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Re: The Space thread
mitchejw wrote:Randall Flagg wrote:Except it’s not. We were taught that model in school to help us understand the setup of an atom, but you can’t observe an electron. It’s not orbiting the nucleus of an atom like a planet does its star.
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is why we can never snap an image of an electron. The best visual image of an electron would be a cloud surrounding a nucleus representing where that electron could be at any moment.
Plus planets form a disc through gravity while the proton and electron are held in place by the electromagnetic force.
It looks like a cloud because the electrons are moving so fast around it?
No, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The electron doesn’t exist in three dimensional space. It manifests at different points randomly in its orbit. The cloud represents the location of where it could be.
What I’m envisioning are electrons moving at high speed in any orbit around a nucleus...so quickly that it’s like looking at a box fan...you’re saying that’s incorrect?
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: The Space thread
Randall Flagg wrote:mitchejw wrote:It looks like a cloud because the electrons are moving so fast around it?
No, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The electron doesn’t exist in three dimensional space. It manifests at different points randomly in its orbit. The cloud represents the location of where it could be.
What I’m envisioning are electrons moving at high speed in any orbit around a nucleus...so quickly that it’s like looking at a box fan...you’re saying that’s incorrect?
Right. I’m saying that electrons aren’t a 3 dimensional object that exist and can ever be observed. They exist and are absent simultaneously in their orbits. We only know that they exist and can generalize a certain level of certainty where they are located, hence the circular orbit cloud representing the likely area the electron is.
I’m not a physicist nor do I want to type out my limited understanding of quantum mechanics on my phone. But an electron can’t be quantified with any physical attributes or location. It doesn’t have a shape.
To fully understand electrons and how they exist would require a unifying theory and science isn’t there yet.
Re: The Space thread
mitchejw wrote:Randall Flagg wrote:No, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The electron doesn’t exist in three dimensional space. It manifests at different points randomly in its orbit. The cloud represents the location of where it could be.
What I’m envisioning are electrons moving at high speed in any orbit around a nucleus...so quickly that it’s like looking at a box fan...you’re saying that’s incorrect?
Right. I’m saying that electrons aren’t a 3 dimensional object that exist and can ever be observed. They exist and are absent simultaneously in their orbits. We only know that they exist and can generalize a certain level of certainty where they are located, hence the circular orbit cloud representing the likely area the electron is.
I’m not a physicist nor do I want to type out my limited understanding of quantum mechanics on my phone. But an electron can’t be quantified with any physical attributes or location. It doesn’t have a shape.
To fully understand electrons and how they exist would require a unifying theory and science isn’t there yet.
Interesting....but you must agree there are some similarities here...since time is a subjective concept....and these planets surround the sun and are orbiting at a subjectively high speed....given the nucleus is the center and both models at least a potential source of energy....
The definition of life is somewhat arbitrary...i was just curious earlier in this thread if our definition of ‘life’ isn’t broad enough. And since life on earth is nothing but a collection of atoms and elements...maybe our definition of life is too ethnocentric.
Re: The Space thread
Life In The Clouds of Venus
A team of astronomers has spotted a gas called phosphine in Venus’s clouds. This isn’t the first time we have seen phosphine on a planet – it’s produced on Earth in industrial processes and by microbes, and at crushing pressures and high temperatures deep inside giant planets like Jupiter – but the strange thing is that there shouldn’t be any on Venus. As David Grinspoon at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona told me when I was covering this discovery for New Scientist: “It doesn’t belong there.”
That’s because any phosphine on Venus should be destroyed within 1000 years of its production by the harsh environment, meaning it must be being continuously made. But the researchers couldn’t find any way to produce anywhere near as much phosphine as they detected on the planet.
Right now, it appears that the only way we can explain all that phosphine is life. That doesn’t mean that we won’t find another explanation – it could just be weird chemistry that we don’t yet understand – but it’s a promising sign.
This isn’t the first time it has been suggested that Venus could be habitable. That may seem surprising given the Venusian surface is notoriously hellish, with surface temperatures around 470°C and pressures up to 90 times that felt at sea level on Earth. “‘Not great’ could be the motto of the Venusian tourism board,” says team member Clara Sousa-Silva at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But temperatures and pressures are much more moderate where the phosphine was detected, about 53 to 61 kilometres above the planet’s surface – to the point where life could theoretically exist there.
“The clouds are like the ocean of Venus, they’re global and deep and stable – they’re not like clouds on Earth, which are more ephemeral,” says Grinspoon. That means that if there are living organisms in those clouds, they could float around indefinitely, as long as they could survive being surrounded by sulphuric acid.
However, it’s not quite time to go running through the streets shouting about aliens. First we need to confirm with more observations that there really is phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere, and then we’ll have to begin the much more arduous task of proving that it came from life. As Sousa-Silva says, “We may not know for sure until we go there and sample the atmosphere.”
Re: The Space thread
This is the best space news of the 21st century.....on several fronts.
- Closer to an answer on the "Is there life out there?" question
- My long dream of giving Mars a rain check and spending the resources on other areas of the Solar System
- Venus getting a much closer look in general is decades overdue
Been reading a lot about this issue lately. I am blown away by the fact that ALL the focus is on the atmosphere of Venus and all the experts discounting the possibility of some lifeform (s) living on the ground in that extreme environment.
There's one Russian scientist who has spent years claiming life can be detected in those few pics taken on the surface by the Soviets. I think he's grasping at straws as the pics are not high quality but I like his approach.
It's time to go back. Let the rover currently on its way to Mars be the last mission to Mars for the next 20-30 years.
Re: The Space thread
This is the best space news of the 21st century.....on several fronts.
- Closer to an answer on the "Is there life out there?" question
- My long dream of giving Mars a rain check and spending the resources on other areas of the Solar System
- Venus getting a much closer look in general is decades overdue
Been reading a lot about this issue lately. I am blown away by the fact that ALL the focus is on the atmosphere of Venus and all the experts discounting the possibility of some lifeform (s) living on the ground in that extreme environment.
There's one Russian scientist who has spent years claiming life can be detected in those few pics taken on the surface by the Soviets. I think he's grasping at straws as the pics are not high quality but I like his approach.
It's time to go back. Let the rover currently on its way to Mars be the last mission to Mars for the next 20-30 years.
What would be the purpose of making Venus the emphasis? Is it just that life may exist there?
I've always wondered about the resources that could be found there...
Re: The Space thread
Mankind has been fascinated by Venus for thousands of years.
It's also considered our "sister planet". Only planet in the solar system that's the same size as Earth....and it's right next door.
In the 20th century and beyond it all got "retconned" to an extent with Mars being the number one planet with Venus always on the back burner.
There were some legitimate reasons for this....
The probes sent in the 70s revealed a hellish environment..... 800 degrees fahrenheit, rains sulfuric acid, no water(that we know of), choking on carbon dioxide, has 90 times the pressure of Earth, atmosphere/clouds so thick you can't see the sun/space, etc
Something catastrophic happened there. Its surface appears to be fairly new (lack of impacts) yet scientists don't believe it has plate tectonics like Earth. It has no magnetic field. It's in a runaway greenhouse effect.
Hell... its runaway greenhouse effect is enough reason to throw our resources at it. We can learn a lot from it.
It never should've been ignored for so long. Mars never deserved all the attention it received.
Other than the fact it's easier to land there and probes/rovers can last years on the surface, Mars is no picnic either.
We're not sending men/women to Mars any time soon... regardless of how much Elon Musk believes in it. We're not even close to overcoming any of the obstacles in our way yet they act like it's right around the corner.
We've spent nearly 50 YEARS looking for life on Mars....yet we've always avoided the most likely place it could possibly be found(the poles).
I'm sick of it....and thankfully some scientists are starting to wake up and realize that we have too many eggs in the martian basket.
Just because it's difficult to land on Venus is no reason to ignore it. Soviet probes in the 70s lasted hours on the surface. I think we can improve on that.
I think we're going to abandon Mars one way or another in the coming years. We're only weeks into this news and a space race to Venus is already starting to take shape....
Next year NASA will announce its Discovery missions for the coming decade. Two of the options are Venus probes. Before this news, one of the Venus proposals wasn't a guarantee.
I'm predicting both get picked. If it happens, it's a game changer.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: The Space thread
Really exciting stuff, but the authors of the study said
"But the researchers, led by UK astronomer Jane Greaves, say their discovery "is not robust evidence for life" on Venus. Rather, it's evidence of "anomalous and unexplained chemistry," of which biological processes are just one possible origin.
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-life-venus-experts.html
Also, we're talking about possible microbial life. Not intelligent life or even life that can be seen with the naked eye.
Carbon based life can't survive on Venus' surface. It's possible these could be silicon based microbes, but the reality is we have no idea. Speculating it's life, even advanced life isn't a stance based on any contemporary understanding of reality.
Re: The Space thread
Carbon based life can't survive on Venus' surface. It's possible these could be silicon based microbes, but the reality is we have no idea.
This is a reason to switch focus to Venus.
If some unknown form of life can survive in those conditions (whether microbial or not), it opens the floodgates for the possibility of life in other areas of the solar system, specifically Titan where there's speculation that some form of life could live in those methane lakes.
Also, we're talking about possible microbial life. Not intelligent life or even life that can be seen with the naked eye
I don't think anyone is speculating that intelligent life is walking around in those conditions. If intelligent life ever thrived on Venus, it was millions of years ago.
I just don't think anything should be ruled out due to the hellish conditions. For all we know, there's giant bird like creatures there that walked by the Venera probes 5 minutes after we lost contact.
On a couple volcanoes they've speculated that life could potentially thrive there due to the temperature being a couple hundred degrees cooler. Still hotter than hell though.
The next probe should land in one of these areas... although it's obvious that the main focus is going to be studying its atmosphere.
"is not robust evidence for life
Of course. We're not going to ever see "robust evidence for life" anywhere until we actually go and find out for ourselves.
Even if the Solar System is drowning in various forms of life, nothing is going to wave at us.
We've been on Mars off and on for 50 years and still don't have an answer.
The phosphine is a sign begging us to finally go back and IMO a sign that we never should've left.
