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NASA's Juno Captures Jupiter Photo So Gorgeous You'll Swear It's Fake:
Jupiter is one of the most daunting planets in our Solar System, and thanks to the continually impressive work of Juno, NASA just shared a truly jaw-dropping photo. Considering most people won't ever get the chance to visit outer space for themselves, images from NASA and other organizations are extremely important. While it's difficult to convey the vastness of space in words alone, a picture from Perseverance, Hubble, or another instrument makes things much easier.
There are regular examples of this all the time. You could read an article about a massive aurora engulfing the Earth, but seeing a picture of its unfathomable beauty is that much more impactful. The same is true of all the Mars exploration happening right now. It's one thing to read about the planet having vast dunes and peculiar rocks, but to see actual pictures of these things is completely different. Whether it be for educational purposes or a passing interest, these photos are most people's gateway to the Milky Way and beyond.
NASA uploaded its latest space picture on November 10 and, simply put, it's so good you'll probably think it's fake. What you're looking at above is an image of Jupiter, as captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft and edited by scientist Brian Swift. The photo was originally taken on September 2 while Juno was 16,800 miles above Jupiter's gassy atmosphere. Juno's been orbiting Jupiter since July 2016 to do exactly this. It orbits the planet, regularly uses its 'JunoCam' to capture high-quality pictures, and is entirely solar-powered despite receiving 25x less sunlight compared to Earth. It's not the most talked-about spacecraft in Nasa's portfolio, but it really is one of the most impressive.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16 2021, @01:23PM (3 children)
Time is important, but here it is treated as the only important variable. It doesn't mean anything if nobody can leave their backyards because of the physical distances involved. von Neumann probes can't replicate without materials to replicate with; the argument here is that they'll just fly around and wherever they get, they just make some more stuff, whatever stuff is needed. The Fermi paradox treats the whole problem as a diffusion problem, but in the steps along the way there are "someone would have figured this out" steps. Not very compelling. As Douglas Adams pointed out, space is big, REALLY REALLY big. There is enough unobtainium and magical thinking that underlies both arguments and you can't treat it as an ideal gas problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 16 2021, @02:09PM (2 children)
The problem here is that the time is much more boggling than the distance! For example, suppose someone started walking from the beginning of the universe at a stiff rate of 20 miles a day. How far would they have gone by now? 17 light-years, a third of that since the Earth was created. The time metric is so much bigger than the space metric that you could in theory walk between stars with the time that's been given.
Which is the point of the exercise. There are all sorts of interesting scenarios. Maybe there are a bunch of dead or moribund civilizations out there that just never passed a "figured this out" step. Maybe we're the first intelligent life in the galaxy. Maybe there's a bunch of galactic life out there, but we're a zoo.
And really, it's not that hard. Do you really think we can't build spacecraft and entities that can last thousands of years?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 16 2021, @02:55PM (1 child)
No, I don't share your optimism. Or I should say, not widespread functioning systems, and certainly not self-replicating systems that can whip up copies of itself out of nothing. The dead hulls and carcasses would drift around, much like the fate of our Voyager probes, and perhaps happen by a star to give a start to an alien Avi Loeb to marvel at. You can't get around the laws of thermodynamics. My personal belief is that there is lots of intelligent life out there, past and present, but on the whole we are doomed to our stellar islands of existence, at least under the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 17 2021, @11:16PM
Sigh. So how long can one build such systems? Order of magnitude is fine. My take is that there's no law of thermodynamics that prevents us from eventually building spacecraft that can last millions of years. It's just a lot more hardcore engineering.