SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The Dawn spacecraft has found evidence of magnesium sulphate (epsom salts) on Ceres, causing the mysterious bright spots:
The US space agency's Dawn satellite continues to return remarkable images from the dwarf planet Ceres. Now just 385km above the surface (lower than the space station is above Earth), the probe has revealed new features inside the mini-world's Occator Crater. This is the 92km-wide depression that has multiple bright spots of what are thought to be exposed salts.
[...] "The intricate geometry of the crater interior suggests geologic activity in the recent past, but we will need to complete detailed geologic mapping of the crater in order to test hypotheses for its formation." Scientists think the bright spots are deposits of epsom salts (magnesium sulphate), the trace remains of briny water-ice that at one time became exposed on the surface.
With no atmosphere on the dwarf planet, the water content would have rapidly vaporised, leaving only the magnesium sulphate spots. Ceres likely has quite a lot of buried water-ice. This idea is being investigated by the satellite's GRaND instrument, which senses neutrons and gamma rays produced by cosmic ray interactions with surface materials. It is a means to understand the chemistry of the top metre or so of Ceres' rocky "soil".
Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 23 2016, @07:06PM
With all the stuff that "vaporizes" into space, I ain't getting into a near-lightspeed ship until we actually invent those sci-fi shields. You can take my seat to Proxima Centauri.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2016, @08:29PM
I'll take the warped space method that actually seems feasible, though not 100% sure whether it's susceptible to small interstellar collisions or just significantly gravitational ones.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Wednesday March 23 2016, @09:32PM
From what I understand of the theory, the a ship in a warped space bubble-thing wouldn't impact any particles at any higher velocity than if it wasn't in the warp. That's the freaky thing with the whole concept of the warp space drive. The ship isn't actually travelling "faster" than it can accelerate to via normal propulsion, but the warp makes it travel in less time, not faster (which I totally get sounds to be a oxymoron, but really, it isn't). So, even though the apparent velocity of the ship is 0.1c (or faster) particles hitting the ship would be slamming into it at velocities orders of magnitude lower.
What I would be concerned about is the theorized buildup of exotic particles at the front of the ship and whether some of that buildup seeps into the space where the ship itself is.