Dark Energy Illusion // Great Meteor Shower // Mars Chopper
NASA is working on an even bigger Mars helicopter, is dark energy just an illusion?, a particle that only has mass when moving in one direction, and Parker Solar Probe completes its closest flyby of the Sun.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YqYY8qV7v3s
Comments (15)
Fight club style picture of “one direction” 😘
Great episode, especially on the dark energy (possible) illusion. DE & DM have always been suspect to me as 'magical' answers to perplexing phenomena. Please keep us up to date.
Great menu of bites this week, Fraser. Makes it tough to pick a favourite, but given my current fascination with the expansion of the universe, my pick will be dark energy illusion when you post the vote. Time dilation is much easier to wrap my head around than dark energy / matter.
A year or two ago you spoke about the difficulties for someone going to college for astronomy. Specifically, the lack of job opportunities. Can you please send me that video? I want to show that to my daughter who is considering that major. Thank you!!
Well done Fraser. This is by far the best explanation of the is Dark Energy really there story. Dark Energy is my thing so I've seen a lot of reporting on this story. A*
On a more down to earth comment, have you seen the Nebula post by Legal Eagle about the web service Honey? Do you think that Honey is partially to blame for your drop in YouTube revenue?
Hah, no. It would only be a drop if we used any affiliate references, but we don't.
Are Galaxy's 13 Billion light years away still part of the observable Universe. Even thought we can see them, at this exact moment they have moved so far away, due to the expansion of the Universe and should have long ago ventured past the observable horizon. So should they really be considered part of the observable Universe?
It’s in the definition: it’s what we are able to observe right now. The light that we observe right now originated in the past. Some of it recently and some of it billions of years ago. All of it is observable. Now. We can calculate which part of it will cease to be observable some time in the future and make qualified assumptions about how much have already receded into oblivion from our time-space position in the universe. But what we do observe is still in the observable part of the universe.
Never was Dark Matter, only the Dark Forest...tread lightly.
In the story about quasi-particles, what exactly does "direction" mean?
Talking about the expansion of the universe and variations in density. I have a question about the map of the Universe. When mapping the Cosmic Web and the position of galaxies and galaxy clusters, how do we know their actual position at this moment? Are those maps based on where we see them, or where they have moved since that light was emitted? I mean, a galaxy a billion light years away, has been moving for a billion years. So doesn't the Universe actually look completely different than what we see?
The universe looks like it does when we observe it. We can calculate how it will change over time. My guess is that the large structures will largely remain recognizable over billions of years as they seem to be bound by gravity. The voids may likely enlarge and the filaments contract, but the overall picture will likely remain the same, even in another 5, 10 or 15 billion years. My reason for this view is that the large structures are as far as we know born out of the cosmic microwave background patterns. I hope this makes sense.
NASA is sending an SUV-sized helicopter to Mars! Very cool, but Martian pedestrians beware. 😬
Ah, but no worries. It won’t be driving around like the earth bound ones do. This one will fly and therefore be a menace to all living and non-living entities on Mars if it should accidentally drop out of the thin atmosphere.