Question box: 2012 Astronomy
1. How long does it take for the magnetic poles to switch?
The time it takes for Earth's magnetic field to reverse polarity is approximately 700000 years. The best evidence of magnetic pole shifts are preserved in the geological record. By studying lava fields in places like Hawaii, scientists "guesstimate" that the most recent shift occurred 780,000 years ago. Beyond that, no one knows how long a shift takes -- could be thousands of years, could be overnight!
2. How expensive is an average satellite?
The average satellite price over the next decade will be $99 million, compared to $97 million in the past 10 years. The per-satellite launch price is predicted to remain flat, at $51 million
3. Why don’t voyager 1 and 2 get sucked into another planet’s orbit?
Following Voyager 2's closest approach to Neptune on August 25, 1989, the spacecraft flew southward, below the ecliptic plane and onto a course that will take it, too, to interstellar space.
The Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of a rare geometric arrangement of the outer planets in the late 1970s and the 1980s which allowed for a four-planet tour for a minimum of propellant and trip time. This layout of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which occurs about every 175 years, allows a spacecraft on a particular flight path to swing from one planet to the next without the need for large onboard propulsion systems. The flyby of each planet bends the spacecraft's flight path and increases its velocity enough to deliver it to the next destination. Using this "gravity assist" technique, first demonstrated with NASA's Mariner 10 Venus/Mercury mission in 1973-74, the flight time to Neptune was reduced from 30 years to 12.
4. Will Earth get sucked into a black hole one day?
no
5. How is a black hole born/made?
6. We think that a black hole can form when a very massive star collapses at the end of its lifetime
Black holes are thought to form from stars or other massive objects if and when they collapse from their own gravity to form an object whose density is infinite
7. What does a black hole do?
t is unknown what happens to the objects that are sucked into the black hole but it is thoerized that they end up in another dimension or region of space. Most scientists believe you go nowhere... you just become a highly compressed plasma that is forever trapped in the black hole.
In fact the gravity is so strong that even light can't escape.
8. Can we dispose our garbage by sending it to the sun? would this be a smart idea?
t costs millions of dollars to put even the smallest of payloads into orbit and much more to create a craft that can achieve escape velocity of earth's gravity. It's simply not cost effective.
9. How do you name your own star or have one?
Starting at $19.95, Name A Star Live is a wonderful, timeless gift that people everywhere give for any occasion. Everyone loves having a star named† after them.
Your star name will be registered in the Universal Star Catalog’s database featuring hundreds of thousands of stars numerically designated by the world renowned Smithsonian Astrophysical Institute. Each star is copyrighted with its precise stellar coordinates allowing the star recipient, friends, family or anyone – including future generations – to identify the star name and locate the star in the sky using a telescope.
10. Does the moon orbit the sun? no, the moon orbits Earth
11. Why can’t we live on Jupiter or Saturn?
You can’t live on Jupiter because there is no ground (It's a gas giant). The air is not breathable because it has methane and ammonia which is deadly. The winds blow at 1,000 miles per hour. You can’t live there because the temperature is -300’F. There is no water or food on Jupiter. Jupiter and Saturn have far more severe radiation than we once thought -- so severe it almost disabled robotic space probes quickly flying by. And let's not forget frequent meteor impacts.
However colonies could orbit Jupiter, its moons or possible inhabit the moons directly. Resource could be culled from the rings and moons. There is a huge amount of particulate matter and energy to be harvested from it to provide the resources for colonization.
12. Are there really aliens? Do they really exist?
If there's life, there's the potential that in some world orbiting some star in some galaxy, an intelligent space-faring race may be as inquisitive as we are, pondering their place in the cosmos and looking for other civilizations like their own.
Advanced beings, also known as aliens, do exist!
13. Are there any similarities to the Milky Way candy bar and the Milky Way galaxy?
The Milky Way bar was created in 1923 by Frank C. Mars and originally manufactured in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was the first commercially distributed filled chocolate bar. The name and taste was taken from a famed malted milk drink (milkshake) of the day – not the Earth’s galaxy, as many contend.
14. How/why is space a vacuum?
The fact that it doesn't have much in it.
Note that it's not actually a perfect vacuum. It's just really close.
Vacuum means region of empty space. It has the same origin of the word as evacuated and vacant.
15. What would happen to the Earth is the sun blew up/died? Would the human race survive?
The Earth will be devoured by the sun when the sun goes through its “RED GIANT” phase of its life
16. How cold is space?
Cold. 0 Kelvin is absolute zero. When all matter stops vibrating. It doesn’t exist, so 3 Kelvin is the coldest space due to the left over radiation from the big bang
It's that cold because there is very little matter in the vacuum of space and what is there is not moving with much energy. That's what "cold" is - lack of energy... or more specifically, lack of molecular motion.
17. Before the earth looked the way it is now, what did it look like before? I heard it was once covered in water, and then lava, …Is this true?
That’s a looonnngg answer
18. What is the nearest star? How close is it? When we look at the night sky would it be the biggest star we see, because of how close it is?
The next closest known star to the Earth is Proxima Centauri, red dwarf star approximately 4.2 light years from Earth
Faint red Proxima Centauri, at only 3100 K and 500 times less bright than the sun
19. How were humans made? How did monkeys evolve into humans?
Chimpanzee DNA is 97% similar to humans. Read Charles Darwin – it’s a long answer too
20. How is a planet born?
The planet appears to be building itself from surrounding dust and gas as it orbits its host star.
A University of Hawaii astronomer used the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to capture the first direct image of a planet forming around a st
21. Is it possible to live on one of Jupiter’s moons?
Perhaps. Astronomers are particularly interested in Europa, an icy moon. They think it might have a liquid-water sea under its frozen surface, and that there might be microbial life there. Still, we don't know for certain.
22. When will Earth collide with another galaxy?
No, it will be devoured by the sun first in about 5 billion years
23. When astronauts go into space, could they go close to a star? Or see a star up close?
It would take a very long time to get to the nearest star, 4.2 light years away
24. Is earth the only planet with liquid water?
Europa, Jupiters moon, is an icy moon, maybe has liquid water underneath the ice
25. Do other planets have rain?
It rains acid rain on Venus, and it snows water ice and dry ice on mars
26. Can a planet exist without a hot core or no core at all? No, it must have some type of core and gravitational force to hold itself together.
27. Can we grow trees on Mars? Will we be able to within my lifetime?
It could take 100000 years for trees to transform an icy blue Mars with a carbon dioxide ... won't see it within my life time though
28. Does the sun orbit? Yes it orbits the galaxy. It takes 230 million year to orbit the galaxy. Its called a galactic year, maybe heard the term in star trek or star wars.
29. Do you think there is life in our solar system?
Yes, some type of microbial life will be discovered… some day.
30. If our solar system is moving 134 miles per second, how come when some one leaves the earth, they don’t get left behind while it goes away?
Gravity and newton’s first law
31. Why doesn’t the north star move?
The North Star does not appear to move because it lies almost directly over the North Pole, on tip of the earth’s axis, on which the earth spins. its real name is Polaris. Polaris will not always be the North Star. Little by little the earth’s axis changes its direction. After many centuries, the North Pole will be pointing to the star Vega, which will then become our North Star
But the North Star does move. If you took its picture, you’d find that it makes its own little circle around the exact point of the north celestial pole every day. That’s because the North Star is really offset a little – by about three-quarters of a degree – from celestial north.
32. How far away is the north star from the sun?
430 light years
33. At night time are we able to see another galaxy?
The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31 or as the Great Spiral Galaxy[1], is one of the most distant objects that the unaided human eye can see; it lies over 2.2 to 3 million light years away.[2] Locating it the first time is a little tricky, but once you find it, it's hard to ever lose it again.
Note: The best time for finding the Andromeda galaxy is between August through late March, so if you're experiencing difficulties locating it, bookmark this page and try again later. Also, be aware that this is easier to find from the northern hemisphere than from the southern hemisphere.
34. What happens when galaxies collide, do they implode and then explode?
A galaxy is made of roughly 100 billion stars. So you would think that in a head on collision between two galaxies, there would be countless collisions between those stars, right? The fact is that in such a collision, the probability of two stars colliding is almost 0
It can interact gravitationally, the galaxies can pull on the material in the other galaxies and disrupt their morphologies. There is also friction between the gas in the colliding galaxies, causing shock waves that can trigger some star formation in the galaxies.
35. Have any telescopes captured the end of a star’s life?
On March 28, 2011, NASA’s Swift satellite caught a flash of high-energy X-rays pouring in from deep space. Swift is designed to do this, and since its launch in 2004 has seen hundreds of such things, usually caused by stars exploding at the ends of their lives.
But this time was hardly "usual". It didn’t see a star exploding as a supernova, it saw a star literally getting torn apart as it fell too close to a black hole!
36. Do you think there are alternate universes?
Wormholes to other universes that exist in parallel ………….. read about string theory
37. Can I buy a planet? No
38. Do you think there is another livable planet in another galaxy?
Its possible – it’s so big
39. What is the temperature of Uranus? (your anus) and Saturn (bob)
Uranus is the coldest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System, with a minimum temperature of 47K (−284°C)
Saturn = -250° C
40. Would my face freeze if I took off my helmet in space. Would I die instantly? Has this happened to anyone before? Why is space cold?
Their exposed veins and eyeballs soon bulge in what is clearly a disagreeable manner. The ill-fated adventurers rapidly swell like over-inflated balloons, ultimately bursting in a gruesome spray of blood
No it hasn’t happened and space is cold because it’s empty, no energy
41. What inhabitants exist on Andromeda?
Unknown
42. Will we reach the north star? No
43. If there’s an end to space, will we hit a force field?
Do not know
44. How big is a black hole?
A black hole with the mass of the Earth would be less than two centimeters (just 0.7 inches) across!!
When you read about black holes, you would have read about something called the event horizon. That is the point from which light can no longer escape from the black hole. Nobody knows as to what really happens inside the event horizon.
the black hole mass is equal to the dead massive star mass its mass is nearly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 KG
which is 1 with 31 zero.
some black holes may be 1 with 36 zero.
this huge mass is compressed in very small space.
45. Do we know when we are going to crash into the Andromeda Galaxy?
The Milky Way and Andromeda are heading toward each other at about 75 miles per second. They are so far away from each other that the big crash is a few billion years away
46. Can we ever make it to Neptune?