Space is Full of Dirty, Toxic Grease, Scientists Reveal (theguardian.com) 163
An anonymous reader shares a report: It looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules. The study provides the most precise estimate yet of the amount of "space grease" in the Milky Way, by recreating the carbon-based compounds in the laboratory. The Australian-Turkish team discovered more than expected: 10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter. Prof Tim Schmidt, a chemist at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and co-author of the study, said that the windscreen of a future spaceship travelling through interstellar space might be expected to get a sticky coating. "Amongst other stuff it'll run into is interstellar dust, which is partly grease, partly soot and partly silicates like sand," he said, adding that the grease is swept away within our own solar system by the solar wind. The findings bring scientists closer to figuring out the total amount of carbon in interstellar space, which fuels the formation of stars, planets and is essential for life.
Dark Matter (Score:1)
They found the dark matter.
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No, but their is now less of it required to make the books balance.
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I'm pretty sure it's not mine...
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Fair enough, you guys are in charge of grammer and speling. Nothing else though.
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Hes write. I should 'ave misspeled 'fair'.
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Hes write. I should 'ave misspeled 'fair'.
Fairy Nuff.
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Grammar, the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit.
If I have to do all the work to understand you, you're being a lazy prick; if your're proud of your ignorance...get off my lawn.
Re:Dark Matter (Score:4, Informative)
Grammar Nazis, keeping us on the straightened arrow.
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How crooked was the arrow before Grammar Nazis?
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How crooked was the arrow before Grammar Nazis?
Grandma Nasty bent tits, be for ewe were borne,
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If you can't do, teach.
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If you can't do, teach.
If you can't teach, you teach gym. :-)
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Keep it up. Your doing great.
Enjoy Trump's second term.
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Speling and gramer are impotant!
Enjoy the next 6 years! Moron.
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Justice Kennedy is retiring! Neener, neener! Another conservative on the SC. How long can Ginsburg survive? She's already senile.
Your life sucks, you should commit suicide by eating salt, like a Samurai of legend. It will save you from watching Hillary die in prison.
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No, you got it all wrong. It is supposed to be:
Fare enuff, you guys is encharged of grammer and speling. nothing not either else thow.
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Mist? How? (Score:1)
Between intra-molecular gravitational forces and surface tension, that surprises me. I'd think you'd find big globs, not a fine mist.
Re:Mist? How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Gravity wouldn't be important, but electromagnetic interactions would be. I'd expect that you'd find both globs and a fine mist, possibly with different components.
OTOH, if these carbon compounds are very light weight (as is likely with little UV to cause them to polymerize) then they'd be likely to evaporate from the globs. (Check what happens to plastics exposed to vacuum. They become brittle because the plasticizers evaporate.)
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Maybe the rest of space is filled with a surfactant?
It's actually filled with lightning because It's a Greased Lightning .
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Zerkians are such slobs. I hate sh&thole plane (Score:2)
Send out the Space Force to clean up the disgusting mess; and build a Dyson Wall around them.
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(It got truncated, supposed to be "planets", not "plane")
"clean up the disgusting mess..." Yes, but when? (Score:3)
"... clean up the disgusting mess..."
I'm not waiting for that. I plan to move to a clean universe.
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Just wait for the Big Rip. [wikipedia.org]
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and build a Dyson Wall around them
Yeah! And we're going to get those fucking aliens to pay for it!
Protomolecule FTW (Score:2)
They found the protomolecule.. Don't tell the Martians.
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Ke?
essential for life* (Score:1)
*As we know it.
I guess Bussard Ramjets are impossible (Score:4, Funny)
I imagine that this grease will literally gum up the works.
There goes my dream of travelling between solar systems using interstellar hydrogen as fuel.
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Like filling a balloon with too much air!
Re:I guess Bussard Ramjets are impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I've seen other claims that Bussard Ramjets are impossible, but since we don't have controlled fusion yet they can't be properly evaluated.
OTOH, this could make it work even better. Carbon is a catalyst in some reactions that fuse Hydrogen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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[I guess Bussard Ramjets are impossible ]
I imagine that this grease will literally gum up the works.
There goes my dream of travelling between solar systems using interstellar hydrogen as fuel.
Nah, just use a spinning vortex to separate the hydrogen out from the grease by centrifugal force, and then you could use the grease to add to the exhaust so you can "roll coal" on nasty aliens parked along your trajectory and holding protest signs.
Strat
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Packs of Butter? (Score:5, Funny)
Could someone convert that to american football fields for me? I can't do metric.
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... 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter
The summary already includes the conversion to American.
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Could someone convert that to american football fields for me? I can't do metric.
Given that an American football game is 4x15 minute quarters and requires over two hours to complete a game (not including half time), if this were in American football fields it would take 37 years to make a touchdown.
Or 1287 London busses parked end to end.
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Just like Lena Dunham (Score:2)
Thank you folks, I'll be here all week. Don't forget to try our potato bar.
Of Course It Is (Score:5, Funny)
Of course space is full of grease.
Just think of what would happen if the galaxy were not properly greased. It would be like trying to drive a truck with no axle grease for the axles. Things would quickly come to a grinding halt from all the friction of the rotation of the galaxy.
And what's worse, it's not under warranty!
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Of course space is full of grease.
Just think of what would happen if the galaxy were not properly greased. It would be like trying to drive a truck with no axle grease for the axles. Things would quickly come to a grinding halt from all the friction of the rotation of the galaxy.
And what's worse, it's not under warranty!
Well, you do need to change it every 3000 parsecs ...
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And don't forget, just 1 trillion trillion trillion packs of space butter can contaminate an entire solar system's water supply so dispose of your space butter properly!
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Of course space is full of grease.
Just think of what would happen if the galaxy were not properly greased. It would be like trying to drive a truck with no axle grease for the axles. Things would quickly come to a grinding halt from all the friction of the rotation of the galaxy.
And what's worse, it's not under warranty!
Well, you do need to change it every 3000 parsecs ...
Or every 250 Kessel Runs [wikia.com]
Helpful (Score:5, Funny)
10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.
I'm glad they converted it into something easier to get my head around.
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My heart stopped when I read it.
Here's the problem (Score:2)
In what volume?
"or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter"
This might be intended to help me visualize the problem. It does not do that.
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no, it's just intended to help you realize that it's a lot.
Move over truffle oil... (Score:2, Funny)
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You forgot... (Score:2)
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It's still space, it' just not empty space.
Can it be collected and used? (Score:2)
As a reaction mass or some kind of raw material?
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About half is expected to be found in its pure form. The rest is chemically bound with hydrogen in either a grease-like form, known as aliphatic carbon, or as a gaseous version of naphthalene
Aliphatic carbons are generally flammable like methane, ethane, ethylene so I suppose it could be.
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Well, it's rather thinly spread. If it's ionized I suppose that a Bussard Ramjet could collect it and profitably use it, but it's not certain that a Bussard Ramjet is even possible.
40 Trillion Packs of Butter (Score:2)
What's the conversion of butter to library of congresses?
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Not sure about congress, but I believe that 1 trillion butter packs == 1 white house butter troll
Is 10 billion trillion trillion really better... (Score:3)
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
1 x 10^34
1e+34
10 decillion
Come on. This is still Slashdot.
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Though it's honestly impossible to frame an appreciable context in the mind at those magnitudes, at least "e34" requires less time to make an abstract one.
Those who can't think logarithmically at all are welcome to continue saying Jillions.
Question (Score:1)
G-D screamed (Score:2)
Space Force (Score:1)
Theory turns out to be all wrong (Score:2)
10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.
Turns out there was no Big Bang - instead, it was a Big Fry.
Space Swimmer (Score:2)
Is there enough to use for propulsion? I imagine a space ship with a large magnetic funnel being projected in front of it. If the grease can be ionized, it can be pulled down the center of the funnel, accelerated, and shot out the back. The magnetic cloak would serve to accelerate the ship, block cosmic rays, and keep the grease from coating it.
Who cares? (Score:2)
All I want to know is can we mine it and burn it in an engine?
Dark Matter from the Galactic Fryer (Score:1)
next time clean out the grease traps before you toss the suns into the cooling vastness of space
All that Space Trucking (Score:2)
Deep Purple was right are all.
Now we know why no ET (Score:1)
Until now there has been uncertainty over how much carbon is drifting between the stars. About half is expected to be found in its pure form. The rest is chemically bound with hydrogen in either a grease-like form, known as aliphatic carbon, or as a gaseous version of naphthalene, the main chemical component of mothballs.
Now we know why we haven't seen any moth based interstellar life. Time to update the drake equation again.
No, Not Naphthalene (Score:2)
Naphthalene has no aliphatic carbons. They are all aromatic. No reference to naphthalene appears in the paper, I do not know what the newspaper writer was using as a source for this.
The explain what the research really did is that they created the conditions believed to be the source of much interstellar dust - outflows from carbon stars and measured its optical properties, and the type and proportions of bonds present. They did this because there is discrepancy between the amount of free carbon we can see
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And the last one, and the one before that, and all of them in the last hundred years or so.
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Come on, you can't just say they all just sucked.
Yes, they all sucked, but they all sucked in completely different ways.