The "horrible thing" is fingernail loss, which mostly occurs after a prolonged spacewalk. It occurs more often in poorly-fitted gloves and in women, but can occur in well-fitted gloves and in men.
Those are basically all of the facts in the article.
No farming on the moon. No mining either. Leave the moon and planets alone. Until we have proven that we can fix Earth, don’t go around trashing the solar system.
The problem is growing leafy plants like lettuce and spinach in space can come with a side dish of bacteria, according to a new study from a team at the University of Delaware. In tests on plants grown in simulated microgravity, they were shown to actually be more susceptible than normal to the Salmonella enterica pathogen.
The ISS has a very strict cleaning regime. Essentially every work minute not spent on research or maintenance is for cleaning. I think to remember that they even have one day a week when all they do is clean.
Sounds like not a big problem at all. Seems like they'll just have to use appropriate cleaning methods. Even in the worst case scenario they would probably just have to use food irradiation.
Nah, you’re just talking out of your ass, look at the size of equipment and the regulations that go into irradiating food and you would see why it’s not feasible in/on the space station.
Also, looks at the list of acceptable foods that can be irradiated for astronauts, ifs also different than what the public has access too.
I’m pointing out it’s far more involved than you think.
Because the general population is dumb
Yes they are if they think it’s that simple to irradiate food properly and safely in the space station and it’s “trivial”. If it was, it would be being done already…
What does that prove about irradiating in the space station? Have you seen the regulations and equipment that go into it? I really don’t even know what you think that’s proving in this exchange.
If it was simple and trivial, why are they not doing it on the space station? Because it’s not simple… it’s not easy… and it’s just not feasible….
The link shows you that it can be done on any food, and that the only reason why it hasn't be accepted by the public is because of fear about the word.
To your additional objections, do a an image search of the machines and you'll see that the non-miniaturized versions that are made for industrial scale mass production products are like 4x4x2 feet for the actual functional machine part of it
It can be done on any food, but look at NASAs list for what is acceptable…. Different agencies are involved with different standards.
Just because it’s easy on earth doesn’t correlate to space… this exchange even started in a post of a an article about this exact thing….
You are right people are dumb yeesh.
Edit, read your own links….
At present, human spaceflight is confined to low Earth orbit but, in future, will again go to the Moon and, beyond, to Mars. The provision of food during these extended missions will need to meet the special nutritional and psychosocial needs of the crew. Terrestrially grown and processed food products, currently provided for consumption by astronauts/cosmonauts, have not yet been systematically optimised to maintain their nutritional integrity and reach the shelf-life necessary for extended space voyages. Notably, space food provisions for Mars exploration will be subject to extended exposure to galactic cosmic radiation and solar particle events, the impact of which is not fully understood. In this review, we provide a summary of the existing knowledge about current space food products, the impact of radiation and storage on food composition, the identification of radiolytic biomarkers and identify gaps in our knowledge that are specific in relation to the effect of the cosmic radiation on food in space.
It shows the challenges and the unknowns of doing it in space….
It’s to show you it’s not as simple as you are making it out to be…. But of course you’re not going to comprehend that as you’ve already established how stupid some people are.
I work in the space industry. I feel like I should be celebrating this, but I just find it hard to be enthusiastic about the commercialization of space.
I didn’t get into this to build hotels, and mine asteroids. I feel like as a species we should continue to explore, and push the boundaries.
I just can’t get behind private industry on the moon. This is a bad move for humanity overall.
Hotels would be just a vanity thing, but we would(could?) collectively benefit from mining asteroids and having industrial construction capabilities in space would make space exploration and space based energy collection easier.
While I agree, isn't the end goal setting up a base on the moon?Hopefully it will be science first and tourism later. I wish I could just fast forward to star trek time :)
Probably, and as much as I love the science fiction of space travel, real life me isn’t so into have space truckers hauling dorritos to the moon.
This stuff creates environmental damage, tons of space debris, and the more activity there is in near earth orbits, the more possibility there is for conjunctions, which means moving your satellite and wasting fuel. It’s just not that smart.
It’s not very reassuring that the last attempt crashed and burned, then NASA had to come in with the save on the landing for this one (the lander’s laser landing guidance failed, and NASA jumped in with “don’t worry, we brought one too just in case”
Space, the final frontier. trumpet music These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, on a mission to explore strange new markets, to seek out new profits and new business opportunities, to boldly trade where no one has traded before. doot DOOOOOOOT
I feel like asteroid mining should be a good thing. We would be able to get the resources we need without sacrificing our planet. I don’t feel like that’s feasible under capitalism.
The Cold War fueled space exploration up to the point political support waned. It would be nice to see another space race to foster competition and technological advancement, hopefully without the Mutually Assured Destruction this time around.
Private industry is going to fill the void of a politically unpopular public space program, which is a shame.
Space is expensive, and never gets the attention it deserves. Only a handful of countries could do much space exploration and as they try to explore more it rapidly gets more expensive, longer timeframe. We need to face that from a societal perspective it just doesn’t scale.
Commercializing space doesn’t just mean silly things like orbital hotels, but it means more, better, cheaper access to space and space resources. It means distributing efforts for better scalability. It means multiple funding sources so we’re less dependent on the whims f politicians. It means someone else can take care of the “easy” stuff, so NASA/ESA/JSA/CSA/ASA/etc can focus on the bigger challenges of exploration.
More international cooperation is also a huge part of this. We need to continue the model of cooperation from ISS, so we can all build on each other’s efforts, and reach out into the solar system as “humanity”
You do realize these “commercial companies” such as SpaceX are funded by government contracts right? You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. And you’re also not going to change my opinion. Space isn’t meant to be the next capitalist playground, which is what we are trying to do.
You do realize these “commercial companies” such as SpaceX are funded by government contracts right?
Yes, but it will be cheaper for NASA to outsource cargo and crew transport than if they did everything themselves. Just look at the success of the NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services and Commercial Crew programs. Cygnus, Dragon, and Falcon 9 are way cheaper than Orion and Ares I would have been for low earth orbit.
This leaves NASA with more resources to devote towards interesting science and exploration missions. I don’t see why lunar exploration would be any different.
Yes, but it will be cheaper for NASA to outsource cargo and crew transport than if they did everything themselves.
That is absolutely wrong. Commercialization in the space sector is - without exception - ALWAYS more expensive in the long run. Not only do you have inefficient company structures much like the public sector administration, you now also have to finance the insane profit margins of some egomaniacs like the little rat that runs shitter these days.
Yet, compare the results of having SpaceX build out launch services currently serving the bulk of world launch traffic, to the Artemis program. The commercial service developed practical reusability that NASA didn’t, refined the service to a fraction of traditional cost, and scaled up far beyond what NASA did. Sure NASA funded and supervised but letting SpaceX do it their way was a great investment and NASA never have delivered the same results. Compare that to the Artemis program, currently expecting to cost $1B/launch with limited usefulness and only four planned launches
I think space is one example where private industries actually can and do deliver cheaper, even if you just blame it on risk avoidance and Congressional interference at NASA.
More importantly, we do have a high value commercial market in satellites. We do have a global market in cooperation with other country’s space development, which are readily served by commercial launch services with only oversight by NASA.
I have no idea what the next phase of commercial development in space will be, but satellites are a resounding success
SpaceX is - among other reasons - faster because they are willing to take more risks. When a crew of astronauts dies on a Dragon spacecraft like they did on the Columbia or Challenger, people might reconsider the costly and slow public approach.
Notwithstanding, they did do some impressive design, however some prices are paid after getting what you invested in. In this case because damage control is necessary with an insecure rich snob kid that owns the place & has public temper tantrums on red wine and sedatives.
Edit: oh, and I forgot to say: basically that stupid Ambien kid alone is ruining astronomy results and polluting near earth orbit with the small dick compensation project starlink.
This argument gets made a lot when talking about privatisation. Lots basic and essential services have gotten privatised over we decades, and none of them got better or cheaper.
The only way you can benefit from privatizing something is when you make others pay for it. In this case, SpaceX is burning other people’s venture capital like rocketfuel. I prefer that over spending public money, but unfortunately, they’ve also spent 1.9billion on a moon lander, with nothing to show.
Lots basic and essential services have gotten privatised over we decades, and none of them got better or cheaper.
This seems like a rather broad statement. Are there really zero cases where a privatized service got cheaper? Do you disagree with the example of NASA’s CRS and CCP programs in my previous comment?
but unfortunately, they’ve also spent 1.9billion on a moon lander, with nothing to show
I think stating that they have nothing to show is slightly disingenuous. They’ve done multiple successful suborbital hops with upper stage prototypes, and two (partially successful) launches of the full stack. I’m eagerly awaiting IFT-3, which could happen as early as March.
Space is unfathomably enormous. I’d much rather have heavy industry fucking up shit in space than destroying our planet to strip it of its resources. I say let them go up there for asteroid/moon/whatever mining.
I didn’t say anything about LEO, as last I checked there isn’t much heavy industry that would be appealing to do in that area. Asteroid or moon mining and production would be outside of LEO. But yes, too much space garbage in LEO is a bad thing that should definitely be avoided as much as possible.
I just think taking a strict anti-commercial stance in space is a bit naive and unreasonable. Like I said, it’s enormous, who gives a shit what Blue Origin or SpaceX or whoever ends up doing in the asteroid belt a hundred years from now?
Did you miss the part where I said I work in the space industry, I have 10 years of engineering experience, and I’ve been out of school a long damn time. Don’t insult my intelligence. I’m not a child, and I’m certainly not naive. Go spout off your uninformed opinions elsewhere. I’m in a bad mood today, haven’t been sleeping well, and I really don’t feel like explaining basic shit to you just so you understand my point of view.
Yeah, China has done a bang up job of following that by blowing up satellites… they basically undid 25 years worth of cleanup efforts with that one selfish act. Seriously, yall need to go somewhere else. I’m not having this conversation with people who are uninformed. I’m tired of it.
Do you know that when you look at a planet and you see that light, that planet’s not even there? That’s just a light. That’s just your neighbor shining a flashlight right into your yard looking for 'coons, and he says “What are you doing in my back yard? …With that flashlight?”
And I told him “I’m shining in the window so I can teach your son about the universe”.
He said, “Get out of my yard, and why are you communicating to my son? Why are you in all black, behind my bushes, shining a light into my house?”
And I said, “I’m teaching your son about the universe! I’m shining a light right in there and exploring his room, as he’s looking out and exploring the universe. I turn the light off and I see your son go to bed, and I turn the light back on and I do swirls on his wall like a comet’s tail.
I do this every night with your son.”
I'm not a professional, but just an enthusiast but I'll try to simplify the article from my layperson perspective, so take my interpretation with a grain of salt.
The new theory seems to point to how Einstein's theory of gravity considers the "energy-momentum tensor" to be unchanged in all scenarios. The energy-momentum tensor describes the relationship of energy as it changes between various forms, for example a stick of dynamite exploding changes the chemical energy stored in the dynamite into kinetic energy - the force of the explosion - and if you calculated the energy of both they would be equal to the initial chemical energy stored in the unexploded stick of dynamite. Which is called the "law of conservation of energy", that energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed into a different form of energy.
The problem arises in high-energy situations where infinities start to appear in the equations. If you know much about math then infinities can break equations, and often in physics if there are infinities appearing in your equation then it usually means that you're missing something crucial. So scientists can use a technique called renormalization which can apply tweaks to equations to reduce these infinity spikes. At these high-energy situations described, renormalization fails and the equations can't be properly satisfied no matter how you tweak the variables. This is a big problem since a correct theory should be able to come up with answer for all possible situations that might arise within the system it's trying to describe without breaking.
Einstein's field theory - which is a model used to describe spacetime based on the distribution of matter within it - uses the curvature of spacetime, the relationship between stress and energy, and the cosmological constant. The new theory proposed suggests that adding to Einstein's field theory with math that accounts for the relationship between temperature and entropy, and the relationship between charge and interaction changes the equation in such a way that the infinities disappear, even at higher energy levels which traditionally break field theory, and most importantly that it's still consistent with observations.
All matter and energy in the universe prefers to flow towards the laziest possible resting position between several different points of equilibrium, and stay there. Everything can be explained mathematically in the context of these symmetries, such as charge, space and time. There are several more. This is the #1 main concern of physics.
When something seems to be violating a symmetry, it is assumed that there is a deeper, more fundamental equilibrium at play. This is how they came up with The Strong Force (symmetry of something they call “color” because it behaves exactly like the RGB color scheme) and The Weak Force (symmetry of something they call “spin” even though nothing is really spinning, it just behaves like it is).
“Conservation of energy” is one of these symmetries, and it states among other things that a stick of dynamite will explode with the same release of energy yesterday, today and tomorrow. A crucial symmetry of energy is through time.
2024 Jan 14, 19:56 GMT by Polly Thompson Nasa astronomers says signal coming from outside our galaxy is ‘unexpected and as yet unexplained’ NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA scientists have found a powerful new gamma-ray signal coming from outside our galaxy. They detected the alternative signal while looking for answers about the universe’s creation. The discovery has created a whole new cosmic conundrum for the astronomists.
NASA astronomers have discovered an unexpected “signal” coming from outside our galaxy, which they can’t explain.
The scientists were analyzing 13 years of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope when they noticed the mysterious signal.
It was “an unexpected and as yet unexplained feature outside of our galaxy,” wrote Francis Reddy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The powerful telescope can detect gamma rays, which are huge bursts of energetic light thousands to hundreds of billions of times as great as our eyes can see. They are often created when stars explode or a nuclear blast occurs. They stumbled on the alternative signal while looking for something else entirely.
“It is a completely serendipitous discovery,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, a cosmologist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, while presenting the findings to the American Astronomical Society.
“We found a much stronger signal, and in a different part of the sky than the one we were looking for.”
They had been searching for one of the oldest gamma-ray features for creating the first atoms — known as the cosmic microwave background or CMB.
The CMB has a dipole structure, where one end is hotter and busier than the other. Astronomers generally think our solar system’s motion creates the structure.
Instead, the researchers detected a signal coming from a similar direction and with a nearly identical magnitude as another unexplained feature, which had some of the most energetic cosmic particles they had ever detected.
“We found a gamma-ray dipole, but its peak is located in the southern sky, far from the CMB’s, and its magnitude is 10 times greater than what we would expect from our motion,” said Chris Shrader, an astrophysicist at Goddard.
They think the discovery could be linked to a cosmic gamma-ray feature observed by the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina in 2017.
The astronomers believe the two phenomena could originate from a single unidentified source, given their similar structure.
They hope to locate the mysterious source or develop alternative explanations for both features.
NASA’s unexpected discovery could help astronomers confirm or challenge ideas about how the dipole structure is created.
“A disagreement with the size and direction of the CMB dipole could provide us with a glimpse into physical processes operating in the very early universe, potentially back to when it was less than a trillionth of a second old,” said Fernando Atrio-Barandela, coauthor of the research paper.
…from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
Okay, so, what they did observed was in the gamma ray spectrum. But now, they are talking about the cosmological microwave background (CMB) and signals from the big Bang at less than 1 second. Seems very surprising … and it seems to contradict the Big Bang Theory.
… “We found a gamma-ray dipole, but its peak is located in the southern sky, far from the CMB’s, and its magnitude is 10 times greater than what we would expect from our motion,” …
Okay, maybe this time I get it : those dipoles, the one from the CBM and the one from the gamma spectrum, are analogs. So it implies that they would extend to the edges of the visible universe.
And since the limit of the visible universe is thought to be the origin of the Big Bang (because of this wrong theory) physicists are now confounded (like with many other recent observations).
Couldn’t this just be planetary capture? A low mass sun just happened by a slow moving planet that had been ejected from it previous orbit, and both of them were just like, “wanna hang out?” and that’s that? I know the odds are astronomical (pun), but it is the universe we are talking about… things do happen.
I don’t really have a good answer for this and frankly it’s probably not rational or coherent or succinct so I’ll just say it comes down to mortality, knowing how small and insignificant we are and desperately clinging to a meaningless life on a meaningless planet in a meaningless etc. etc. etc.
There’s so much out there that we don’t know and probably never will and it’s all growing faster than we could ever hope to catch up with and we’ll all be dead so soon relative to the lifespan of the universe and it’ll just keep going on long after our meat sacks stop functioning and turn into nothingness until maybe everything turns into nothingness and then there’s never anything ever again or maybe that won’t happen but we’ll all still be long, long gone.
Well, when you put it like that, yup. I can relate.
I’ve been trying to come to terms with it by thinking (or trying to convince myself) that this curiosity and willingness to observe everything and learn all things are just evolutionary adaptations whose sole purpose is to survive. Like, our curiosity to explore pushed us to get to better places with better living conditions. But that survival function is now too overfitted, like cancer cells that just replicate and replicate and replicate… strange analogy, I know. So there’s nothing inherently of value in having such attributes. “Why are we here? Where are we going?” So deep! Hm, nope. We’re just machines programmed to survive by just searching, searching, searching, and finding, and understanding, and harnessing, and… searching and searching and searching.
Anyway. Then I stop thinking about that and go make myself a sandwich.
I think he's wrong too. I mean, sure, he can be terrified by whatever he wants. But I just don't see the reasoning behind it.
An empty universe means it's all ours. No competition, no threats, our descendants can expand at whatever the ultimate maximum speed can be practically achieved. We got there first and so we claim the prize.
We will also be those colonies, though. So whoever wins it's us.
Humanity has always had internal conflict. That's just part of us being us. Though perhaps our descendants will develop in less contentious ways, if that works well for them.
There is essentially no way we are the only ones in the entire universe. It would have to be the most astounding and amazing luck for that to be the case…. Vanishingly small, might as well be zero, chance of being the only ones. The universe is an absolute monster in size. There is no way for our monkey brains to even fathom how big it is. We need abstract numbers to even talk about it, which make it so anything that could exist most likely does.
However, those extraterrestrial peers of ours may be so far away that we might as well be alone. Even if we traveled for millions of years and kept our warring civilization from destroying itself, we may only explore a small percentage of this one single galaxy. Even if we managed to catalogued the entire thing, there are still 200 billion more galaxies out there. Our alien buddies may be on one of those that will soon blip out of existence due to universal expansion before we could get there, even if we traveled at maximum speed, never to be seen or heard from again.
When we talk about actually attainable and achievable exploration goals, the chances of other intelligent life existing get sort of really small. That is what I find to be not terrifying, but somewhat depressing to think about.
We are indeed limited in what portion of the observable universe is reachable thanks to the expansion of the universe. IIRC something like 95% of the galaxies we can see would be impossible to ever reach even if we travelled at the speed of light to get there, they'd disappear across the cosmological event horizon before we could get there.
But 5% of the observable universe is still pretty darned big. I wouldn't be surprised if our expanding sphere of colonization eventually bumped into another one. But we'll have colonized hundreds of millions of galaxies by then, so I'm not going to be too upset by that. Mustn't get greedy. :)
You might be interested in this article, Eternity in six hours. It suggests that a civilization with access to six hours' worth of a single Dyson swarm's total energy output could launch a colony ship to every galaxy within that reachable horizon. This makes the Fermi paradox a lot sharper since aliens could do the same thing, but it really illustrates just how easy it should be to get spreading around the cosmos once we get up into space in a serious way.
How much warning would we have? Weeks? Years? Centuries? If we had a decent warning, we might prioritize establishing lunar and martian colonies if, you know, the fate of all known life depended on it.
I feel like humanity would be more likely to fast track world war 3/4/whatever we’re on by then, nuclear winter, and near (if not complete) human extinction. But I also have little faith in humanity, so there’s that. 🤷♀️
In the mind-bogglingly unlikely event that a Venus-sized object was on a collision course with Earth, I'd guess we'd likely have a couple of years' warning. Maybe a decade. It's not easy to detect objects out beyond Neptune, even when they're sizeable.
The odds are so incredibly small that they're not worth worrying about even abstractly, IMO. The Solar System has gone for 4.5 billion years without any of the Terrestrial planets in it being smacked by a rogue planet (I suppose it's possible one of the gas giants might have swallowed a small one in the distant past, though even then I'd expect signs of such an event to remain on its moons) so the chance that one might happen to come along right at this instant in time is vanishingly small.
Beyond that, Jupiter is 100,000 times the mass of the Earth. Should Jupiter not exist? This star is a red dwarf, or maybe the smallest possible main line type G2V star that we’ve seen, it could also be an M class star. This planet is in the same general area of the gravitational field of said star, that the asteroid belt and Jupiter would occupy in our star’s much larger gravitational field. It seems probable that giant rocky planets would form, but be so far outside the “Goldilocks zone” of the star as to be permanently frozen.
Edit: I’m not an astronomer, so I probably missed something.
It just sounds like the headline should read something like: “This planet couldn’t exist around Sol, so why does it exist?” or “We found a planet that can’t exist in our solar system, here’s why the star it exists around probably allowed its formation.”
Edit 2: The average density of “empty space” inside galaxies is 28.9 solar masses of dust per cubic light year. There’s more than enough dust out there for any star to form its own inner planetary, asteroid, and comet, systems. As well as several outer planets.
The close orbit makes that less likely, due to the way orbits work. Even if the planet was moving very slowly when it encountered the star, it accelerates as it gets closer and would end up with an elliptical orbit with a farthest point at about the same distance away as when the star first became a dominant force on it. If it were our system, the planet would spend most of its time in the Ort Cloud and occasionally it might venture into the area the gas giants live in or maybe even the inner solar system. It wouldn’t necessarily be on the same plane as the other planets, too.
In order to find a close orbit and stay in it, it would have to kick other planets out, giving its momentum away when it was close (which makes it rarer than just a capture, especially considering it might not even be on the same plane as other planets in orbit). Or some other event would need to perturb the orbit just right.
“If [it] does hit Earth, it will be repelled by the magnetosphere. But the collision will temporarily weaken the magnetosphere, causing a geomagnetic storm that could trigger vibrant aurora displays that light up the night sky. The storm will be minor to moderate (G1 or G2 class) and will not pose a threat to satellites or ground-based infrastructure.”
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