Etc.

When any certainty? Surely humanity is having a giggle

[Diocletian]

Looks like Bent Judge is off his meds again.....

[Penelope]

 
I actually thought it was one his more sane posts.

It does actually raise questions about how accurate are these other claims about size weight age etc of celestial objects, galaxies and the universe

[dwaino]

It is still small. In fact smaller than our moon, and measurements weren't that bad for something over 7b km away that only shows as a few blurry pixels in the most powerful telescopes.

Next up, hopefully some more great new finds in the Kuiper belt.

[Stalin]

I know its small, dark, far away

But we can't even work oit how big it is till now. Yet we want to have confidence with theory in regards to pre big bang / multi universe ?

[Diocletian]

Astrophysics is all just a conspiracy started by The Freemasons & Walt Disney.

[Stalin]

Walt is still frozen futrama-style
 

[mightytiges]

I know its small, dark, far away

But we can't even work oit how big it is till now. Yet we want to have confidence with theory in regards to pre big bang / multi universe ?

The last sentence about the big bang theory etc ... has nothing to do with why Pluto had many unknowns.

It comes back to Kepler's Laws of planetary motion. The 3rd law relates the distance of a planet from the Sun to the time it takes to orbit the Sun. Likewise, a planet's mass is determined from its orbital radius (distance), period (time) and centripetal force using Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. As Pluto was only discovered 85 years ago yet it's period is approx. 248 years, a complete period of Pluto's orbit hadn't yet been observed to obtain precise measurements from here on Earth.   

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-scientists-measure/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

[dwaino]

Not to mention its elliptical orbit which can throw a calculation.

[mightytiges]

Not to mention its elliptical orbit which can throw a calculation.

True. The period is related to the semi-major axis of the elliptical orbit via Kepler's Laws.