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Space

Planck Satellite Reveals Star Formation Processes 29

Posted by CmdrTaco from the watch-the-thumb-on-the-lens dept.
An anonymous reader writes "New images from the Planck Space Observatory reveal the gas and dust between the stars and isolate the physical processes at work in our galaxy. The new images are an eye-catching by-product of a spacecraft designed to look back at the earliest light in the universe. ... When observed at much longer wavelengths, where the cosmic microwave background can be seen, the picture is very different, as clearly demonstrated in new images from ESA's Planck mission. The dust is no longer a dark shroud, but shines out in its own right, and new aspects of our galaxy are revealed."
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Planck Satellite Reveals Star Formation Processes More

Planck Satellite Reveals Star Formation Processes

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  • To reach the stars (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Just walk the Planck

  • Awe (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MonsterTrimble ( 1205334 ) <monstertrimble@h ... m ['il.' in gap]> on Monday April 26, 2010 @12:09PM (#31985986)

    Seriously, I'm in awe of these pictures and how much is out there. Between these and the new hubble images, it really drives home two things:

    1) I miss living in the country. The night skies on clear nights were awesome.
    2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.

    • Re:Awe (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mindcontrolled ( 1388007 ) on Monday April 26, 2010 @12:27PM (#31986160)
      ad 1) Definitely. I used to live at the arse-end of nowhere, at the outskirts of town right at the forest's edge. The night sky was spectacular and you could spot a lot of things just with some binoculars. Middle of a large town now, the light pollution is so bad you can't usually even see the milky way. The most spectacular night sky I ever saw was when I traveled Iceland, though. I spent a night in a cabin in the middle of the highlands - no civilization around for at least 100 km in every direction. Absolutely breathtaking. No aurora, though, unfortunately. ad 2) Who knows? Scientific revolutions have a tendency to come unexpected and lead to a phase of rapid technological growth. My hopes aren't too high, either. We seem much too busy developing new cellphones and plasma TVs these days, though.

    • I'm impressed that you can see microwaves. Warming up leftover should be very interesting.

      Unfortunately, I only saw the milky way on rare occasion. It is difficult to be far from civilization in Europe. Which may explain why I prefer satellite observation than looking at the sky directly.

      My wife made a Planck shaped cake with sugar mirror and marzipan detector. Unfortunately the talks were too long and the biscuit got soggy. At the same occasion, someone made ALMA.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sznupi ( 719324 )

      If in 2) by "son" you mean, well, perhaps not biological species per se, but beings which undoubtedly are descendants of humanity...then (very) perhaps. Otherwise - I'm afraid you shouldn't count on it. We haven't really seen anything which might be an indication of FTL anywhere in the Universe, apart from inflation period, in a way (but if you are a being which can & wants to use that, I'm not sure we can notice any traces of humanity in you anymore). Our view of the world seems essentially correct, ev

      • We haven't really seen anything which might be an indication of FTL anywhere in the Universe

        You're forgetting about quantum entanglement.

    • Seriously, I'm in awe of these pictures and how much is out there. Between these and the new hubble images, it really drives home two things:

      1) I miss living in the country. The night skies on clear nights were awesome. 2) I regret that I will not live long enough to see faster then light travel. Perhaps my son will see it.

      I certainly hope that my children will get the chance to travel our of orbit. I'm still holding out that i'll step foot on the moon or another planet before I leave this beautiful

  • Interesting discoveries, but the next thing you know we're going to have CERN using these discoveries to try to create a star.

    In other news, I have a feeling this article isn't going to last very long. I already got a MySQL error of "Too many connections" going to the article.

  • The summary is a verbatim copy of the article's first section. Shouldn't you give credit to the article's author rather than to "Anonymous"? Aren't reader-submitted summaries also supposed to be summarized by the reader?

  • See inside Planck (Score:3, Informative)

    by ProdigyPuNk ( 614140 ) on Monday April 26, 2010 @12:45PM (#31986376) Journal
    Here's an interesting look inside the Planck satellite, in case anyone is interested in where and how these pictures are obtained: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqr3IX7Ufk [youtube.com]

  • What are those tracks in the Perseus view linked in the article? An intergalactic dust-swept highway? A slash and a dot?
    http://www.uploadgeek.com/share-8FEE_4BD68D73.html [uploadgeek.com]

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