Voyager 1 Crosses The Termination Shock 420
SubstormGuy writes "In a scientific session at the AGU meeting in New Orleans this morning, Dr. Ed Stone presented clear evidence that Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock last December. The scientists in the room applauded when the announcement was made."
Fixed article link (Score:5, Insightful)
The first link doesn't go anywhere useful. This link [agu.org] brings up the correct results for the session. You can also view the session details [agu.org].
Re:Update wiki with new information (Score:2, Insightful)
But yes, thank you for paying attention and telling me what I've already said.
Re:Update wiki with new information (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really Dangerous: Chinese Military (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for playing, AC! but why not check some of the manifests for Shuttle flights; and whether the astronauts have security clearances; etc. The notion that NASA is "entirely civilian" is
Re:Update wiki with new information (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh... really old? (Score:2, Insightful)
plus, this post has been up for less than a day and someone updated it...pretty good i'd say
Re:...and they want to cut funding?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Science just doesn't work when politics gets involved... :(
On the other hand, science like this would never be funded with out politics. There's only a limited amount of money out there to fund endevours like this, and someone has to decide how to divy that money up. So who gets the money? Well you have to create a policy to decide where appropriate funds.... and now you've entered the relm of politics. Whether it's decided by elected senators on the floor of Congress or by a tribunal of society's leading scientists: scarcity leads to a policy of allocation which leads to politics. Can't avoid it.
Re:This really makes me (Score:5, Insightful)
The nearest we have in Europe is the European Space Agency [esa.int]. Now celebrating thirty years this has run some major programs and developed some excellent lauchers. Although it has a European Branding, my impression is that almost half the funding and most of the political drive has come from France, with very little in the way of contribution from the UK. If you ever get the chance and find yourself in South West France, check out the excellent Cité de l'Espace [cite-espace.com] museum near Toulouse. This is easily Europe's finest space museum with a wide range of information on space exploration and the European Space Program, inclding two Skylabs to walk through and a full size Ariane 5 rocket which dominates the skyline as you approach.
Considering how much we spend on (Score:4, Insightful)
2006 budget:
Nasa: 16.5 billion
Education: 56 billion
HHS: 68.9 billion
Social Security: 540 billion
Medicare: 340 billion
Medicaid: 199 billion
Yeah, killing NASA would make a big dent.
Re:This really makes me (Score:1, Insightful)
alot.
Re:This really makes me...wonder (Score:1, Insightful)
"Creating an object that can travel out of the Solar System is HUGE" What is so HUGE about it ? I'm pretty sure you can do the same easily from the shuttle or the ISS. Just walk outside and throw some object in the right direction. with some little math you should be able to send it in the right direction, then it's just a matter of time (years) before the object exists our solar system.
What about doing some math on the speed you have to throw away your object before making this comment?
The circulair speed of the ISS is:
v_c = sqrt(GM/r)
The escape velocity from ISS orbit is:
v_esc = sqrt(2GM/r)
so you are only 41% of your current speed short.
The ISS speed is about 7.7 km/s. To get to earths escape velocity you have to throw something away with 3.2 km/s (=11520 km/h = 7200 Mph).
But then you have still the sun. Speed of the earth around the sun is about 28.9 km/s, escape velocity from the sun in earth orbit is about 40.8 km/s.
Conclusion: Yes, getting something out of the solar system is quite an accomplishment. Even a powerfull gun won't do it (a high barrel exit velocity = 900 m/s). Smart people use gravity from other planets to accomplish it because you need huge amounts of energy.
Nyh
Re:Uh... really old? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, an article appeared on Slashdot a while back about this. Wiki is not peer-reviewed for accuracy. The article discussed an intentional inaccuracy posted to see how long it would be discovered. In short, it never was, and the author finally went in and changed it.
While it may be very useful in many situations, I wouldn't cite Wiki as a source. Use it to track down other sources based on its information though.
Re:2005 is shaping up to be quite the year! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This really makes me (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars rovers?
Cassini-Huygens?
Hubble?
Chandra?
Re:Considering how much we spend on (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. The poster should be ashamed of themselves, and the moderates who modded you down as "flaimbait" for speaking the truth even more so.
1) Social Security isn't "welfare." We pay into the system, we get benefits out of the system. Social Security recipients are not getting "something for nothing," so to lump them in with welfare recipients is just plain Ignorant(tm) and Stupid(tm).
2) You want to discuss welfare, start by discussing the savings and loan bailout, the tax subsidies virtually every large corporation gets from state, local, and federal governments, and the immense amount of government pork in the defense budget which amounts to Yet Another Subsidy. The amount of tax dollars spent on corporate welfare, an appalling percentage of which goes directly to line the pockets of the very wealthy, dwarfs by an order of magnitude the amount of money being returned to those who've paid into the Social Security system, being paid to those who've paid into the Unemployment Benefits system, being returned to those who've paid into the Medicare and Medicaide system during their working lives, and yes, even those getting free handouts ('welfare') because they're too poor, too uneducated, lack resources, lack opportunity, or (in some cases, but not even close to all) are simply too lazy to work.
That doesn't change the fact that funding the space agency should be one of our top priorities, not one of our last, but to blame it on "welfare" is numerical nonsense--and to blame it on the modest, half-assed social programs we call Social Security and Medicare simply unconscionable right wing and, yes, fascist dogma. The Right in America has become so toxic it boggles the mind.
Re:This really makes me...wonder (Score:1, Insightful)
LOL! You fail physics 101.
It takes *a lot* of additional velocity to escape earth orbit. If you throw a rock, or even fire a high-powered rifle from the ISS, the bullet will still be in orbit around the Earth. Once you do actually escape earth orbit guess what, now you're in orbit around the sun. and then it take a hell of a lot of additional velocity to escape solar orbit.
stfu about things you don't understand moron.
Re:details (Score:1, Insightful)
The following paragraph applies equally as well to Bush as it would to Kerry. It's non-partisan.
His advisors will say this: "Science data from a project so old that it won't even get a 30 second soundbite on CNN, versus at least two or three announcement-style photo-ops with full press coverage, followed by lots of cash for the primes and their subcontractors to do the studies on the Mars programme. Tough choice, huh?"
Remember, politicians aren't motivated by the same concerns as scientists. They therefore get their advice from different sources.
This Voyager to be cancelled (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cool (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Thats a bit like calling an ape who chucks a stone into the sea aquatic.
Re:Power source (Score:5, Insightful)
While this is true, my basic problem is that most people opposed to RTGs can't understand this statement in context. The environmental impact statement of this project is particularly useful. Its in this PDF [nasa.gov] on page 19. But let's analyze that statement anyway, piece by piece.
1) An "accident" could have released material, but it was unlikely. The containers were tested under explosions, fires, shrapnel, reentry heat, and impact. The RTGs were tough enough that they could hit concrete at terminal velocity and release only a minscule amount of fuel (0.22 grams).
2) Yes, Plutonium is "highly toxic". But most people complaining about the RTGs don't worry about "toxic". They worry about "nuclear explosion" or "fallout". Of course, none of those can result from the failure of an RTG. 10kg of toxic material (only a fraction of which would actually be released in a failure) is hardly your biggest worry. I'd be more worried about the thousands of pounds of very nasty fuel in solid rocket boosters.
3) The fuel in the RTG's isn't plutonium, its plutonium dioxide. This is an important difference, because the latter is very stable, almost inert (it was believed to be completely inert until 1999), and is insoluable in water. It also has a very high melting temperature and an even higher vaporization temperature. The net result is that the mechanisms through which it can enter the environment in the event of an accident are very limited. Basically, it would have to be bulverized and become airborne. Pulverizing 10kg of a hard material encased in a strong, unrestrained container, with just a single explosion is non-trivial. The physics of the situation tend to make the container just fly away and land in the dirt.
So basically, an accident was exceedingly unlikely, and even if it did happen, release was unlikely, and even if that happend, you had bigger things to worry about at that point.
You can operate on a basis of reasonable risk management
It's not "reasonable risk management". It's "not caving in to complete paranoia".
assuming the general public is entirely ignorant of physics
The general public *is* ignorant of physics.
I'm sure there are plenty of people in the "general public" who have studied more physics and bio/chemistry than you have.)
Well that's fine and good, and I don't doubt that biology and chemistry can tell you that plutonium will cause poisoning and cancer. However, biologists and chemists are not engineers or environmental scientists. They cannot tell you the probability of an RTG failing in an explosion, nor can they tell you the environmental mechanisms through which plutonium could spread even in the case of a failure. Nor can they tell you what sort of population impact such a spread would have anyway. Finally, they are not trained to make risk assessments of this nature. Engineers build bridges (and planes and cares and buildings), that thousands of people trust their lives too every day, without a second thought, using the exact same risk assessment mechanisms the NASA folks used. If you're going to question the NASA folks, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to grill the guy who designed your car about what risks he took with your life.
I agree that people sometimes go way overboard with their resistance to anything nuclear, but that attitude was instilled in them, or their parents, pretty forcefully.
Most parents are people, and most people are stupid, therefore most parents are stupid. Is having stupid parents supposed to be an excuse for being ignorant?
And it doesn't help the situation one bit, when the only response when concerns are raised is "go away, you are ignorant"
What if "you are ignorant" is the correct answer? I do not buy the idea that it is the du