The science behind RHCs liver thread

Spaceships could use blinking dead stars to chart their way
Like GPS satellites, pulsars could help ships pinpoint their place in space
BY
EMILY CONOVER
5:15PM, JANUARY 12, 2018

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SPACE PLACE NASA’s SEXTANT experiment demonstrated a stellar version of GPS, finding the experiment’s location with an apparatus consisting of 52 X-ray telescopes (illustrated) on the International Space Station.

NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

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OXON HILL, Md. — Future spacecraft could navigate by the light of dead stars.

Using only the timing of radiation bursts from pulsating stellar corpses, an experiment on the International Space Station was able to pinpoint its location in space in a first-ever demonstration. The technique operates like a stellar version of GPS, researchers with the Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology experiment, SEXTANT, reported at a news conference January 11 during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Known as pulsars, the dead stars emit beams of radiation that sweep past Earth at regular intervals, like the rotating beams from a lighthouse. Those radiation blips could allow a spaceship to find its location in space (SN: 12/18/10, p. 11). It’s similar to how GPS uses the timing of satellite signals to determine the position of your cell phone – and it would mean spacecraft would no longer have to rely on radio telescope communications to find their coordinates. That system becomes less accurate the further a spaceship gets from Earth.

SEXTANT used an array of 52 X-ray telescopes to measure the signals from five pulsars. By analyzing those signals, the researchers were able to locate SEXTANT’s position to within 10 kilometers as it orbited Earth on the space station, astronomer Keith Gendreau of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reported.

On Earth, knowing your location within 10 kilometers isn’t that impressive — GPS can do much better. But “if you’re going out to Pluto, there is no GPS navigation system,” Gendreau said. Far from Earth, pulsar navigation could improve upon the position estimates made using radio telescopes.

 

Really low starting base isn't it.

Pulsars can be used for time keeping as well. They are that regular you could set your onboard chronometers from it.

I am just surprised they've not already done this kind of position fixing work in the past already.

 

Pulsars (some) have been observed to switch radio emissions type, and the rate of pulses slowing down and speeding up again.

 

Top 5 scientists of all time?

Toughie, this one.

I'm not putting them in order, which is a little limp-wristed but:

Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Galileo, Dirac, Planck.

Not biased at all with 3 brits in there, but impossible to discount any of them. Your views?

 

Newton Tesla Maxwell Galileo, Einstein's wife

you sexist

 

There have been some great bints, but none of them in the top 5. Maxwell a top shout.

 

science as in all science?

Darwin should be in there. The trend I've noticed is seismic change to the conventional wisdom through their discovery in your list so Darwin must be in there. there are several stages post Darwin looking at genetics and discoveries such as Watson and Crick while amazing are all building gone stage upon another based on a revolutionary ideal

Galileo should be similar but he ended up locked up for being right and fudged the whole this ans arguing both sides of the thing to get off which was quite clever. However perhaps Copernicus should be in here instead. That said Galileo invent his own telescope and discovered far more.

Newton check

I would actually say Aristotle as i quote: "As regards his method, Aristotle is recognized as the inventor of scientific method because of his refined analysis of logical implications contained in demonstrative discourse, which goes well beyond natural logic and does not owe anything to the ones who philosophized before him." – Riccardo Pozzo. i Just think the whole basis of science is there

I'd like to insert either Fleming or Jenner as people who have changed medicine utterly.

Does Einstein get a shout. Of course he does for revolutionizing thinking form newtonian physics to relativity but he rejected quantum physics totally.

 

"God doesn't play dice"

lthough Dirac did not at first fully appreciate the importance of his results, the entailed explanation of spin as a consequence of the union of quantum mechanics and relativity—and the eventual discovery of the positron—represents one of the great triumphs of theoretical physics. This accomplishment has been described as fully on a par with the works of Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein before him.[2] In the context of quantum field theory, the Dirac equation is reinterpreted to describe quantum fields corresponding to spin-1/2 particles.

 

which is why he's not on a top 5. cos his work has not really impacted the worlds yet.

How do you apply it?

I'm sure at the time newton was a wow rockstar given his position but i'm not sure say darwin was.

 

Yeah it ****ing has. It made a fundamental contribution to quantum theory and predicted antimatter, which was detected several years later. The Dirac equation is sublimely beautiful.

Your'e having a giraffe with Darwin. If you're talking about impact on the world (which I wasn't necessarily originally), no one theory has made a more game-changing impact than the theory of evolution. It totally changed mankind's view of the world and of our place in it. Absolutely no need for the shackles of religion any more. That's ****ing impact, la

 

and how have either made an impact on the general populace compared to:

the earth being round (Galileo)
evolution and genetics (darwin)
Antibiotics? (fleming)
the underpinning of all engineering (newton)
The scientific method they all use (aristotle)

I pointed out if you read back that Darwin underpins later work on genetics (red hair, blond hair black hair) leading to dna via numerous peopel. leading to gene therapies today.

You are of course right that it is as night and day as the flat earth v round earth that the whatever 4000 year old earth verses the 4 billion year earth.

Perhaps a geologist should make the list.... like Hutton?

 

Antibiotics don't ****ing work anymore. That's evolution

What about Einstein?

 

Einstein has deffo changed the world. Not sure if you could say he absolutely originated the work thats lead the the splitting of the atom but its all in there in the work. and of course that has profoundly changed the planet.

 

E = mc2 demonstrated exactly the power that could be unleashed by nuclear fission. That's why he was so ****ing mortified when the atom bomb was first built and detonated.

 

and that is the crux of Einstein's best work right there, not relativity. E = mc2 has been tested over and over for accuracy and it has been validated again even as recently as 2016.

 

really the only link is solving the equation to see how much energy you can get from a mass, so you can create the desired energy release. You are 100% correct

 

or unfinished courses allowing some of the bacteria to survive, allowing for a resistant strain to emerge.

Most of the adaption to anti-biotics comes from not killing the infections entirely.
Though I 100% agree, viruses and bacteria evolve and adapt.

Seen a documentary on Virus evolution and it is truly amazing, it is a war between immune systems and viruses. The Viruses almost seem to know wtf they were doing

 

Did you get that link from the comedy movie Young Einstein?

 

A shout out for Clark Maxwell who was a mathematical genius. I'm not a mathematical genius, but I know your order is six, not five btw. Oh, and Faraday too as an intuitive genius.

 

Ooh Faraday, good shout. Maxwell, a shoe-in for top 5

Edit, wrong Maxwell sorry Duh