Space.

Birneybau

For anyone interested in good science fiction, I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's Odyssey series and would highly recommend them. The '2001-a Space Odyssey' book makes much more sense than the film ; D

anncoates

Jawgap wrote: »

To earn your astronaut wings you have to fly above 50 miles.

I think I may have even read it in The Right Stuff where the pilots first started to experience space like effects and views when they reached certain altitudes in the experimental manned jet programmes that preceded the Mercury project.

Karl Stein

Baggy Trousers wrote: »

Michael Collins revealed that he was very worried about Armstrong and Aldrin's safety.

Just read that here. Well worth a read.

Armstrong thought his prospects were only 50-50 of making it back to Earth. And so did Collins, the pilot of Columbia and one of the world's most experienced aviators.

Richard Nixon, then US president, had even prepared a speech that he would deliver in the event of the Eagle's engine failing. "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace," it ran. "These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice."

"[Collins] My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone; now I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter," he wrote. "If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it."

Duiske

In billions of years a new sun could emerge in our galaxy, planets could form around it and life similar to human life could evolve on one of those planets. Crappy thing for them though is that they will look out beyond the milky way into inter-galactic space and see... nothing. They will believe that the milky way galaxy is on it's own in the universe.
The expansion of the universe is speeding up and could one day be expanding at the speed of light, meaning galaxies will be moving away from each other so fast that the light from one galaxy will never reach the other.

Clermont1098

Space makes you think : here's a bit from a poem by I think Francis Thomson.
Not where the wheeling systems darken
And our benumbed conceiving soars
The drift of pinions would we hearken
Beats at our own clay shuttered doors.

That's nice.

Capt'n Midnight

kneemos wrote: »

How far away is space?
You can see it from space is a common saying,but is it that far away?

100Km


Because you can't stay that high in an aircraft without going fast enough orbital anyway.

It's the Kármán line.

foxy farmer

You can't bate a bit of space.
Even if it's only in the bed.

Aongus Von Bismarck

One of the best things I've ever had the pleasure of doing was taking a trip to San Perdo de Atacama in the salt flats of Northern Chile. There's a French chap there who runs the biggest publicly-accessible space observatory in South America. We left the small town of San Pedro at 1am in the morning, and drove through the desert to the observatory. What followed was 2 hours of passionate, funny and educational talks by astronomers who had a deep passion for their jobs'. They also had a huge range of telescopes. From observing the rings of Saturn to seeing variable stars. Incredible and deeply humbling.

Birneybau

Not too humbling I hope.

Panda_Turtle

kneemos wrote: »

Being seen from space is not really a major feat then.

KFC logo in Nevada can be seen from space.

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/U7pH8Gtq4TB2vcmwVsvfNQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/technews/mw-630-kfc-rachel-nevada-630w.jpg

Jon_459

Duiske wrote: »

In billions of years a new sun could emerge in our galaxy, planets could form around it and life similar to human life could evolve on one of those planets. Crappy thing for them though is that they will look out beyond the milky way into inter-galactic space and see... nothing. They will believe that the milky way galaxy is on it's own in the universe.
The expansion of the universe is speeding up and could one day be expanding at the speed of light, meaning galaxies will be moving away from each other so fast that the light from one galaxy will never reach the other.

What are they chances they'll develop their own version of Boards and someday, someone will ask :
"How far away is space?
You can see it from space is a common saying, but is it that far away?"

Timberrrrrrrr

Saw this in the astronomy forum yesterday and kinda gives you a perspective of the size of space, Small smudge in or night sky contains a TRILLION stars.

Egginacup

kneemos wrote: »

How far away is space?
You can see it from space is a common saying,but is it that far away?

400 miles

BeerWolf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8cEJEk6Ydc

Egginacup

Karl Stein wrote: »

Louis Armstrong was the first man to play trumpet on the Moon.

The Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km (62 mi) above sea level, is conventionally used as the start of outer space in space treaties and for aerospace records keeping.

The Moon is 238,900 miles (384,400 km) away. Venus is the closest planet to Earth - it is about 25 million miles (40 million kilometers) away from Earth. The Sun is 92,960,000 miles (149,600,000 km). The nearest star is 4.24 light years away (that means it would take 4.24 years travelling at at 300,000 kilometres per second to reach there).

Hubble pointed its mirrors at what appeared to be a dark patch in space and took this image - those galaxies and star clusters are between 5 and 10 billion light years away. That means we're looking at the universe as it appeared billions of years ago.

So space is kinda big.

To give people an idea that's probably somewhat comprehensible.....as you say the nearest star to us is 4.24 light years away. If it burnt out and vanished tomorrow, we on earth would continue seeing it until Spring 2019, :eek:

Starboy

anncoates wrote: »

I think I remember reading once that space technically starts at 50 or 60 miles up.

Yup that's about right,concorde used to travel at about 50 miles up,apparently you could see the curvature of the earth,the ISS travels at an orbit of about 250 miles up

GerB40

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Saw this in the astronomy forum yesterday and kinda gives you a perspective of the size of space, Small smudge in or night sky contains a TRILLION stars.

That's an unreal video..

ScumLord

Space doesn't exactly stop at the earths atmosphere, it's everywhere. This particular piece of space just happens to have a planet in it, but it's still space.

Birneybau

Karl Stein wrote: »

Louis Armstrong was the first man to play trumpet on the Moon.

Neil Armstrong, astronaut,
He had balls bigger than King Kong,
The first big suit on the Moon and he's asked to play golf,
Hole in one!

Panda_Turtle

"Astronomers estimate that the observable universe has more than 100 billion galaxies. Our own Milky Way is home to around 300 billion stars, but it's not representative of galaxies in general."


With the amount of galaxies and stars out there, there must be plenty of life out there. Incredible!:eek:

ScumLord

Panda_Turtle wrote: »

With the amount of galaxies and stars out there, there must be plenty of life out there. Incredible!:eek:

The problem is our planet and solar system doesn't seem to be typical. Most solar systems may be inhospitable, and most planets around most solar systems would probably be inhospitable too.

It could also depend on how critical a moon is to the evolution of life, a planet like ours with a moon like ours may be even rarer. So even though the size of the universe kind of predicts that there must be other life out there and if there's enough of those planets (which there probably is) there is the potential for a few other civilizations, we may never get to see them because of the distances involved. Even with warp drive and extended life spans.

I think it's more likely that we will create a lifeform that is eternal and in a few billion years the universe will be populated with artificial life forms remembering the organics that created them and died out.

Birneybau

Like Zombies?

o1s1n

ScumLord wrote: »

I think it's more likely that we will create a lifeform that is eternal and in a few billion years the universe will be populated with artificial life forms remembering the organics that created them and died out.

They'd refer to them as 'god' and the whole feckin' thing would repeat again

Panda_Turtle

ScumLord wrote: »

The problem is our planet and solar system doesn't seem to be typical. Most solar systems may be inhospitable, and most planets around most solar systems would probably be inhospitable too.

Yes but we are talking about tens of thousands of billions of stars, even if one in a billion of them have a planet with intelligent life then there is tens of thousands of such planets.

Kepler telescope has detected so many planets and they haven`t even scratched the surface.

ScumLord wrote: »

It could also depend on how critical a moon is to the evolution of life, a planet like ours with a moon like ours may be even rarer. So even though the size of the universe kind of predicts that there must be other life out there and if there's enough of those planets (which there probably is) there is the potential for a few other civilizations, we may never get to see them because of the distances involved. Even with warp drive and extended life spans.

We certainly won`t find out, but maybe future humans can develop some way of surviving on a spacecraft for tens of thousands of years to get to these places. Seems unlikely though!

ScumLord wrote: »

I think it's more likely that we will create a lifeform that is eternal and in a few billion years the universe will be populated with artificial life forms remembering the organics that created them and died out.

This sounds mad but yeah could happen

obriendj

ScumLord wrote: »

I think it's more likely that we will create a lifeform that is eternal and in a few billion years the universe will be populated with artificial life forms remembering the organics that created them and died out.

Like at the end of that movie?

A.I.

?
Make sure you preserve a lock of hair.

ScumLord

o1s1n wrote: »

They'd refer to them as 'god' and the whole feckin' thing would repeat again

Probably.

Panda_Turtle wrote: »

Yes but we are talking about tens of thousands of billions of stars, even if one in a billion of them have a planet with intelligent life then there is tens of thousands of such planets.

Kepler telescope has detected so many planets and they haven`t even scratched the surface.

Yes but they haven't really discovered many that have the potential to support life as we know it. Most planets are gas giants unable to support life and many are in a position as to make the possibility of a rock planet in the habitable zone unlikely. We have no way of knowing if there's even the potential for life on one in a billion stars, it may be less, just for life.

Civilization is a completely different kettle of fish. The chances of an intelligent life like ours evolving is extremely rare. We are the result of many accidents and being in the right place at the right time. even when modern intellect appeared on the scene around 70,000-100,000 years ago look at the amount of time it took for us to develop science. We almost went extinct many times and it's pure luck we're still here.

We certainly won`t find out, but maybe future humans can develop some way of surviving on a spacecraft for tens of thousands of years to get to these places. Seems unlikely though!

I think they will but even if you could travel to any part of the universe instantly it's still no guarantee we'll find life, never mind intelligent life.

This sounds mad but yeah could happen

It is happening, the best the human race can hope for is that we can merge into a new species half organic half machine rather than just getting left behind by the artificial intelligences we create. In the next 100 years we'll likely see a new human species that has inbuilt technology, nano tech to increase intelligence, strength and health. Artificial limbs will become so good people might elect to have them fitted even if they have perfectly good organic limbs.

obriendj

Panda_Turtle wrote: »

With the amount of galaxies and stars out there, there must be plenty of life out there. Incredible!:eek:

ScumLord wrote: »

The problem is our planet and solar system doesn't seem to be typical. Most solar systems may be inhospitable, and most planets around most solar systems would probably be inhospitable too.

We only need a similar conditions we a solar system with 1 Sun and a planet and a moon all in the same proportions to us. Also a planet like Jupiter to stabilize the system and keep asteroids away, I don't think that would be too rare given the number of solar systems we have.

However the spark that started life on this planet could be a little harder to find.

Karl Stein

We also have to make the distinction between making contact with intelligent life*, intelligent life itself, and simple life forms like bacteria. Most people would consider Chimps and Gorillas (apes) as intelligent life yet there would be no evidence for us other than optical observation only for Humans developed broadcast technology.

If there were alien beings developed enough to listen for signals then our Apollo communications would only be reaching their listening devices now if they were ~40 light years away. If their technology was of a similar level a signal back congratulating us on the moon landing it wouldn't arrive until ~40 years from now. Space is big.


*this presumes that the intelligent life wouldn't have developed to the point of knowing not to interfere and thus would deliberately avoid contact.

5starpool

Starboy wrote: »

Yup that's about right,concorde used to travel at about 50 miles up,apparently you could see the curvature of the earth,the ISS travels at an orbit of about 250 miles up

Concorde travelled nowhere near 50 miles up, don't be silly. The highest any jet plane has flown is less than 25 miles up.

ScumLord

obriendj wrote: »

We only need a similar conditions we a solar system with 1 Sun and a planet and a moon all in the same proportions to us. Also a planet like Jupiter to stabilize the system and keep asteroids away, I don't think that would be too rare given the number of solar systems we have.

As far as I can remember many solar systems have turned out to be binary and many have large gas giants in a really close orbit rotating around the sun really fast, many are not the right kind of sun to support life.

Our solar system is not typical. Apparently our solar system is on it's third life cycle, meaning our star has blown up and reformed twice. Maybe we're ahead of the game for stars in our part of the galaxy. Maybe other stars are still on their 2nd cycle and don't have the required heavy elements to support life. It is all a guessing game at this point but I was under the impression that the first results taken from our ability to actually see planets around other stars now was disappointing in that none of them had the remotest possibility of being able to have a planet like earth.

Karl Stein wrote: »

*this presumes that the intelligent life wouldn't have developed to the point of knowing not to interfere and thus would deliberately avoid contact.

I'd agree, I'm pretty sure that if there is other intelligent life out there and they know we exist, or they find us over the coming decades that they will just observe. The only benefit we can be to them is scientific research. There nothing on earth that they would need.