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Here's a reference you provided for gravity assist that is what I was referring to when using a planet's gravity to move a probe further. I assume this is similar to the way a planet would clear its path by pushing objects out of the way rather than absorbing those objects.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreamwoven
It is most unlikely that any Oort Cloud objects will come anywhere near the solar system. A Kuiper Belt object like Pluto is vastly nearer but one probe, New Horizons did make it, taking advantage of a one-in-250 years conjunction that brought Pluto nearer. We may just be lucky - or at least later generations - 11+ thousand years for one orbit is a long time to wait...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreamwoven
Yesterday we saw the first half of a Swedish TV Program on Origami as applied to nature, how leaves and flowers open up to their full size from buds. They fold out to their full size. The Swedish language uses the origami principle to describe development. The word utvekla means to develop but also means to bend out.
Apart from being interesting in itself I remembered that there are plans in development to use solar wind for space travel. The applications of this are many and potentially far-reaching. There is a lot of material on this in all it variations in the above Wikipedia article on Solar Sail applied to un-manned space travel. Speed builds up slowly but faster and faster. Travel to the outer planets (e.g. Neptune 8.5 years) and even to the Oort Cloud are possible: "Such a sail would take "Two and a half years to reach the heliopause, six and a half years to get to the Sun’s inner gravitational focus, with arrival at the inner Oort Cloud in no more than thirty years."
Thirty years seems a reasonable time to wait. You mentioned earlier about using lasers to send very small probes even faster and further should those ideas get developed.
I suspect some of the nearer places would be high priority, like the moons of the outer planets, Uranus and Neptune, for example. It would be handy to complete the mapping of many moons of the outer planets, and after that the nearer reaches of the Oort Cloud.
Or landing on Ceres to find out what those bright spots are. We would need something to do while those other probes were en route.
http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/...t-bright-star: it is "only" 4.22 light years away. And we still don't know how many stars (suns) are in it. Probably 3.
It looks like I am too far north the see Alpha Centauri although they say it is the third brightest star in the sky.
The problem with Alpha Centauri is that one of the stars is so bright and the others are so dim (being brown dwarf starts near the end of their lives ) that the bright star makes it hard to see the others. We think there are 3 in all, but not sure.
It would be kind of strange having three suns in the sky on any planet surrounding one of the stars comprising Alpha Centauri. I hope there is some nighttime.
In Populär Astronomi over a year ago something I never knew came out. On 9 May last year Dawn began its spiral descent to its lowest position, some 375 km above Ceres. It will be continuing to collect data for as long as possible, but it will eventually become a permanent satellite of Ceres, its own (artificial) moon.
I thought Dawn would crash into Ceres. I guess it is better to have it orbit as long as possible.
It has been nearly a year ago that New Horizons left Pluto and headed deeper into the Kuiper Belt. It has found an icy body 150 km wide and rotating quite rapidly, every 5.4 hours, fast for a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). See http://www.space.com/32946-new-horiz...ond-pluto.html.
http://www.space.com/32973-supermass...-born-big.html. This post on black holes shows how fast knowledge and theory grow...
The article mentioned they only have candidates for what might be black holes. However, the conjecture that massive black holes did not grow to their massive size but started off big is interesting.