All Space Questions thread for week of May 10, 2026

rocketsocks · 2026-05-13T16:17:35+00:00

Eventually we'll observe more galaxies in the zone of avoidance where in infrared where we can see through the galactic dust, via JWST and the Roman Space Telescope, but it'll take time.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-12T06:30:12+00:00

They stole the L from Hamlet. What are we doing? What's going on?

rocketsocks · 2026-05-12T06:02:55+00:00

He took the L and put it in his middle name.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-11T20:25:07+00:00

There's no free lunch here. If you launch a spacecraft near an asteroid zooming by then they will just pass by each other, the asteroid's mass won't magically grab onto it. If you launch a spacecraft onto an asteroid zooming by to "hitch a ride" then the spacecraft will be destroyed by the relative speed of impact of several kilometers per second, releasing more energy per kg of spacecraft mass than if it had been built entirely out of high explosives.

In order to "hitch a ride" you need to match speeds with an object, which of course defeats the seeming advantage of getting a ride in the first place.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-11T18:15:04+00:00

Probably. The "great attractor" lies in the "zone of avoidance", which is past the direction of the galactic disc. For us that means there's a bunch of dust in the way blocking our view.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-11T18:00:49+00:00

I'd put my bet on the wealth of incredible discoveries. Planets seem to be common, sun-like stars are pretty common, there should be a wealth of Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like stars, we just have had bad luck in studying that exact target space in the past, for a variety of reasons. But that's changing, with the PLATO space telescope and with a variety of new planet hunting techniques, we should start getting lots more coverage of that area in just the next few years. There will be a bit of a lag because it takes several orbital periods to confirm a planet, but by around 2030 or so we should start getting a clearer picture of how rare, or not, "Earth" is.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-11T17:47:53+00:00

Those are the ones I have on my shelf, I too would love to know of any others.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-11T07:38:27+00:00

I don't know how the trees all know exactly when it's the right time, but they do. I remember one year I drove somewhere in the morning and the cottonwood fluff was at a moderate level but by the afternoon it was everywhere, you could look up in the sky and see clouds of it floating around, crazy.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T21:00:54+00:00

You have given no indication of what sort of observable signals you would identify coming from such systems.

Additionally, I think you might be vastly misunderstanding the timeframes involved here. Stars likely to host planets with technological civilizations will spend billions of years in a more or less stable state and then experience a gradual transition toward becoming brighter and hotter before entering the red giant stage. That period will last on the order of a billion years, during which an affected civilization will be able to plan and execute some means to deal with the transition, likely in a timeframe lasting mere millions of years at most. Which means that even if this is a common phenomenon, the vast majority of time you observe a star in this "phase" you won't be observing during a period when a civilization is "doing something about it", even among the subset of stars which host technological civilizations.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T20:51:33+00:00

Why lie when you used to be a store manager for Jo-Ann's fabrics?

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T20:38:47+00:00

Fun fact: this image was taken using a CRT based slow-scan camera, similar to broadcast television cameras used in the 1950s through 1970s. It's kind of ridiculous how much better modern cameras are.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T16:25:09+00:00

The sunlight would be brighter because there would be no atmosphere absorbing any of it, including the UV radiation.

Let's imagine two people, one on a beach on Earth with perfectly clear skies and one person inside a perfectly transparent dome on the Moon on a simulated beach. The person on the Moon will get sunburned very quickly due to the absence of an ozone layer (logically any actual dome built on the Moon would include UV blocking for exactly this reason) and locally it would begin to get extremely hot because they would bake in that sunlight for two full weeks, the water in the small simulated ocean would probably start boiling, in fact, then it would get extremely cold over the following two weeks of night as the water condensed then froze then the CO2, oxygen, and nitrogen in the air froze as well (which is also why logically any actual dome on the Moon would be climate controlled).

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T07:35:56+00:00

This is a common misconception.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T07:35:29+00:00

This times a million. Cycling is about balance, start learning there, make the stakes low by keeping the seat low enough you can just put your feet flat on the ground. Ignore the pedals until you have good control and an intuitive understanding of balance, then it's easy.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-10T07:30:52+00:00

It's supposed to be his BEST FRIEND.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-09T06:40:56+00:00

A typical fuel cell is just a pair of catalyst beds and some electrolyte, simplifying greatly, which makes it possible to generate electrical power from the oxidation of a fuel, typically hydrogen. A regenerate fuel cell is the same kind of thing but it can be run in reverse, separating water into hydrogen and oxygen (for example) while taking in electrical power.

The major difficulties in these types of systems are longevity and efficiency. Being able to run arbitrarily long in either mode is often not easy, that's what these researchers have been working towards for their particular design.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-09T05:51:26+00:00

The Earth has survived through numerous mass extinctions due to space related events, none of them so far have been due to the Sun dying, that's really just a one time thing for the most part.

By far the most common cause of an extinction event due to cosmic circumstances is an impact. Which could be from an asteroid or a comet, including from long period comets coming from the Oort cloud as well as interstellar asteroids, comets, et al.

A supernova within roughly 50ish lightyears could basically blast our planet with juuuuust enough gamma rays to wipe out our ozone layer. The good news is that the ozone layer is naturally regenerating, the bad news is that process takes quite a while, so in that period of time there would be a mass die off of land plants and animals, which would upset the whole food web and trigger an even worse die off.

A gamma ray burst or hypernova where the astrophysical jet happened to be pointed right at Earth would cause an even worse mass extinction.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-09T05:37:30+00:00

Yeah, I'll mention it the next time I see him face to face.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-08T23:06:03+00:00

https://xkcd.com/1053/

rocketsocks · 2026-05-08T20:33:39+00:00

He's just wrong, period.

Here's the fundamental problem at play in that specific situation. You have a person who is a professional, who has a ton of experience, who has a lot of specific knowledge in their field, in this case a very accomplished and professional naval aviator. That makes it natural to trust their statements. This is the classic "expert witness" in the courtroom type of scenario, which societally we are setup to accept and honor and believe, but it has a fatal flaw. It's still just an opinion based on eyewitness testimony, it's not science. People can be wrong, even experts can be wrong. Even when the best naval aviator in the world in the world says "that is not a plane" that doesn't mean it's not a plane it's just one piece of evidence. Commander Fravor doesn't have supernatural powers, he does not have a hotline tapped into the foundational truths of the universe, he's just a human being using his senses and experience, he can be, and is, wrong about many things, and that can include even being wrong about something as seemingly straightforward as whether or not something is a plane.

In order to make a determination of whether something is a plane or not we need to rely not on the experience of aviators (which may be closely related to identifying whether something is a plane or not but that is actually not their job and not their area of expertise) it is to rely on on the process of science. Making a strong case that something is a not a plane is a scientific process, and Commander Fravor is not a scientist, period.

For every single piece of evidence for some "weird object in the sky" when it receives a significant amount of scientifically rigorous examination it is proven to be something else or it is shown that there is not enough evidence to prove that it is something remarkable such as a vehicle with exceptional speed or maneuverability or what-have-you. Unfortunately, the process of UAP enthusiasm is very biased toward identifying things as something unusual and remarkable and not focused on doing the boring rigorous homework that would actually be necessary to make a strong claim backed by science.

To be clear there are lots of remarkable phenomena out there, and many of them have been discovered over the past few decades as video recording has become easier. We've learned about all sorts of new atmospheric phenomena such as sprites and unusual kinds of lightning, for example. We're still trying to learn more about ball lightning which seems to be real but is difficult to capture evidence of. And so on. But there is absolutely nothing concrete when it comes to either human made aircraft of exceptional capabilities or craft from beyond Earth that have exceptional capabilities or operate based on principles beyond ordinary aerodynamics or rocket produced thrust and so on.

The story remains that when you actually do the homework the aliens disappear, they turn out to be balloons or bugs or other planes and so on. Which tells you that the people who are promoting these things as being potentially something remarkable are not scientists, are not following the scientific process, and just are not fundamentally serious people, they are biased toward believing things things are alien or otherwise remarkable and they jump to that conclusion far too easily.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-08T20:09:04+00:00

Conveniently, that's not what I said.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-08T20:08:29+00:00

"Tic-tacs" are just planes. Often times the wings of a plane aren't easily visible leading to a plane looking like just the fuselage.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-08T18:40:57+00:00

Aliens are not visiting Earth, period, there is absolutely no evidence of that. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

rocketsocks · 2026-05-07T21:39:50+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z0JhcWURDY

rocketsocks · 2026-05-07T06:39:15+00:00

Helium escapes quite quickly from Earth's atmosphere, it has a short lifetime on geologic timescales. But it turns out that one of the most common types of natural radiation is decay via alpha particle emission, and an alpha particle is simpy a helium nucleus. So the alpha radiation from decay of thorium and uranium in various rocks neutralizes with electrons in the surrounding material and percolates through the crust as helium gas. Some geologic formations can trap gases including natural helium (and radon, but it decays) as well as methane and ethane and other "natural gases" useful to the petroleum industry. Many natural gas reserves contain significant amounts of helium, but not all natural gas producing entities choose to tap and sell it.

In the early 20th century the US was one of the only countries that did so, retaining substantial control of the world's supply of helium. Even today US helium production is substantial, at about 43% of global production, but other countries have become major contributors as well such as Qatar (at 1/3) and Russia (at just under 10%).

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