yeseye
Well-Known Member
Oh yeah, the kilt also, nearly forgot about that.
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Ultima Thule
- Thread starter Damocles
- Start date
Oh no. That's devaststing.I kept meaning to mention this in a thread somewhere but as I'm pretty inactive at the moment I never get the chance.
During my break, a experimental result happened which pretty much kills string theory and M theory as potential ideas on the structure of the Universe. Seems as though we live in a normal 3 spatial + 1 time dimension Universe.
Early looks at Ultima Thule are puzzling as it isn't producing a light curve.
Essentially if you think of an object in a spotlight then you can tell by its shadow if it is rotating or spinning. The amount of light it reflects changes as it moves.
Thule's light curve is being blocked by something or it isn't moving. There's theoretically nothing in the Universe that shouldn't move. Maybe something is in the way or an instrument is malfunctioning?
Essentially if you think of an object in a spotlight then you can tell by its shadow if it is rotating or spinning. The amount of light it reflects changes as it moves.
Thule's light curve is being blocked by something or it isn't moving. There's theoretically nothing in the Universe that shouldn't move. Maybe something is in the way or an instrument is malfunctioning?
1.618034
Well-Known Member
Small Black Hole?Early looks at Ultima Thule are puzzling as it isn't producing a light curve
Essentially if you think of an object in a spotlight then you can tell by its shadow if it is rotating or spinning. The amount of light it reflects changes as it moves.
Thule's light curve is being blocked by something or it isn't moving. There's theoretically nothing in the Universe that shouldn't move. Maybe something is in the way?
But, seriously. What?
Small Black Hole?
But, seriously. What?
No idea.
The New Horizons team are stumped as well.
We'll find out in a couple of days.
1.618034
Well-Known Member
Fascinating.No idea.
The New Horizons team are stumped as well.
We'll find out in a couple of days.
Fascinating.
The only plausible explanation that anyone has come up with is that it is oriented in a weird way and we're essentially looking at from the top down.
Like looking down a sausage that's rotating.
But that doesn't square with other data shown in the past.
Another potential is that there's a heat source nearby which isn't really possible. Or a brand new type of astronomical formation which we haven't seen before in terms of moons it has.
There's not really a good explanation.
1.618034
Well-Known Member
Ah. It's its Light Curve, not cone.
https://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/nasa-catches-snapshots-of-nearby-holiday-asteroid/
https://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/nasa-catches-snapshots-of-nearby-holiday-asteroid/
1.618034
Well-Known Member
Full quote, just FTR...The only plausible explanation that anyone has come up with is that it is oriented in a weird way and we're essentially looking at from the top down.
Like looking down a sausage that's rotating.
But that doesn't square with other data shown in the past.
Another potential is that there's a heat source nearby which isn't really possible. Or a brand new type of astronomical formation which we haven't seen before in terms of moons it has.
There's not really a good explanation.
“It’s really a puzzle,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas, United States. “I call this Ultima’s first puzzle – why does it have such a tiny light curve that we can’t even detect it? I expect the detailed flyby images coming soon to give us many more mysteries, but I did not expect this, and so soon.”
What could explain the tiny, still undetected light curve? New Horizons science team members have different ideas.
“It’s possible that Ultima’s rotation pole is aimed right at or close to the spacecraft,” says Marc Buie, also of the Southwest Research Institute. That explanation is a natural, he said, but it requires the special circumstance of a particular orientation of Ultima.
“Another explanation,” says the SETI Institute’s Mark Showalter, “is that Ultima may be surrounded by a cloud of dust that obscures its light curve, much the way a comet’s coma often overwhelms the light reflected by its central nucleus.” That explanation is plausible, Showalter added, but such a coma would require some source of heat to generate, and Ultima is too far away for the Sun’s feeble light to do the trick.
“An even more bizarre scenario is one in which Ultima is surrounded by many tiny tumbling moons,” says University of Virginia’s Anne Verbiscer, a New Horizons assistant project scientist. “If each moon has its own light curve, then together they could create a jumbled superposition of light curves that make it look to New Horizons like Ultima has a small light curve.” While that explanation is also plausible, she adds, it has no parallel in all the other bodies of our Solar System.
So, what’s the answer?
“It’s hard to say which of these ideas is right,” says Stern. “Perhaps it’s even something we haven’t even thought of. In any case, we’ll get to the bottom of this puzzle soon – New Horizons will swoop over Ultima and take high-resolution images on 31 December 2018 and 1 January 2019, and the first of those images will be available on Earth just a day later. When we see those high-resolution images, we’ll know the answer to Ultima’s vexing, first puzzle. Stay tuned!”
I love this.