Astronomers find oldest planet yet

[FSPilot 0]

To find the age of a planet you simply count it's rings.

Saturn is 1 year old.

[Skul 0]

Young upstart! You're thinking of trees! You don't count a planet's age by it's rings! You do it thorough intense and inexplicable formulas which include...... (rambles on in the incoherent language of scientists...)

(Many hours later...)

...and that, in turn leads us to know that 1+1=2...

Hold on... I've lost the thread now...

.................Ah yes! That's it!...

I believe it was...

Closing

[Gareth Gates must die]

[theavonlady 2]

Maybe one of our forum members succeeded in traveling back in time and reported in.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

13 billion years? ... pff humbug!!!

[DarkLight 0]

Quote[/b] ]I see that the "The Earth is the center of the Universe" theory is still alive and well

Yes the Earth is the center of the universe, and also  its flat and there are sea monsters.

Dear fucking god!!!

I'm never going to travel by boat again!!

This is horrible! Why didn't i know all this?!

[DarkLight 0]

13 billion years? ... pff humbug!!!

Why humbug?

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

It probably is

[USSoldier11B 0]

Read this, sometimes the inginuity of our species gives me hope.

Quote[/b] ]July 9) -- One hundred million years before dinosaurs pounded upon the Earth, the humble horseshoe crab scuttled along its shores. Soon the blood of this primitive creature could be used to detect primitive life on faraway planets.

"One of the reasons the horseshoe crab has survived for so long is its advanced immune system," said Norman Wainwright, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass. "This system can be used to find microbial life.

"When one of these armored arthropods is injured, bleeding and exposed to bug-laden ocean water, its blue blood hardens and keeps infection out.

The crab's trick takes the form of a cascade of enzymes that causes clotting when it encounters cell wall material of most bacteria, yeast and mold.

Run By Freeze-Dried Enzymes

Since the 1950s, the unique coagulating reaction of the horseshoe crab's blood has been tapped by pharmaceutical companies to test the purity of sterilized medical equipment and products. Now scientists have packaged the blood's enzymes into a hand-held instrument that can test for signs of life.

"If there are microbial species that evolved outside the Earth, that life may have originated here and spread throughout the solar system," said Wainwright. "It's possible the cells walls of microbes on other planets may be similar enough to detect using the test.

"The calculator-sized device developed by researchers at MBL and Charles River Laboratories in Wilmington, Mass., is filled with the unique set of enzymes contained inside horseshoe crab blood. To supply the tools, scientists insert a large needle into the crab's heart and extract up to 300 milliliters of blood per crab. The crabs are then released back into the ocean.

Although the process sounds traumatic, most of the helmeted animals survive the ordeal, says Robert Barlow, a State University of New York neurobiologist who conducts research on horseshoe crabs at the MBL.

"There's about a 10 percent mortality rate," he said.

The enzymes are then isolated from the blood, extracted and freeze dried. When inserted into the instrument, rather than coagulate blood, the enzymes cause a clear solution to turn bright yellow when encountering microbes.

"The more yellow the sample, the more microbes it's finding," Wainwright said.

Past Probes Tested for Life

Using the blood of one of Earth's oldest creatures may not seem particularly high-tech, but the test holds at least one key advantage over other methods — it's fast.

The horseshoe crab blood instrument has been used, for example, to ensure spacecraft are free of any Earthly microbes before heading to space and other planets. Once a swabbed sample is inserted, the instrument provides a reading within 15 minutes. Other tests that involve waiting for cultured samples to develop normally take three days or longer.

Barlow (who isn't involved in the project) says that MBL and Charles River scientists have volunteered their device to test the purity of spacecraft mostly to "get a foot in the door" at NASA so they might eventually send a unit to outer space.

Wainwright has even taken a microgravity flight on the so-called vomit comet (a modified jet whose pilot provides passengers with a sense of weightlessness by flying a parabolic course at high altitude) and found it functions fine with limited gravity.

The last time a Mars probe directly tested for signs of life was on board NASA's Viking 1 and Viking 2 crafts that landed on Mars in the 1970s. Neither of the probes' experiments, which tested for particular amino acids, produced any evidence of life.

The two NASA probes that are now on their way to Mars will mainly be searching for signs of water. The European Space Agency's Beagle 2, meanwhile, hosts instruments that will search the planet for signs of methane — a calling card of active life.

NASA officials say the two probes that will touch down in January 2004 are paving the way for future probes that will begin an aggressive search for life. It's on one of these spacecraft that Wainwright hopes the horseshoe crab blood instrument might catch a ride to the Red Planet.

Jason Dworkin, an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explains that because possible alien life remains mysterious in form, NASA will need an array of tests to seek it out.

"Life that we don't understand is difficult to recognize. It's hard to identify something if you don't know precisely what it is," Dworkin said. "So new tests are always useful."

Cutting the Catch

Of course, to guarantee the instrument is around when the next batch of probes rocket to Mars, scientists need to ensure horseshoe crab populations remain robust.

The horseshoe crab is undoubtedly a hardy creature — having survived 250 million years of evolution. The crab can go a year without eating and can endure extreme temperatures and salinity. But scientists say years of overfishing of the horseshoe crab for use as conch and eel bait have depleted the arthropods' numbers.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering recommendations from a panel of scientists to cut harvests by more than half. The cuts will be considered in December and if approved, would apply from Virginia to New York.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Read this, sometimes the inginuity of our species gives me hope.

Quote[/b] ]snip

probably just going to figure out how to use it to kill people, but interesting, nonetheless

[cpl_BOB 0]

to be quite honest, the whole LIGHT SPEED thing is bollox and fabricated by Scientists who are to afraid of what they dont know, so they make up there theorys.

Sure Speed of sound does exist that much is obvious but i find it hard to believe that what wee see has a time delay on it, Pure crap!!!

and i challenge anyone to prove the light speed theory.

end of Drunken rant!

[bn880 5]

Hmm, well they can easily prove it these days, as a matter of fact speed of light will be the limiting factor in a few generations of transistor based processors. The size of the chip will be too large for electrons (traveling across at nearly the speed of light) to cross in one clock cycle.

[Tovarish 0]

to be quite honest, the whole LIGHT SPEED thing is bollox and fabricated by Scientists who are to afraid of what they dont know, so they make up there theorys.

Sure Speed of sound does exist that much is obvious but i find it hard to believe that what wee see has a time delay on it, Pure crap!!!

and i challenge anyone to prove the light speed theory.

end of Drunken rant!

How the speed of light was proven

*edit* replaced with better source

And why is it so hard to believe that what we see has a time delay, when you know that what we hear does?

[Baron Hurlothrumbo IIX 0]

You can determine the distance of stars by using redshift:

because red light bends more than blue light, the distance between the two at this end indicates how far away the object is.

Imagine two rifles, side by side. One has a slow muzzle velocity, the other has a fast one. When fired at the same time at a target, you could determine how far away the target was by the distance between the holes on the target (theoretically, because the rifles wouldn't be zeroed the same).

[NurEinMensch 0]

to be quite honest, the whole LIGHT SPEED thing is bollox and fabricated by Scientists who are to afraid of what they dont know, so they make up there theorys.

Sure Speed of sound does exist that much is obvious but i find it hard to believe that what wee see has a time delay on it, Pure crap!!!

and i challenge anyone to prove the light speed theory.

end of Drunken rant!

Tovarish has already posted a good link. But I want to say my two cents too.

You remember when they had that little roboter "i think it was called mars rover or something like that" on mars? Remote controlling it was rather difficult because of the lag caused by the time the radio waves needed to reach the mars.

Since "light" is just another kind of electromagnetic wave just with another frequenzy (thats simplified I know) it shows light has a limited speed, too.

So when you watch the sky at night what you see is how it was thousands and even millions of years ago!

A rather impressive thought imo!

[Akira 0]

You can determine the distance of stars by using redshift:

because red light bends more than blue light, the distance between the two at this end indicates how far away the object is.

Imagine two rifles, side by side.  One has a slow muzzle velocity, the other has a fast one.  When fired at the same time at a target, you could determine how far away the target was by the distance between the holes on the target (theoretically, because the rifles wouldn't be zeroed the same).

Through various false color images, x-rays, and spectrum analysis of known elements can also be used to determine the age of distant objects.

And for the person that asked why these stories are always being brought out...that is easy. Money.

Scientific and exploration budgets are always being slashed. Joe SixPack doesn't care...unless you giving him something to think about. Throw out tid-bits to make sure your project remains in the limelight...or at the very least, in the back of ordinary citizens minds. After the highly publized landing of Sojourner on Mars, NASA got more money, and people were screaming to explore other areas. But then time moved on since these projects aren't made and launched overnight...now everyone has forgotten again.

I find it a valid tactic if it steals a few dollars from the Bush "Need bigger more expensive weapons" philosophy and buts it to a use that is far more valid and one that I support.

[Guest]

You can determine the distance of stars by using redshift:

because red light bends more than blue light, the distance between the two at this end indicates how far away the object is.

Imagine two rifles, side by side.  One has a slow muzzle velocity, the other has a fast one.  When fired at the same time at a target, you could determine how far away the target was by the distance between the holes on the target (theoretically, because the rifles wouldn't be zeroed the same).

Through various false color images, x-rays, and spectrum analysis of known elements can also be used to determine the age of distant objects.

And for the person that asked why these stories are always being brought out...that is easy. Money.

Scientific and exploration budgets are always being slashed. Joe SixPack doesn't care...unless you giving him something to think about. Throw out tid-bits to make sure your project remains in the limelight...or at the very least, in the back of ordinary citizens minds. After the highly publized landing of Sojourner on Mars, NASA got more money, and people were screaming to explore other areas. But then time moved on since these projects aren't made and launched overnight...now everyone has forgotten again.

I find it a valid tactic if it steals a few dollars from the Bush "Need bigger more expensive weapons" philosophy and buts it to a use that is far more valid and one that I support.

That's exactly what I thought....couldn't see the relevance of the existance of life on this planet.

Red light bending more than blue light is not what Redshift means. Redshift refers to the Doppler compression and expansions of light waves, which causes changes to the colours of stars depending on how fast they are travelling away from us...that's what they are using.

Light bends in the manner you described when it passes from one medium to another...ie Air to Glass. Space however is a vacuum. Telescopes are glass, and the atmosphere is air but these effects are compensated for. C'mon....scientists aren't that dumb

[DarkLight 0]

to be quite honest, the whole LIGHT SPEED thing is bollox and fabricated by Scientists who are to afraid of what they dont know, so they make up there theorys.

Sure Speed of sound does exist that much is obvious but i find it hard to believe that what wee see has a time delay on it, Pure crap!!!

and i challenge anyone to prove the light speed theory.

end of Drunken rant!

You may not realize it, but the light of the stars and planets that has reached our planet is very very old, when a planet or star is very far away, the light that we see will actually have "left the planet" thousands of years ago. Yes, very hard to understand but it's true...

[SKULLS_Viper 0]

The planet may not even be there any more, because the planet may have exploded a very long time ago.(maybe, maybe not    )

[bn880 5]

Skulls, exactly, the weird thing about astronomy is many or even all the stars we see could be gone by now! Ok so that would not make much sense but it's possible with the distances.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Skulls, exactly, the weird thing about astronomy is many or even all the stars we see could be gone by now!    Ok so that would not  make much sense but it's possible with the distances.

Wouldn't that be awkward. I can just imagine the Congressional hearings that would occur if NASA got a multi-billion dollar grant to study stars that exploded several hundred years ago

[SKULLS_Viper 0]

If the star is a million light years away, it'll take 1 million years before we actually see the light.So there may be some baby stars we haven't even seen yet.

[denoir 0]

to be quite honest, the whole LIGHT SPEED thing is bollox and fabricated by Scientists who are to afraid of what they dont know, so they make up there theorys.

Sure Speed of sound does exist that much is obvious but i find it hard to believe that what wee see has a time delay on it, Pure crap!!!

and i challenge anyone to prove the light speed theory.

Pick up a satellit phone and you'll notice that delay. Or even better, tune in on a transmission of one of the gadgets exploring Mars and you'll notice a 40 minutes delay.

Visible light is just electromagnetic waves in a frequency range that our eyes can pick up. The same way radio signals are delayed from Mars, so is light. When you point a telescope at it, the picture you see is 40 minutes old

[Supah 0]

I understand has a certain speed and that stars are so far away that us (and even the first humans ever) might possibly be looking at stars that are long gone. I however dont get why you cant travel faster then light. This has been said so often "You cant go faster then ...." and everytime it has been proven false. Some scientists said you couldnt travel faster then the speed of sound and lots of people believed that .... untill Earl Yeager strapped himself in to his X-1 and broke the sound barrier

[bn880 5]

And that's why some theories are trying to suggest that if something travels faster than the speed of light it may be traveling back in time or some such. I really don't know...

[Guest]

And that's why some theories are trying to suggest that if something travels faster than the speed of light it may be traveling back in time or some such.  I really don't know...  

No, but the guy on your avatar had a few thoughts about it.