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Space is full of dirty, toxic grease, scientists reveal
- WilliG 8y agoWas interested to read, tnx. I'm fond of space exploration, hope it the next few decates we'll get more info about our Universe. I like to watch live webcame from Internationa Space Station here https://worldcams.tv/other/international-space-station https://worldcams.tv/other/international-space-station with amazing views from space. There is the ISS Tracker which gives info about the current location of the ISS.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arrty88 8y agoCan we harvest it?
- tgtweak 8y ago> 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter Toxic butter.
- sjs382 8y ago> 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter I have a new favorite unit of volume.
- majewsky 8y agofrom the measuring-area-in-football-fields dept.
- deadmetheny 8y agohttp://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=nutrition+in+one+cubic+parsec+of+butter http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=nutrition+in+one+cubic+...
- psalminen 8y agoThe butter must flow.
- Double_a_92 8y agoWhy are people here always downvoting jokes? I mean especially jokes. You could say something racist or otherwise bigoted and it would still be slightly better than jokes. And also it's almost impossible to get upvotes. Why are we so toxic on here?
- steve_adams_86 8y agoProbably something to do with being greasy and full of carbon.
- Veen 8y agoToxic means poisonous. How is preferring to avoid Reddit's plague of puns and repeated identical jokes poisonous? Toxic does not mean "anything that I don't like".
- Double_a_92 8y agoToxic referred to not upvoting any comments or being positive in other ways. My "best" comment where lots of people agreed has 9 likes... Usually I end up with -1 or -2, even on normal serious comments. Meh...
- smt88 8y agoJokes don't contribute to the discussion. They're generally considered noise rather than signal here. HN's official policy is that it isn't reddit and doesn't want to be reddit. In my opinion, intolerance of jokes is the entire distinction between the two. There's also the issue that jokes are often misunderstood and end up causing even more wasted text.
- Double_a_92 8y agoActually they do. Worrying about if your comment is "serious" and good enough is what is blocking discussion. I'd rather not comment at all when comments on here seem to mostly displease other people.
- krapp 8y ago
- mkl 8y agoIt's incredibly thinly spread out, so I doubt it. Yes, there's a lot of it, but space is almost unimaginably big. Places where carbon is concentrated like some planets, comets, etc. would be much more economically viable, and we're sitting on a planet with far more of this type of stuff than we need already.
- onemoresoop 8y agoYes, but we can't carry this stuff (or much of it) with us on orbits or space, but if we collect and process it it may open some doors to space exploration.
- mkl 8y agoThen mine comets or dip into appropriate planetary atmospheres. The material in the article is way too spread out.
- onemoresoop 8y agoTrue, but it may at least fuel our imaginations for the time being.
- neilsimp1 8y agoIs it useful?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sliken 8y agoThere's approximately 1 atom per cubic cm in space. Of those there's 10,000 hydrogen for each greasy carbon atom. So sure you could harvest the volume of the earth in deep space and get 21 kg worth.
- juliangoldsmith 8y ago>There's approximately 1 atom per cubic cm in space. How do you figure? I'd think gravity would cause it to clump up, and draw it toward massive bodies.
- maze-le 8y agoThe Article talks about interstellar space, aside from some occasional planemos, there are no substantial gravity wells outside of solar systems. It would probably move along according to the local standard of rest (~flow of material) in the galaxy. And this material would also probably not get trapped inside solar systems to a large degree, because as the article notes, the solar wind has a greater infuence on it than gravity.
- sliken 8y agoYes, gravity is a factor. But stars, planets, and galaxies have already formed. Within the solar system is higher, within the arms of galaxies is higher than without. There are also web like structures between galaxies that have higher densities.
- rtkwe 8y agoProbably, though it's still going to be very sparse and thinly spread.
- starbugs 8y agoI can already see the Grease Drive coming in the next Star Trek Discovery season.
- moron4hire 8y agoIt's already canon. The front cone portion of the nacelles are Bussard collectors. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bussard_collector http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Bussard_collector
- jacobush 8y agoThough its job is mainly to capture deuterium, I presume for propulsion. (In a fusion process? This is where Star Trek veers off into literary freedoms with the dilithium crystals and what not.)
- Semirhage 8y agoIIRC, it’s a matter-antimatter drive, and the dilithium crystals in some way help to catalyze the production of antimatter. As you say, fictional.
- magduf 8y agoNo, the dilithium is somehow supposed to help control the matter/antimatter reaction. The antimatter is stored onboard in magnetic bottles I think. But yeah, it doesn't make that much sense.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- yeasayer 8y agoIs this a new oil? That could speed up the space exploration.
- alex_duf 8y agoI don't think its density would make it worth anything. It could be used in transit though I suppose
- mtzaldo 8y agoit is not grease, it a Symbiote...
- eruci 8y agoGood to know...
- cabaalis 8y agoThe Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C Clarke makes it a large plot point that any vessel traveling through the stars would need some kind of "windshield" as mentioned in the article. His idea for implementing it seems as good as any to my layman imagination!
- jdwithit 8y agoThis is also the function of the "deflector" on ships in Star Trek. The idea being that when you're traveling that fast, even the tiniest debris will ruin your day, so you need something to push it out of the way.
- krapp 8y agoInterestingly, this would apparently be a problem with Alcubierre drives from what I've read. The bubbles of spacetime around a ship would wind up "collecting" stray particles as it travels, then releasing them in a massive energetic burst when the bubble popped, probably annihilating anything in its path. I've sort of decided one of the possible solutions for gamma ray bursts is just starships exiting to realspace.
- jacobush 8y agoCould be a feature, depending on circumstances. :-) What would happen to radio transmissions from an Alcubierre drive fitted space ship while in transit?
- krapp 8y ago>What would happen to radio transmissions from an Alcubierre drive fitted space ship while in transit? I'm not an expert on the physics involved, but I imagine they would probably just get reflected back as Hawking radiation or something. The point of the bubble is to separate an object entirely from our own universe, because while there is a limit to information travelling at the speed of light, and relativity makes it impossible for an object with mass to approach lightspeed, there are no such limitations on spacetime moving through spacetime. If anything can cross the threshold and get into or out of the bubble in transit, then there is some degree of quantum entanglement and information transfer and it still counts as a "thing" in our universe, so I would assume the trick only works if the bubble is essentially a black box. speculatory edit: this also seems to suggest that a ship in an Alcubierre bubble would be blind and unable to actually steer. I don't know if the bubble itself would decay (possible due to collisions with interstellar matter or some inherent instability) or would have to be collapsed from the outside. If the latter, then you need an existing infrastructure of stargate-like things already in place (either moved by conventional means or constructed) and just have to hope they're working and where you're aiming when you set off. There might be models that overcome these issues, I don't know. If it turns out that Alcubierre drives are the only viable means of FTL, then one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox might lie in the complications inherent to using them - the civilizations that survive tend to be the ones that don't progress beyond simple rockets and radio telescopes, and FTL civilizations are still limited to expansion at below relativistic speeds, and even then the inherent complexity and risk means FTL travel isn't likely to be common.
- JoshTko 8y agoI wonder if this is a factor limiting interstellar travel. Where spaceships are not able to approach light speed because they will quickly accumulate a ton of space grease.
- alex_duf 8y agoOr that grease can be captured processed and burnt to reach the speed faster, (though I'm reading elsewhere the density is so thin there's no point almost)
- imglorp 8y agoYou'd need an oxidizer too. They're talking about napthalene, C10H8.
- kijin 8y agoThere's a lot of oxygen in space, too. Just like carbon, though, it will be bound to hydrogen.
- marcosdumay 8y agoYou'd need a fusion reactor capable of merging carbon atoms.
- tim333 8y agoJust merge the hydrogens and accelerate the other stuff as ions out the back.
- krapp 8y agoI would suspect that accumulated space grease is an insignificant factor when compared to a ship's existing energy/mass ratio and the effects of relativity and time dilation, where energy requirements and an object's apparent mass tend towards infinity as it approaches lightspeed. It's probably no more a factor than how thick the paint is on the hull.
- zeroisnowfour 8y agonot suprised 40TTT of anything can be found in infinite space given enough distance
- _cereal 8y agoSorry, what is the meaning of TTT? I did a search but could not find a definition. Edit: got it, trillion.
- diminoten 8y agoWell I don't think it's actually infinite, but yeah the example units on this article are kind of strange. Packs of butter?
- mirimir 8y agoInfinite? Hard to say. But yes, why use "packs of butter" as a unit? I mean, what size pack? Pounds? Kilos? Pats? Edit: OK, 250 gm packages, standard in the UK, and generally outside the US.
- otoburb 8y agoI was trying to figure out why this material might be toxic, and the article explains nicely: "Until now there has been uncertainty over how much carbon is drifting between the stars. About half is expected to be found in its pure form. The rest is chemically bound with hydrogen in either a grease-like form, known as aliphatic carbon, or as a gaseous version of naphthalene, the main chemical component of mothballs."
- maushu 8y agoWhat a cruel universe for moths.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoThanks, made my day, fell from my chair.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoI understand clutter etc. but downvotes for a "Thanks?" to prevent future "Thanks?" - wow.
- kbutler 8y agoI upped the thanks, downed the talking about downvotes. Of course, this is also talking about downvotes, so...
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoThanks ;-)
- hutzlibu 8y agoAh ... it is friday today, I see...
- 8y ago
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoCould someone here explain briefly (or point me somewhere) the basic process through which someone is able to look at the sky and reliably say "there is grease floating out there umpty billion miles away"? I understand things like spectral emissions showing particular atomic elements, but does that extend to complex molecules too?
- projektfu 8y agoSo, according to the abstract, this is looking at the absorbtion of a particular infrared band (3.4um). This band is presumably associated with the carbon-hydrogen bond, but I'm rusty on my IR spectroscopy so don't take my word on it. It's already known that there is attenuation of this band correlated with distance to a star, so they created molecules in the lab that mimic the absorbtion. This tells them how many molecules are needed to produce a particular amount of attenuation. From this, they can estimate the mass of a column between the Earth and a star, and extrapolate that to the Galaxy.
- tenaciousDaniel 8y agoScience is miraculous. I couldn't even imagine being able to figure that shit out.
- anonymousab 8y agoAlmost everything is built on the work of those that came before. The way projectfu describes it shows a clever but clear line of problem solving from 'we have x and we know y, how do we figure out z'. Still miraculous, of course. I think it's inspiring to see that it's not too different the fundamental problem solving process that many of us use in our daily lives.
- nerdponx 8y agoAlso don't forget that these scientists are deeply immersed in their fields. Every single one of them has been through a PhD program and is an expert in some domain, likely a narrow one. When you are that good at something, even your shower thoughts (and especially your shower thoughts) will be scientifically productive.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- codeulike 8y agoThe space behind the washing machine, presumably?
- CPLX 8y agoInteresting substitution of "full of" for "has trace amounts of" but I guess on this topic everything is contextual right.
- binarymax 8y agoThis is hardly surprising, given what we know of how violently the universe was created. When a massive explosion occurs it propels matter everywhere. Some debris is large but there is plenty of dust.
- Ar-Curunir 8y agoThat intuition doesn't work for galactic scales, and anyway in the Big bang nothing really exploded
- nnx 8y agoCould this “grease” be what we thought to be dark matter? Ie. explaining the “missing” mass of the universe
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mac01021 8y agoSo that's what dark matter is...
- ddalex 8y agoDark matter is butter... not even Douglas Adams could figure this out :)
- saalweachter 8y agoEveryone likes butter, Galactus included.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago> carbon ... which ... is essential for life. We know so much more about the universe, discovered a huge number of exoplanets, and still hold on to these traditional ideas. Carbon is essential to life as we know it, that's it.
- test6554 8y agoThere was an attempt to be more relatable to the lay person. 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.
- realo 8y ago* My God, it's full of grease! * (Sorry... couldn't resist...)
- mikeymop 8y agoWas hoping for an image of what they recreated.