A question

This forum is for discussing space science topics related to Stardust@home.

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startrak
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Awesome stuff

Post by startrak »

WOW! Wish I could have a couple hundred years or more to digest all this. The more I read the more questions come to mind. Thanks so much, I love this stuff. :D But, of course, I really don't understand it.
Nikita
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Post by Nikita »

That makes two of us! :D But I'm trying!
From dust we come
startrak
Posts: 52
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Location: Kennebunk, ME

Pictures

Post by startrak »

Nikita, the "Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive" is absolutely awesome. I'm enjoying the pictures so my dusting has taken a back seat at present.
Nikita
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Post by Nikita »

NOOO!!!!
Now you'll have the Stardust team after me!!!
:lol: Glad you enjoy it, I could get lost in there.
From dust we come
startrak
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Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Kennebunk, ME

Dark matter -- is there or isn't there?

Post by startrak »

fjgiie
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Post by fjgiie »

startrak
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Location: Kennebunk, ME

Phase 3

Post by startrak »

First of all I'd also like to thank Bryan for taking the time to reply to my question of a while ago regarding space dust particles.

My question now -- I've seen "Phase 3" mentioned a couple of times in the Forum and am curious as to what Phase 3 involves.
bmendez
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Re: Phase 3

Post by bmendez »

startrak wrote:First of all I'd also like to thank Bryan for taking the time to reply to my question of a while ago regarding space dust particles.

My question now -- I've seen "Phase 3" mentioned a couple of times in the Forum and am curious as to what Phase 3 involves.
Hi startrak,

Phase 3 will be the next step in the Stardust@home search when we begin scanning the rest of the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector. There may be a mix of high and low resolution movies in Phase 3 (that hasn't been decided yet). Phase 3 will also see some little changes here and there to some features on the website. We may also be extracting candidates from the collector soon to analyze, and will have a better idea of just what we've found so far.

Thanks,
-Bryan
"I am made from the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins"
- RUSH
fjgiie
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Dark Matter in Abell 901/902

Post by fjgiie »

Nikita
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Post by Nikita »

There goes a few more brain cells trying to understand this stuff!
Awsome Picture! Thanks for sharing it fjgiie!
From dust we come
startrak
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Kennebunk, ME

Dark matter

Post by startrak »

Thanks fjgiie and I know what you mean, Nikita.

Would like to take the opportunity to ask a couple more questions -- are the discovered planets being discovered in our own galaxy? Would elliptical galaxies contain planets? :?
startrak
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Dark matter

Post by startrak »

Tonight at 9 PM EST the History Channel presents "The Universe - Dark Matter".
Nikita
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Post by Nikita »

You know, I have literally started with elementary school books on quantum mechanicsand am now working through a couple of more complex books, like Stephen Hawkings stuff to try to grasp some of this. I have repeatedly read that some of it just can't be explained. Not that we couldn't handle it...well, yes, without the years of mathmatics, we couldn't understand the exact "why" behind it. Some ideas are only explainable in terms of the math.

To the best of my knowledge, we have no way to know if there are planets out side of the Milky Way. Here's this article that might help. I'm sure the NASA site would again have you swimming in the deep end on this.

Personally I'm not sure why eliptical galaxies couldn't contain planets. There is sufficient gravity to keep stuff together, some of that should be rocks.

I hope you enjoy the show tonight! I couldn't tell when it was made, hopefully it is current!
From dust we come
bmendez
Stardust@home Team
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Re: Dark matter

Post by bmendez »

startrak wrote:Would like to take the opportunity to ask a couple more questions -- are the discovered planets being discovered in our own galaxy? Would elliptical galaxies contain planets? :?
Hi Startrak,

Yes, all of the over 200 exo-planets discovered so far are all inside the Milky Way Galaxy. More than that, they are also very close to the Sun in our little corner of the Galaxy. The reason for this is that planets are difficult to detect and the methods we are using to find them require their parent stars to be fairly bright. Bright stars means close stars for the most part. They need to be bright to provide a high "signal-to-noise" ratio since the signatures of the planets are just above the noise level.

Given how common planets are just in our corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, we fully expect that planets are common everywhere in the Galaxy and in other galaxies as well. Elliptical galaxies should have planets too. The emerging idea of how elliptical galaxies form is as a merger of many smaller galaxies that merge in such a way as to cancel out any overall sense of angular momentum so that the resulting galaxy has no overall spin (like a spiral galaxy does). So the stars in an elliptical galaxy are all on randomly oriented orbits. During the process of merging a huge amount of star formation would be stimulated and certainly planets would be expected to form. The only major requirement for planet formation would be that enough generations of hot, blue stars have come and gone to produce enough heavy elements needed for the stardust that is the seed of planet formation.

The places where we would expect there to not be many planets would be very, very old star systems that do not contain many heavy elements. An example would be the globular star clusters that orbit the Milky Way in its halo.

A good place to learn about the planets being discovered is http://exoplanets.org/

The History Channel's Universe program had an episode a few weeks ago entitled "Alien Worlds" that is a nice introduction to the subject. It also featured nice interviews with several UC Berkeley Astronomers, including Geoff Marcy who has led the team that has found the majority of exo-planets.

-Bryan
"I am made from the dust of the stars, and the oceans flow in my veins"
- RUSH
startrak
Posts: 52
Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Kennebunk, ME

Dark matter

Post by startrak »

Again I thank you for your time and knowledge. The more I learn, the more fascinated I am in the universe. I can't help but wonder if black holes have something to do with dark matter. After 15.8 billion years there must be trillions of inactive black holes with gravity still present.

And yes, I am retired with lots of time on my hands and loving it.

The History Channel program re. dark matter was very interesting but quite a bit for my brain to handle. I always look for and usually see UC Berkeley Astronomers on the Universe programs.
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