
A Big Surprise from the Edge of the Solar System - cromulent
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/09jun_bigsurprise/
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Alex3917
There is a Terence McKenna quote from the early 80's where he says that
basically everything we know about the (largescale) universe comes from radio
telescope data, and all the bits from all the data ever recorded have roughly
the same amount of energy as a piece of cigarette ash falling about two feet.
And this is what our entire understanding of the cosmos is based on.

Not sure of the validity of the measure/comparison, but it's an interesting
idea nonetheless. One does have to wonder though, if it's so obvious now why
this phenomenon is happening then why didn't they predict it before seeing the
data? Especially if we see the same thing in solar flares. It seems like it's
generally a good idea to bet on the laziness of the universe, but beyond that
anyone who pretends they know what's going on is probably full of shit.

edit: The Terence McKenna quote is from this talk about his life:
<http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=1509>

The talk in general is about his formative intellectual influences, and about
why he finds psychedelic drugs to be intellectually interesting. He has
another talk that's more about his views of physics, epistemology, and
cosmology here: <http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=297>

Perhaps my two all time favorite talks on any subject, albeit you need a high
tolerance to ideas that are at times _highly_ speculative. (And sometimes flat
out wrong.)

~~~
andrewcooke
your "if it's so obvious why didn't they predict it?" question is a result of
the way that the article is written which, in turn, is a consequence of the
dependency of nasa (and astronomy and space research in general) on public
goodwill to motivate funding.

this isn't so exciting, and it isn't so shocking.

it's a standing joke in astronomy / astrophysics that magnetic fields are
complicated and misunderstood. whenever something can't be explained it's
attributed to tangled magnetic fields. so complexity in the magnetic field -
this "foam" - would not be a great shock.

i have a phd in astronomy. one reason i left the field (apart from the small
matter of being a pretty crappy astronomer) was that i felt it was a fraud.
sure, it wastes much less money than the arms program and, yes, we do have
non-stick pans now, but _everything_ you see from the field is presented in a
sexed-up, over-sold, exaggerated way to get more funding.

~~~
DanI-S
Incidentally, did you manage to find a career in a field where things _aren't_
oversold in the pursuit of popular enthusiasm? It seems a fundamental
component of capitalism, if not human enterprise in general.

~~~
andrewcooke
sorry, previous reply mis-understood your question.

this is the same point as the pressure for jobs, really. it's not that
astronomy is the _only_ place where things are oversold, or where there's a
lot of competition for jobs - it's a question of degree.

in the case of astronomy it doesn't produce much at all of quantifiable
physical value. it's not that different to poetry (you can make the same
"life-affirming" arguments for both). in contrast, car mechanics, say, do
something physically useful: they fix your car and you're willing to pay them
for that.

so astronomers and poets are, largely, state funded (through science and arts
grants, respectively).

you could, i guess, argue that a car mechanic who places an advert in the
local paper is also relying on "over-selling". sure. but i hope you'll agree
there's a difference in degree between the two cases: the mechanic is, say,
90% useful, 10% "ephemeral"; astronomy is 99% "ephemeral" [edit: made phrasing
less abrasive].

in modern universities, most depts have a range of sources of funding. it's
very unusual for astronomy depts to have links with industry because they
don't produce anything that people want (there are engineering-related
exceptions for optics and detectors). the way they get money is by being cool
and hoping to appear attractive to rich donors (or the govt). hence the
reliance on "advertising".

ps and to reply directly: yes; i now work on projects that help save people's
lives.

~~~
gammarator
Speaking as someone who has also wished at times to make a more immediate,
tangible impact on the world around me, I'm glad you're liking your new job.
That said, even "ephemeral" things have value. Individuals will buy poetry
books, for instance!

You seem to be saying that, since one can't persuade the average person on the
street to pay you to write a research paper[1], the research that gets done is
"over-sold" through "advertising." In other words, the work is funded not on
its own merits, but as a popularity contest. I'd argue, though, even within
astrophysics alone, some research is more important than others: maybe it
answers more fundamental questions, or could enable a unifying explanatory
framework for a broader class of phenomena, or is actually of near-term
importance to us on Earth (asteroid location, space weather).

Science is a human endeavor. Yes, there is often hype and trends as people
advocate for funding for their next big thing--but there's a lot of that here
on Hacker News, too.

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demallien
Interesting. All of a sudden a deep space radio telescope seems like a good
scientific mission. It would be a fascinating discovery if we poked our noses
out of the heliosheath just to discover that all of the missing mass in the
universe was to be found in cosmic rays that never reach the inner solar
system.

~~~
atakan_gurkan
We have good reason to believe that the missing mass cannot be baryonic or
fast moving massive particles. This comes from the abundance of elements, so
it is indirect but is consistent with other findings.

Furthermore, those cosmic rays would radiate when decelerated. I think if
there was substantial mass in cosmic rays, we would see this radiation (did
not make a calculation though). Note that the estimate for the mass of dark
matter is about ~5 times the normal matter.

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yaix
It would be great if we would send one or two such probes out per year, in
different directions. We could find so many interesting things. There are
currently only two.

~~~
sushumna
Voyager1 and 2 were sent around 30 years back. If we send now, we will get
results only after 2040 only.

~~~
mkr-hn
I don't think a new one would take 30 years.

<http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/overview/overview.htm>

It tops out at 90,000 meters per second.

<http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html>

The furthest one out is 17 billion kilometers.

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=17+billion+kilometers+divided+by+90000+meters)

[http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=188888889+seconds+in+years)

That's about six years, though I don't know how long it would take to reach
the top speed.

~~~
junkbit
How long does it take the data to reach us?

~~~
patrickyeon
Speed of light, baby! IIRC, on the order of 4 hours from Pluto. 16 hours (one-
way) out to Voyager 1 where it is now.

~~~
ralfd
Wolfram Alpha excels in that type of questions:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+pluto+%2F+ligh...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+pluto+%2F+lightspeed)

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+voyager+1+%2F+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+voyager+1+%2F+lightspeed)

P.S. You are correct.

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lotharbot
This seems like a sort of analog to the way hurricanes sometimes spawn
tornadoes. At the boundary where the relatively still external air/space meet
the rapidly spinning air/magnetic field generator, you get some turbulent
interactions.

I would love to see the equations or programs they're using to model this.

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iwwr
Is magnetic reconnection an established phenomenon, i.e. verified in a lab or
at least strongly theoretically founded?

~~~
sanxiyn
Apparently it is: <http://mrx.pppl.gov/>

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click170
TL;DR

"The sun's magnetic field extends all the way to the edge of the solar
system," explains Opher. "Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes
twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina's skirt. Far, far away from the
sun, where the Voyagers are now, the folds of the skirt bunch up."

~~~
rcthompson
That's just the setup. The point is a little later: "The crowded folds of the
skirt reorganize themselves, sometimes explosively, into foamy magnetic
bubbles."

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mrleinad
I always wondered why those pictures depicted the sun's magnetic field limits
as so clean cut from the rest of the galaxy.. didn't seem natural..

Maybe I should have followed my science instincts and perform a career in
physics instead of System's Engineering

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orofino
This seems to be the problem with relying solely on the private sector space
exploration. With shuttles there is opportunity for revenue, with revenue come
investors, with investors we can make progress. However, where is the revenue
opportunity from either of these probes? Without a body that can be truly
altruistic about projects and the benefit they'll provide, certain projects
may never have/or my never again, become a reality.

This kind of news makes me truly excited about the future. We have concrete
knowledge about so little in this universe, the future is ripe with
possibility if we can just show a little foresight.

~~~
jerf
Nobody is proposing relying solely on the private sector for space
exploration. But we'll be far better off harnessing market forces to make
space access cheap then letting NASA just do the minimum stuff it can do with
the suddenly-cheap tools it has access to then we will ever be trying to make
the unaccountable jobs-program government space program provide the access.
That has demonstrably failed. How many more probes would we have if we cut
NASA's budget in half _but_ they could just buy rocket space instead of
building and maintaining the Shuttle and ISS at umpty bumbkin billion dollars
each?

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Shenglong
Watching that video, I couldn't help but wonder what Sheldon Cooper would say.
It's unfortunate that NASA needs to work towards _this_ level of public appeal
just to try and secure funding.

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alphadog
Could this offer some protection from a gamma ray burst?

~~~
gammarator
Gamma-ray bursts happen all the time, and aren't dangerous to us--the Earth's
atmosphere absorbs all of the gamma-rays.

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velutinous
Correct me if I'm wrong, at that distance isn't it possible to get some
unreliable data.

The discovery is huge, but I'm just wondering

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yxhuvud
Boring. With that title, I was expecting a monolith!

