Something May Have Just Hit Jupiter 299
The blog of Anthony Wesley, an Australian amateur astronomer, has what may be the first photos of a recent comet or asteroid impact on Jupiter, near the south pole. These photos are 11 hours old. The ones at the bottom of the page show three small dark spots in addition to the main dark mark. The Bad Astronomy blog picked up the story a few hours later — but cautions that what we're seeing may not be an impact event. This is all reminiscent of the closely watched impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter in 1994.
Alternate site for slashdotted article (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/07/19/possible-new-impact-on-jupiter/ [universetoday.com]
Or may not have (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad Astronomy says "it's jumping the gun to call it an impact event before we get more observations". I've got an idea for the next Slashdot article: "Asteroid heading towards earth - or maybe just spot on lense".
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Informative)
>An amateur astronomer puts up pictures on his blog and we're comparing it to Shoemaker-Levy?
Levy is an amateur, his degree is in english lit. He won an amateur astronomers award.
(what I tried to post last time, bloody web2 crap)
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people seem to think that amateur is a synonym for incompetent.
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Insightful)
What's worse, many people seem to think that professional is a synonym for competent.
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, as the german philosopher Schopenhauer famously put it:
Dilletants! Dilletants! - so are called those, who are occupied by a Science or an Art out of love to it, per il loro diletto, with disdain by those who do it for profit, because they love only the money which can be earned by it. This disdain is based on the dastard conviction, that nobody would ever seriously take on a subject if not distress, famine, or another greed urges it. The public is of the same spirit and thus has the same opinion: from here comes his respect for "people of the trade", and his mistrust of amateurs. In reality for the amateur the subject is the goal, for the man of the trade as himself it is only means. Only he will carry on with earnest who is immediately interested in the subject and who is occupied with it out of love. From those, not from the paid servants, the greatest has ever started.
(Sorry for my bad english. I am an amateur after all ;) )
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It could just be a huge zit. Your basic case of acne, brought on by global warming. Those damned humans, and their fossil fuels.
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Informative)
It's the amateurs that tend to be the first to discover unknown stuff like comets and stuff. The professionals are in general engaged in directed research and do not have the time to be poking around random areas of the sky to see if anything interesting is going on there. As someone mentioned, David Levy is himself an amateur.
Re:Or may not have (Score:5, Funny)
Just hit jupiter (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, just up and hit it. No warning, no reason, just a wild haymaker out of nowhere. Didn't even see the guy.
Man, that's going to leave a spot.
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Jupiter being naughty again? (Score:4, Funny)
Super Comet Fragment Impact Very Large Explosions (Score:4, Funny)
Let's all sing another round of Super Comet Fragment Impact Extra-Large Explosions [slashdot.org] by Kare and Higgins.
Re:Super Comet Fragment Impact Very Large Explosio (Score:5, Funny)
Let's all sing another round of Super Comet Fragment Impact Extra-Large Explosions by Kare and Higgins.
Let's not.
Good to see it doing it's job (Score:4, Interesting)
The gas giants are there to act as a magnet for comets/asteroids etc, so they don't end up near us.
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Funny)
Jupiter is the king! (Score:2)
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Interesting)
After that fizzles we can move to the homesteading rush.
If you think about it, it's probably the fastest way to colonize space, because I don't see the super powers doing much more than having a global pissing match over what is already here....
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Not to mention that Jupiter's orbit keeps it close to a lot of asteroids (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InnerSolarSystem-en.png). Kind of beautiful: the Sun basically has a huge, sparse ring around it.
And here's a deep thought: if the asteroid belt had been closer to the Sun, there is a good chance we wouldn't be alive to wish it weren't ;)
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, I could have worded it better. I'm not claiming intelligent design put Jupiter there, merely that Jupiter is doing what Jupiter does, and that this event is nothing out of the ordinary.
Very cool that it was captured (by an Aussie)
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Sorry, didn't mean to come across like a jackass.
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but in your rush to denigrate people who believe differently than yourself you did.
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You mean like the jackasses who insist the universe is 6000 years old?
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:5, Insightful)
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Thanks, but no. Although it is a little churlish, at this point, I'm fascinated by the continuing responses of the [i]righteously indignant.[/i]
I especially like the ones that are lecturing me on religion, especially since my religious beliefs can be no more or less inferred from my comment than I could or should from the GP.
There's some mod(s) out there +1ing ACs for one line comments, including the AC that is basically flipping my apology the bird.
The score for the original comment is swinging up and dow
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Sorry, I could have worded it better. I'm not claiming intelligent design put Jupiter there, merely that Jupiter is doing what Jupiter does, and that this event is nothing out of the ordinary.
Yes, yes, gas giants *will* be gas giants, and all that...there's no such thing as a bad gas giant!
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Very cool that it was captured (by an Aussie)
Free the asteroid! Free the asteroid!
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yep, that's why God put em there (Score:5, Funny)
When was the last time Jupiter cashed one of his paychecks?
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Hey, you know what? If that high horse you're on weren't so high, maybe you could see that apology that I wrote to the GP several minutes before you posted you counter diatribe.
I had a knee jerk reaction and I was wrong and I admitted it. If you read the following replies, you'd have seen that. Instead, you'd rather tell me that I'm foaming at the mouth.
Who's holds the moral high ground now? It ain't me, but it ain't you either.
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The title of the original post was "Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Interesting)"
no religious reference there.
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Funny)
The gas giants are there to act as a magnet for comets/asteroids etc, so they don't end up near us.
I don't remember that part of Genesis...
Which part do you remember?
I remember Phil Collins great drumming and Peter Gabriels vocals. Of course this was the old Genesis not the reformed one.
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Yes, Phil Collins did great drumming and Peter Gabriel is a great singer, but they are much better apart than they are together. So, the whole Jupiter-Earth combination is kind of an anti-pre-reformed-Genesis.
Re:Good to see it doing it's job (Score:5, Funny)
" Yes, Phil Collins did great drumming and Peter Gabriel is a great singer, but they are much better apart than they are together. So, the whole Jupiter-Earth combination is kind of an anti-pre-reformed-Genesis."
Holst that thought.
Dang (Score:5, Funny)
So, I should cancel my plans to land on Europa?
Re:Dang (Score:5, Funny)
All these worlds are yours, except Europa, attempt no landing there.
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All these worlds are yours, except Europa, attempt no landing there.
Until the sequel anyway. Then you can probably get away with it.
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Well what did they think we would do once they said we couldn't land there?
Damn teases!
Honestly had they said nothing we would have not gone looking around. It was a boring little place anyway. At least, it was until we decided someone was hiding something.
In any event, I'm sure it won't end badly at all.
Re:Dang (Score:5, Funny)
All these worlds are yours, except Europa, attempt no landing there.
In the real 2010 its more like:
aLL THESE WORLD ARE BELONG TO YOU KK, DO NOT WANT EUROPA THX
Re:Dang (Score:4, Funny)
In the real 2010 its more like:
aLL THESE WORLD ARE BELONG TO YOU KK, DO NOT WANT EUROPA THX
This is not the moon you're looking for. We can go about our business. Move along.
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All these worlds are yours, except Europa, attempt no landing there.
Do or do not. There is no 'attempt'.
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Re:Dang (Score:5, Funny)
Something also embedded into Uranus. Good luck with that ;-P
Well that's why they're there... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yeah, till the day one of them changes the orbit of what would have been just something to observe in the sky, to something that knocks us clean out of our orbit.
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How does that help protect the even smaller pinprick that is Earth in 3D space?
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Well a lot of the stuff we worry about is roughly in the same disc as the planet...
True, but the size of their orbits makes it seem like playing foosball [wikipedia.org] with two (weakly) magnetized needles for goalies and a bunch of iron fillings as the ball.
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Actually, I think the biggest deal is that Jupiter and Saturn have been at it so long that after a certain point, they took care of most everything that hadn't already hit us in the first billion or so years.
Obviously, a lot of stuff rocked our world in the early days... like whatever gouged the moon out.
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Moon impact is in its own league, considering that the impactor was very large and came in very slow/probably from one of Lagrangian points of proto-Earth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis [wikipedia.org] )
pak chooie unf (Score:2)
I am the sweeper planet. I am here to protect you from the terrible secret of space.
I am the pusher planet. DO NOT TRUST THE SWEEPER PLANET. Sweeping will not protect you from the terrible secret of space. Pushing will protect you from the terrible secret of space.
I just hand an thought... (Score:5, Funny)
and a dark spot is noticed on Jupiter...
Now where did i put that monolith...
Re:I just hand an thought... (Score:5, Funny)
Check your lagrange points. I'm always leaving monoliths there. And defining blues-rock trios. Those always show up at my lagrange.
She just fell on the coffee table! (Score:4, Funny)
"something may have hit jupiter" and left a black mark...but jupiter inisists she just fell eye-first on the coffee table!
Re:She just fell on the coffee table! (Score:4, Funny)
"Great, another planet that doesn't listen..."
Can I use my frequent flier miles to upgrade the seat to hell that I just purchased?
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It parses far too easily as a joke on spousal abuse.
Does it parse any other way!?
Well, I guess it could be parsed as planetary lesbian domestic partner abuse, if you really want to be PC.
Re:This should be modded "Troll" ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So? here at Slashdot we make jokes of murderers, pedophiles, recently deceased people, people with disabilities, etc. And if we don't care about *those*, I don't see why we'd care about simple domestic abuse.
Plus, it provides some much-needed relief from the endless 2010 allusions being posted here.
I hope it had collision insurance! (Score:2)
You know, the cost of repairing or replacing the Jovian atmosphere is really high. I hope the planet had a good insurance policy...
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Well we can't claim it on insurance because the interplanetary authorities will know we wasted our air.
I have a backup plan.
We are just going to send a ship to suck the air out of another planet. Just have to get the planetary shield codes first.
May the schwartz be with you.
Fuck you Jupiter! (Score:5, Funny)
I found a new dark spot on my pole last week and you don't see me running to the science press about it! media whore!
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Who will be the first? (Score:4, Funny)
Who will be the first to register "Jupiter-aid.com" to collect donations for the stricken Jupiterians?
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Hey, you jerk! I'm from Jupiter, and the proper demonym is "Jovian," you insensitive clod!
Hubble! (Score:2, Insightful)
I hope they can get the Hubble scope on it fast, without bureaucratic or technical hurdles.
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Re:Hubble! (Score:5, Informative)
Just like my point-and-shoot camera doesn't care whether something is 100 feet away or several miles away when I manually set it to infinite focus, the Hubble Space Telescope doesn't care whether something is a light second or several billion light years away. It has imaged every planet in the solar system except Mercury (including Earth), has imaged the moon, and once indirectly imaged the sun [discovermagazine.com].
Re:Hubble! (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to be pedantic, point-and-shoot cameras (aka focus-free, including the ones in cell phones) are not focused to infinity but rather to the hyperfocal distance [wikipedia.org]
My god, is full of... (Score:2)
Received transmission: (Score:5, Funny)
All these planets are yours
except Europa
Attempt no landi- hang on, what the fu#$(@*$&
NO CARRIER
The gods are slugging it out (Score:2)
How to solve it (Score:5, Funny)
The math is actually pretty simple to figure this all out.
Given: About 12 weeks ago, Balmer finds out that Netbooks are shipping with Linux.
How much did kinetic energy did the chair possess...
Gasp! You've solved our mission to Mars problem! (Score:3, Funny)
A large dark spot forms on Jupiter... (Score:5, Funny)
And the space station toilet is broken. [msn.com] Coincidence?
new site jupiter.samba.org (Score:5, Informative)
Anthony's webserver has been slashdotted, but
he has copied the files to:
http://jupiter.samba.org/
He is now trying to login to his server so he
can redirect the pages to the above site.
As well as being an amateur astronomer, Anthony
is a keen Linux enthusiast. His home built
telescope is controlled by his Linux box.
Cheers, Tridge
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As well as being an amateur astronomer, Anthony is a keen Linux enthusiast. His home built telescope is controlled by his Linux box.
But not tonight, I bet it's not controlling a damn thing.
Just doing it's job (Score:2)
Black Spots on Jupiter? (Score:2, Funny)
please use new URL (Score:5, Informative)
Can the slashdot admins please move the link in the story to the new site? I can't even log into my box to put the redirect in place...
http://jupiter.samba.org/
Thanks again Tridge, you're a lifesaver
Anthony
OMG! Shooting planets out of the sky? (Score:4, Funny)
Where's the safest place to take cover?
Oh, wait. This is probably one time boot camp training will come in handy.
1. Sit down.
2. Place your head between your knees.
3. Kiss your ass "good-bye".
I don't know - that still sounds kinda disgusting - maybe I'll read and think a bit before I do that. Oh. That's right. ALL THE PLANETS have been hit repeatedly. There probably isn't a year that goes by without one being hit. This hit's maybe the biggest ever recorded, but nothing new. Lotsa hits happened before mankind was around to record them.
Phhht.
More non-news. Maybe I'll just catch the re-runs next year.
Nice example for FOSS (Score:5, Interesting)
Astronomy is a good example for FOSS. A lot of near Earth low energy astronomy gets done by amateurs in the best sense of the word, those who have a passion for the topic but don't get paid to do it.
The same for other areas such as birding and botany. Often volunteers discover or rediscover rare species and then the pros can come back in and do more in depth studies.
Anywho. Nice job. What ever it turns out to be.
Is it the Hydrogues? (Score:2)
And should we be worried?
south pole (Score:5, Funny)
No, not the first (Score:4, Funny)
Jupiter's been impacted many many times before.
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Pretty sure you mean "Uranus".
Something May Have Just Hit Jupiter (Score:5, Insightful)
Eeriest Slashdot story title of the year?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not a vacuum cleaner, it's gravity isn't so powerful as to pull other objects out of orbit per se. Sure, it probably gets hit more than other planets, but that's not that impressive. It fills less of its Hill Sphere than Earth does, so it's more likely to scatter a passing object than absorb it. And a recent study by Grazier and Newman demonstrated that it probably is taking more pot-shots at Earth than it is protecting us.
Re:thats nice and all (Score:5, Funny)
Ant.
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At a few kilometers per second, you won't feel the difference between hitting a solid and hitting a gas.