Cosmic Oddities

[Michael Sternbach]

Have you ever heard of a planet with the shape of a doughnut? Or a moon that comes with a moon of its own?

 

http://top10platform.com/2018/11/17/10-weird-things-that-could-exist-in-space/

 

At least some of these peculiar objects will most likely one day be confirmed to actually exist somewhere out there in the vastness of space.

 

Enjoy!

 

And feel free to discuss any of these thought-provoking possibilities.

 

Hey, Marbles... This topic is for you!

[Everything]

Everything exists.

[Michael Sternbach]

22 minutes ago, Everything said:

Everything exists.

 

I don't doubt your existence.

[Everything]

3 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

I don't doubt your existence.

 

[Everything]

Yesterday, took this photo of the full moon.

 

 

I like the white sparkly stripes around the crater. Also the crater themselves seem empty, whatever collided must've evaporated due to the kinetic energy of the collision. Perhaps the craters were caused by some kind of frozen meteoride, maybe frozen meteoride of water. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it crystalized again short after evaporating, cause I guess it's somewhat cold out there without an atmosphere.

 

One theory I am very interested in, if it's true or not, wether the moon always faces the earth on the same face, that it's gravitationally locked unto the earth like an artificial satellite. I have to take another photo to see if the moon has spinned around to show a different side of itself. Would be a real crazy idea to think the moon was dragged there from somewhere else and locked into orbit around the planet earth.

 

I just checked on the internet, and forgot that my moon is upside down, due to mirror telescope. So it's basically the same face I see on the internet. I don't see any picture on the internet that shows a different face of the moon. Strange.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Everything

[Michael Sternbach]

5 hours ago, Everything said:

Yesterday, took this photo of the full moon.

 

 

I like the white sparkly stripes around the crater. Also the crater themselves seem empty, whatever collided must've evaporated due to the kinetic energy of the collision. Perhaps the craters were caused by some kind of frozen meteoride, maybe frozen meteoride of water. Whatever it was, I'm pretty sure it crystalized again short after evaporating, cause I guess it's somewhat cold out there without an atmosphere.

 

Most of the colliding object as well as much of the surface in the impact area are being atomised and widely spread due to the tremendous kinetic force. On a body with an atmosphere, this can lead to the dreaded phenomenon called 'nuclear winter' - the prolonged darkening of the sky, in this case due to the impact's fall-out. The 'splattering'  may also result in anomalous concentrations of iridium and platinum (metals that are very rare on Earth) in remote areas, such as in the ice of Greenland, where its detection in ice core sample indicates (and allows the dating of) such events.

 

There are indeed objects out there that mostly consist of frozen water (along with some frozen gasses, rock and dust) and that occasionally appen to collide with a planet or moon; those belong to the comet category. However, the bright 'rays' you see with some of the craters is not due to ice but to ejecta excavated from beneath the Moon's surface. As the latter is comparatively dark (or 'mature'), bright fall-out material suggests a relatively recent event ('recent' in geological terms; let's say, not more than half a billion years ago).

 

Quote

One theory I am very interested in, if it's true or not, wether the moon always faces the earth on the same face, that it's gravitationally locked unto the earth like an artificial satellite. I have to take another photo to see if the moon has spinned around to show a different side of itself. Would be a real crazy idea to think the moon was dragged there from somewhere else and locked into orbit around the planet earth.

 

I just checked on the internet, and forgot that my moon is upside down, due to mirror telescope. So it's basically the same face I see on the internet. I don't see any picture on the internet that shows a different face of the moon. Strange.

 

You are correct, the Moon is tidally (gravitationally) locked to the Earth, in this case resulting in synchronous rotation (as opposed to mere spin-orbit resonance as we observe e.g. with Mercury and the Sun). Therefore the Moon indeed always shows us the same face and we had no idea what the other half of her surface looks like before it was surveyed by a Russian space probe in 1959.

 

But synchronous rotation per se has nothing to do with a satellite being artificial or captured; it is simply the consequence of the latter's orbital eccentricity and obliquity being close to zero.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Everything]

5 hours ago, Michael Sternbach said:

 

You are correct, the Moon is tidally (gravitationally) locked to the Earth, in this case resulting in synchronous rotation (as opposed to mere spin-orbit resonance as we observe e.g. with Mercury and the Sun). Therefore the Moon indeed always shows us the same face and we had no idea what the other half of her surface looks like before it was surveyed by a Russian space probe in 1959.

 

But synchronous rotation per se has nothing to do with a satellite being artificial or captured; it is simply the consequence of the latter's orbital eccentricity and obliquity being close to zero.

So the moon is the most round asteroid out there. I guess our orbit does promote roundness.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Everything

[Michael Sternbach]

1 hour ago, Everything said:

So the moon is the most round asteroid out there. I guess our orbit does promote roundness.

 

I see you edited your previous comment before I had a chance to answer. So maybe you figured out what you were asking about, but just in case: The Moon does rotate - in sync with her orbital motion!

 

But the Moon is no asteroid, and has never been one. Unlike Mars' two small moons, which are most likely captured asteroids.

 

Talking about real asteroids, Ceres is probably the roundest one (now classified as a dwarf planet).

 

Edited January 22, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

And just to eliminate all unambiguities, Ceres has some comet-like features.

 

http://science.time.com/2014/01/22/the-asteroid-that-thought-it-was-a-comet/

 

The most widely accepted theory rigjht now is that Ceres originally migrated from the Kuiper belt into the inner solar system. At any rate, really a fascinating lady...

[Michael Sternbach]

Quoting the linked article:

 

Quote

The fact that Ceres has enough ice left to be generating water vapor at all, more than four billion years after the asteroid originally formed, suggests that there’s an awful lot of it. That would be strange enough in itself, but it’s completely at odds with the composition of

Vesta, the second-largest known asteroid.

That body, 326 miles across, is covered with lava flows, evidence of a mostly rocky and metallic interior. In theory, the larger Ceres should have had similar flows, since it has plenty of rock as well. It doesn’t, though—possibly because Ceres was literally able to let off steam as it cooled, where Vesta couldn’t, trapping heat inside until the molten rock burst free.

 

So perhaps Ceres represents the Water element, whereas Vesta, the second largest asteroid and bearing the name of the Roman goddess of the hearth, represents Fire.

 

Just a (metaphysical) thought.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

Heard about White Holes first in my elementary school days, at a time they were all the rave in astrophysics. Then they have no longer been heard of for a while. However, the idea is still out there, and it's as fascinating as it ever was.

 

Take a look...

 

https://www.space.com/40422-are-white-holes-dark-matter.html

[Fa Xin]

What are the odds that the moon was captured into Earth’s orbit in the exact location that it eclipses the sun perfectly?

 

 

[3bob]

haven't seen marblehead in a long time?

[Zen Pig]

8 hours ago, Fa Xin said:

What are the odds that the moon was captured into Earth’s orbit in the exact location that it eclipses the sun perfectly?

 

one also has to factor in the odds of the moon being in the exact position to perfectly cover our sun so we can see a full eclipse.

[Michael Sternbach]

11 hours ago, Fa Xin said:

What are the odds that the moon was captured into Earth’s orbit in the exact location that it eclipses the sun perfectly?

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Zen Pig said:

one also has to factor in the odds of the moon being in the exact position to perfectly cover our sun so we can see a full eclipse.

 

Seems like yinz* are saying the same thing here. Yes, that the Sun and the Moon as seen from Earth appear to have exactly the same size is indeed pretty amazing. Thus, in many ancient cultures, the two Luminaries were considered to be the two eyes of the Cosmic Man.

 

I am not sure if that means the Moon could not have been captured by the Earth though. At any rate, it does mean that things just fell into place.

 

The currently most widely accepted theory is that primordial Earth was hit by a stray planet (about the size of Mars) in the newly forming solar system. Subsequently, the Moon was patched together from all the debris floating in space as a result of that collision.

 

Given the Moon's distance from the Earth, it takes her 27.32 days for one revolution around our globe. Interestingly, if we divide 1 by the number of days in a leap-year, we get 1/366 = .002732 (whereas 1/27.32 = .0366). This again suggests that there is nothing accidental about the way the bodies of the solar system have been arranged.

 

Moreover, the number series 2732 shows up as some kind of cosmic constant in a variety of contexts. Some of this stuff is rather complex... I may say more about it some other time.

 

 

* Pardon the Pennsylvian English, it just comes in so handy sometimes that I can't help it!

Edited January 23, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

Alright, let's take a look now at item #7 from our list of odd astronomical objects (linked to in the OP): The possible existence of an additional BIG planet in our ow solar system!

 

This one has always been of particular interest to me, since as an astrologer, I have been insisting for decades that there should be two more planets orbiting our Sun - in order to complete what is sometimes called astrology's domicile scheme: The concept that each of the twelve signs of the zodiac is 'home' to a particular planet.

 

While in antiquity it was accepted that basically every sign is the domain of two of the then-known planets, the discovery of additional planets quite undetectable by the naked eye (starting with Uranus found by Wilhelm Herschel in 1781) and their subsequent assignment to zodiacal signs by astrologers led to an asymmetry that in my mind strongly suggests the existence of two more planets. I.e., if there is an objective cosmic reality underlying  astrological theory, which I assume to be the case.

 

It therefore came to me as a bit of a shock when in 2014 an extensive survey by the WISE space telescope yielded no evidence of there being any major bodies on the outskirts of our solar system. I immediately sent an email to renowned TNO* discoverer Mike Brown, asking him if in his opinion WISE's negative observational result would rule out the existence of Planet X for good.

 

Brown's reply reached me about two years later, when in the January 2016 issue of the Astronomical Journal he declared that (notwithstanding the negative result of the WISE survey) there is indeed strong indirect evidence for one or more further major planets orbiting our Sun - the probability of that being a staggering 15.000:1 as suggested by the gravitational anomalies observed in the outer solar system.

 

 

 

Already a year earlier, there was also a professor of Madrid university  suggesting the existence of two yet unobserved planets in our solar system.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/two-hidden-planets-could-exist-5000557

 

One thing is for sure: We do live in excitig times as space aficionados!

 

* Trans-Neptunian Object

Edited January 24, 2019 by Michael Sternbach

[Michael Sternbach]

For those of you who wish a little more background on Planet X:

 

http://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-evidence-real-ninth-planet-49523

[Michael Sternbach]

A recent update on the search for that yet unseen planet that may be lurking far out in our solar system.

 

http://www.andylloyd.org/darkstarblog70.htm

[Michael Sternbach]

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

 

May I introduce to you Orion's Dragon.

 

[Nungali]

Cool!  If you watch the 3d rotating version in the vid in the link, as it turns, the middle bit looks like a vortex . At around 0:05 it looks like a sea shell .

[Michael Sternbach]

New NASA  research suggests that extraterrestrial life might be based on something other than DNA as we know it.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/nasa-dna-discovery-alien-life-proof-hachimoji-detection-a8792636.html

 

Of course, we should have known that already...

 

[Nungali]

does that thing ^  have a face as its genitals  ?   

 

... nah, probably not ... its an alien, I am just giving it human association, genitals between the legs and all that .

 

if it is a real alien , I suppose its genitals could be in  its eye .... or back home on its planet ... or   ....

[Michael Sternbach]

Meanwhile, there is some cool news about our good old Moon...

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/anomoly-five-times-size-island-hawaii-buried-near-moons-south-pole-180972401/

[Michael Sternbach]

A really cool compilation of some true 'cosmic oddities' - reminding us that there is still SO much to learn out there!

 

https://listverse.com/2012/12/05/top-10-unexplained-mysteries-of-the-stars/

 

The human adventure has just begun.

[Michael Sternbach]

While red giant star Betelgeuse is still one of the most awesome stellar objects to behold in the night sky, we know today that it has  some considerably larger mates out there in the galaxy. The current record holder is UY Scuti, a star that baffles scientists not only due to its enormous size, but (in conjunction with that) also by some of its other traits - that truly make it a cosmic oddity.

 

The following video includes an exciting outlook at UY Scuti's probable future.

 

Enjoy!