I don't know if you've seen this before, but it's a pic taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a picture that was taken in a dark spot in the sky as far away as Hubble could see. It makes up a spot about the size of a dime 75 feet away in relation to the surrounding sky. All of those dots are galaxies. Makes us seem really small in the scope of things.

Hubble Deep Field Image

You can click on the Index tab on that page to see more also.

Ya I love astronomy stuff. There was supposed to be a Satellite orbiting saturn by now too if i remember right. Anyone know where you can go to look at it's pictures?

Here you go. The mission is called Cassini-Huygens, named after two signifcant astronomers who helped in identifying Saturn and it's rings. Cassini is the name of the orbiter, and Huygens is the name of the probe that is to be launched and landed on Titan, the largest of Saturn's 31 known moons. Lots of very good information on this site.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

I remember when that pic was released, it makes me wonder how some people still believe we are alone in the universe.Even if the odds were 1 in a billion(statistically non existant) that one of those stars had a planet hospitable to life, and on that planet the odds were one in a billion that life could have started, there would be probably a few million civilizations present in the picture alone.

agreed


http://www.SPACE.com represent

It's amazing how insignificant one photo can make a person feel. Very cool.

I feel small. Makes you wonder when we'll make contact with other living biengs from elsewhere.

And by elsewhere I don't mean Wisconsin.

Joe and Ryan...

sweeet.
Imagine the 'gearheads' on a different planet...

Now that makes ya just feel like a sack of shit doesnt it? Now I almost dont feel like making any money today, but life goes on. An insignificant spec like me wants to jump in an insignificat spec of a ferrari and travel and travel as close as I can to the speed of sound, since the speed of light is a little of the charts. Crazy :ohmy:

In the BIG picture, even the speed of light isn't that fast. We are hundreds and thousands of light years away from most other celestial bodies, which would mean it would take hundreds and thousands of years to reach them traveling at light speed. If we're ever going to go anywhere outside of our solar system in the future we're going to have to travel faster than light.

Not possible and it never will be.

Not possible and it never will be. [/b][/quote]
Technically true, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways around that. While we may never be able to truly travel faster than light, there might be options we haven't considered.

I mean, didn't we all see Contact? :lol:

Not possible and it never will be. [/b][/quote]
Yeah, and the Earth is flat.

People said for years that breaking the sound barrier in a car was impossible because of the wave created around the car wouldn't be able to form like it does in a plane. It took a while, but they were proven wrong.

Even 60 years ago people didn't think we could get into outer space. Now life would change drastically without and people take it for granted. With our current technology and limited thinking, we cannot think of a way to go faster than light, but that doesn't mean we won't be able to overcome it in the future.

Exceeding the sound barrier and going into space didn't break Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity, reaching the speed of light does.Might I add the special theory of relativity has been proven time after time after time for around 130 years.The Lorentz transformations say(again well proven) mass increases with velocity.At the speed of light, mass is infinite, which would mean an infinite amount of energy would be required to propel something to the speed of light.There isn't an infinite amount of energy in the universe and there never will be.So an object would have to have zero mass or a negative energy density to reach the speed of light.

I agree, there are a plenty of ways that will eventually allow us to travel unimaginably large distances.Quantum worm holes and the Casimir effect have the greatest potential IMO.

The special theory of relativity applies locally, but we do not know how it applies on a greater scale. We do not have a firm grasp on how space and time are related and the theory applies only to a spacetime area that is flat. Just like a circle, if you take an area small enough it is nearly flat (a tangent), but when you look at a larger area it is curved.

Spacetime may be just like this, but we do not know. Jumping between those points may make it appear to other observers that you are traveling faster than the speed of light. The Alcubierre warp bubble is a theory about this. There are tons of other theories too, but our knowledge is so limited on the subject that it is all speculation right now.

I know the answer.. and if i told you they would keel you...

-E

General relativity tells us how it acts on a large scale, which has been proven over and over again for 75+ years.We do have a grasp on how space and time are related, and we do know space and time are warped by energy/mass.It can be observed in some of the gravitational lense pictures at the above Hubble link.

As far as taking a short cut through an area of warped space-time, even though it would appear c is exceeded, its not.The object taking the short cut is still travelling less than c, Alcubierre's "theory" even states that.Its analogous to 2 cars travelling from one side of a mountain to the other.If a car dvives over a mountain and a car drives through a tunnel in the mountain both traveling at the same speed, the car going through the tunnel will arrive at the other side before the other car, but the speed is still the same.

Yeah, and I stated that it will appear that c will be exceeded, in what I said. Also, I don't know if you know or not, but c has been exceeded. It just has not been exceeded by anything with mass.

Also, Einstein's theory has not been proven on a grand scale. We are stuck on this tiny speck of sand in the universe. Things may be different on a larger scale.

Hell, for all we know we will end up being able to convert ourselves into pure energy, in which case we would have no mass and be able to travel past the speed of light.

"Open up your mind and look at the possibilities."

No proof exists that c has been exceeded.I have read about experiments over the years in which scientists have supposedly accelerated photons faster than c.In these cases it still only "appears" c has been exceed, but its more than likely other things, like quantum tunneling, that are actually happening.

Gravitational lenses billions of light years away, blackholes, and the perihelion shift of Mercury have all been observed and accurately predicted by relativity.I don't know of a more grand scale than that.Its actually the extremely tiny small scales where relativity breaks down, which is where quantum mechanics come into play.

Holy Crap!!

Hard to belive all this stuff came from me posting a pic. :lol:

Here are my thoughts on it. It's hard to think about reaching or exceeding the speed of light because we think about it in "Earthly" terms. Wind resistance and friction are our biggest enemies here on Earth when it comes to speed. But in space there is no resistance and no friction. This is why Plasma engines work in space. Very little initial thrust, but it keeps accelerating as long as it's turned on due to no friction in space to slow it down. Ever heard of "solar sails". These are big sails that are propelled by light photons hitting them it in space. They will reach the speed of light over a period of time. Now if you could design something that would act like 2 magnets with the same poles pushing each other apart, but acting on light photons instead of magnetic energy, then you could exceed the speed of light in space. Remember light photons have weight and mass. That's why light cannot escape a "black hole". The gravity is so strong that light cannot break away from it's grip.

I don't belive in the theories that support "bending" or "folding" space into a shorter distance. Imaging trying to move through a big room. Those theories suggest that you could fold the room in half and shorten the distance required to get from one side to the other. But you are talking about moving whole galaxies and solar systems closer to where we are to decrease the distance. I don't believe this is possible. To do it you would have to bring the other objects, solar systems and galaxies closer to us. Can't be done, especially when the universe is constantly expanding. You can't think "two dimensional" as would be required to be able to fold space. Space is "three dimensional".

Yeah, I watch allot of Discovery Channel. ;)

That theory is useless. The car "going through the mountain" is taking a straight line approach. Of course it would get there faster. But in space travel, why would you go the long way around? You would fly a straight line to where you are going which would be the shortest distance.

Ya bunch of nerds.

Stuck on Science and physical limitations in your minds and at the same time some of you argue that you need to open your minds up to other possibilities and worm holes and whatever. I still stand by my believe that there is a single reason behind every one of the stars you are in amazement over. You can start in Genesis and don't quit till you hit Revelations and maybe you will understand more than you expected. I agree completely, don't let your mind limit you, You really ever expect to travel faster than light in this body?

First of all, photons do not have mass, they do have momentum though.None of the theories of solar sails state they can be propelled to the speed of light.You see light and magnetism(and anything else the is radiated equally) adhere to the inverse square laws, which state strength is inversly proportional the the square of the distance.Which means at twice the distance, the force is 4 times as weak.So things powered by solar sails will lose acceleration at an exponential rate as they get farther from the source radiating the photons.BTW even without friction, it can potentially take ion/plasma drive hundreds of years to even reach 50% the speed of light.They also suffer from the mass increase as well, which means they will eventually come to a constant speed(and not accelerate further)because they do not have enough energy to overcome the mass increase.

Thats like saying you don't believe in a curved earth or our solar system orbiting the sun.Bending of space is readily observed and has probably been proven the most out of all physics theories.They have brought atomic clocks on flights which showed time dilation.Time dilation is a consequence of bent space-time.Pictures in the link you posted show gravitational lenses, which are a consequence of bent space-time.Gravity in the black holes you talked about is a consequence of bent space-time.

In that analogy, Our 4 dimensional existance is the long way around.A straight line would be the long way around.Its called Non-Euclidian geometry, check it out.

I'd rather be a nerd than a bible freak.

I'm gonna have to go with Mike on this one. I took astrophysics in college. I've come to understand that there is no hard evidence of unifying theory that links nucleus of the atom to the physical (moreover observed) parameters of the universe. For instance, the gravitational attraction between an electron and the nucleus is a trillionth of a trillionth of a newton, while its electromagnetic attraction is relatively infinitely larger (think of the energy of particle accelerator). The latest popular idea is that the remaining/equalizing force of gravity is located in another universe, commonly called "branes" A perturbation in this brane caused it to lose some of it's gravity (unprovoked, big-bang like, no intellectual cause), mass, energy, which created this universe. Supposedly, this process has happened and will continue to happen without beginning or end- rather just cyclical. The speed of light, the rapid expansion of the universe, the ratios of dark energy, matter, and anitmatter are all accidental.

What I've read is that it's been a repeated theory that 70% of the universe's "ingredients" is dark energy. The matter that we consist of is like 4% and there's anitmatter, energy, which adds up to 100%. It has in turn been hypothesized that a different in these ratios of 0.5%, and none of the stars and the earth would have ever formed. This is the newest and maybe best answer for asking why astrophysics is what it is (someone help me with string theory).

When I studied astronomy, everything seemed so orderly and simply.
So like Mike, I believe God intended for these ratios. And likewise, He created a cosmic speed-limit. 2.99 x 10^8 m/s. :3gears:

No offense, but it seems your college course must of been quite some time ago.The nuclear weak force, that binds electrons to the nucleus, and the electromagnetic force have been unified into one force called the electro-weak force.In fact Steven Weinberg (his books are great, read them) won a nobel prize for it.

The dark matter or shadow mass has also been pretty much tossed out.It seems blackholes can account for most/all of the unobserved matter.10 dimensional string theory has been pretty much tossed out as well, though it seems to be coming back in the 11(or the even newer 12) dimensional M-theory, M-branes, membranes or whatever they call it these days.These theories IMO are getting off track.I agree that it will take a high dimension count theory to unify quantum mechanics and relativity, but string and M theories won't be it.While I can't make up my mind on the whole "God" thing, I think the "theory of everything" will be a spiritual one, but not spiritual as it is defined today and definately not theological or "divine"

I swear, that's what they taught me last spring. I received a minor in astrophysics taking that as my last class.