Solutions to the problems of interstellar travel
Given the insane scale of interstellar distances, how might we extrapolate from the physics we do understand to envisioning possible ways that aliens (or us in the future) could cross the cosmic void? There are a few possible solutions to the problem of interstellar travel.
A bold claim, I know. It won’t surprise you to find out that I want to stick some qualifiers on it. For the purposes of this article, “futurists” means educated industry analysts and hard science fiction authors with a comprehensive knowledge of physics.
On Wednesday, CEO Elon Musk outlined how the company’s under-development rocket will deliver a “high fly rate” of a dozen launches in 2022. This will enable the ship to deliver actual payloads in 2023 before moving on to more ambitious goals like sending humans to the Moon and Mars.
The comments, made at the joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Board on Physics and Astronomy, outline how the stainless steel rocket taking shape in Texas will move from prototype curiosity to working ship.
It’s a project that could enable some of SpaceX’s most significant goals. First outlined in 2017 under the name “BFR,” the Starship is a stainless steel rocket that measures around 400 feet tall when paired with its Super Heavy booster. It’s fully reusable, designed to fly up to three times per day. It’s capable of sending up to 150 tons or 100 people into space at a time.
Today, the greatest mysteries facing astronomers and cosmologists are the roles gravitational attraction and cosmic expansion play in the evolution of the Universe.
To resolve these mysteries, astronomers and cosmologists are taking a two-pronged approach. These consist of directly observing the cosmos to observe these forces at work while attempting to find theoretical resolutions for observed behaviors – such as dark matter and dark energy.
In between these two approaches, scientists model cosmic evolution with computer simulations to see if observations align with theoretical predictions. The latest of which is AbacusSummit, a simulation suite created by the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).
If you think of very low temperatures, there’s a good chance you are picturing ice. Ice is a quintessential “cold” thing for us. But at extreme pressures, like in the core of large planets, something peculiar can happen. Ice can remain solid but have a temperature hotter than the surface of the Sun.
This type of water ice is called “superionic ice” and has been added to the list of around 20 phases water can structurally form, including ice, liquid, and vapor. Now, researchers report in Nature Physics the discovery and characterization of two superionic ice phases, having found a way of reliably and stably recreating the ice for longer than has previously been achieved to be able to study it.
One superionic phase extends between 200,000 and 60,000 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level and at a temperature of several hundred to over 1,000 ° C. The other phase extends to half the pressure experienced at the center of the Earth and with temperatures of thousands of degrees.
Trap based on electric fields alone boosts the search for a non-zero electron electric dipole moment and other phenomena beyond the Standard Model.
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Scientists have released the largest catalog of gravitational wave detections to date, shedding new light on interactions between the most massive objects in the universe, black holes and neutron stars.
The catalog was compiled by three groundbreaking detectors: the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors located in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, and the European Virgo gravitational wave antenna in Pisa, Italy.
Of the cosmos’ four fundamental forces, gravity is the one that grasps us even before we exit the womb. From our first few minutes of life until we lose the fight to lift our heads from death’s pillow, this weakest of nature’s fundamental forces continues to elude researchers.
In the last few years, however, gravitational wave astronomy has made great strides in detecting gravitational radiation rippling through spacetime at the speed of light.
Einstein first predicted that any accelerating mass should emit gravitational radiation in the form of waves. Gravitational waves were first indirectly detected almost 20 years ago. But it was only recently, in 2,015 that the ground-based LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detected waves from two merging stellar mass black holes over a billion light years distant in the general direction of the Southern Hemisphere’s Magellanic Clouds.
In 2,015 researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) captured the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, more than a century after the phenomenon was first proposed.
Gravitational-wave events have only been detectable for a few years, and a new study shows the remarkable diversity of waves caused by black hole mergers.
