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A NASA probe has touched plasma and gas that belongs to the sun
- worldvoyageur 5y agohttps://archive.fo/ZJdvH https://archive.fo/ZJdvH
- mdoms 5y ago
- senectus1 5y agoWas just thinking that as I clicked the link. I'm just glad they didn't go with "got to first base with the sun" of the Gen X/Y 's lexicon.
- Illennial 5y ago[flagged]
- uoaei 5y agoeasier with fewer keystrokes/syllables/etc yet conveys same meaning
- techdragon 5y agoBoop is hardly a millennial word. I’m pretty happy using it and my hair is going grey. Also it has an onomatopoeic feel to it that evokes a specific kind of contact that is otherwise hard to describe without using more words. It’s a perfectly cromulent word according to the Oxford English Dictionary, dating back to the 80s and likely derived from “bop”. They also have the word cromulent.
- ycombinete 5y ago"Cromulent" on the other hand is just plain ridiculous.
- quickthrower2 5y agoBack to the 80s. The word is millennial even if its users are not.
- dang 5y ago"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead." "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances [...] They're too common to be interesting." "Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- 0xdeadb00f 5y agoYour comment is stupid. But I too instantly become infuriated at the sight of the word. "boop".
- throwaway81523 5y agoWhy didn't the probe burn up in the coronasphere? It went at night!
- quickthrower2 5y agoIt had a face mask.
- onion2k 5y agoI don't know much about celestial mechanics, but Newtonian conservation of energy should mean that not only did we 'boop the Sun', but we also pushed the Sun a tiny, tiny, tiny bit away from where it was. I wonder if that would be measurable.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 5y agoWould”t that be true of any voyage through the solar system?
- vbrandl 5y agoIf the vessel was started at day, the earth was also pushed away from the sun
- vegai_ 5y agoCool way to fix the global warming problem. Just push the sun away.
- sergiomattei 5y agoCue the classic meme: “we should take Bikini Bottom and PUSH it somewhere else!” https://youtu.be/ubePTrs2VJc https://youtu.be/ubePTrs2VJc
- JaimeThompson 5y agoThis Grand Theft Pluto: New Horizons Gets a Boost From Jupiter Flyby [1] "For New Horizons to speed up, of course, Jupiter must slow down. "That's conservation of energy," he says. But no one will notice. The change in Jupiter's orbit around the Sun due to the flyby is fantastically small. New Horizons will absorb about 1/1025 of Jupiter's orbital energy. That's like "taking a single drop out of the ocean," says Farquhar. " [1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/news/jupiter_flyby.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/news/jupiter_...
- areoform 5y agoAt its launch, the Parker Solar probe surpassed all prior records of speed. And it will continue to break its own record over the 7 years after 7 consecutive encounters with Venus that will lower its trajectory to 9.86 Solar Radii While a lot of it will be eventually achieved due to orbital mechanics, most of the push was given to it by the Delta IV Heavy. For those who may not be familiar, the launches are always spectacular due to the pre-flushing of Hydrogen through the system. NASA has an HD video that you can download, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlyuSwRSVHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlyuSwRSVHU The PSP's speed is impressive without context, but it's even more impressive in context. Here are phenomena in the same range as the PSP. The Earth rotates around the sun at a speed of, 29,800 m/s or 0.01% the speed of light Our galaxy approaches the Messier 98 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_98 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_98 galaxy at a speed of, 140,000 m/s or 0.04% the speed of light. PSP is faster than both of these at, 163,000 m/s or 0.05% the speed of light. Due to the quirks of orbital mechanics, by the end of its life, the probe will be even faster and it will reach, 192,000 m/s or 0.06% the speed of light It's 8,000 m/s shy of our solar system's orbital velocity around the galactic center. The design is a stunning accomplishment of engineering and daring. If you would like a detailed overview of how the mission trajectory was designed, the navigation team has written an excellent explainer that you can read here, https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/handle/2014/47575 https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/handle/2014/47575
- cmpb 5y agoI was confused at first because the article mentions that "a spacecraft bound for the center of the solar system would need to slow itself down" and "engineers must take Parker past Venus seven times throughout the mission, so that the spacecraft can use that planet’s gravity as a brake", but you mention that PSP is traveling very fast (and indeed I've always understood that items orbiting closer to the center travel faster). Is this just a dumbing-down in the article's verbiage, or is it common to think of shrinking the perihelion as "braking"?
- samhuk 5y agoPassing by Venus is lowering the spacecraft's periapsis, increasing the orbit's eccentricity. The lower the satellite goes, the faster it will be at periapsis. Those speeds the GP comment is refering to are, in all likelihood, velocity as periapses.
- josefresco 5y agoI just read and watched a video about the Parker Solar probe (very cool) thanks to The Orbital Index email newsletter: https://orbitalindex.com/ https://orbitalindex.com/ I am not affiliated, but enjoy very much getting my weekly space news!
- daveslash 5y ago"Reaching the sun is, remarkably, more difficult than reaching the outer planets, or leaving the solar system altogether." A fact that I independently stumbled upon in Kerbal Space Program when I was trying to fly my Kerbals directly into the Sun. It was surprisingly difficult (still haven't achieved it - no spoilers please!), but obvious after a few moments thought.