Oknight
Oknight t1_j8p8z12 wrote
>Space launch costs have dropped like a stone over the last decade or two, but it still ain't cheap to lift mass into orbit – SpaceX's best prices are still well over US$1,000 per kilogram (2.2 lb).
People have SERIOUSLY not internalized what's about to happen.
Oknight t1_j4mpblo wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in How do we know that we are in a certain place inside our galaxy? and how do we know how big it is just by looking at the cross section we are in? by friday_panda
Problem is, what do you mean by the "size" of the galaxy? Where is the edge of a cloud?
Oknight t1_j4mon6h wrote
Reply to comment by e_j_white in How do we know that we are in a certain place inside our galaxy? and how do we know how big it is just by looking at the cross section we are in? by friday_panda
But remember the size isn't really a determined thing... the galaxy doesn't have "start and end" points it's a vague cloud mostly of surrounding dark matter in a gigantic halo. There's a "center" to the spiral structure of the areas that are most actively forming stars and where gas and dust are densest but that isn't a strongly defined point the way the Sun is for the Solar System.
Oknight t1_iu990aw wrote
Reply to comment by DuncanEastwood in Why does the angle of Spitzer's Pillars of Creation image look different? by MalcolmY
You are technically correct, the BEST KIND of correct!
Oknight t1_irw7odq wrote
Reply to comment by skibble in The vast majority of the 150-400 billion stars in the Milky Way haven't been directly detected. Alpha Centauri is the nearest known star to Sol. What is the probability that there are nearer stars that remain undiscovered? by [deleted]
The orbital period of Proxima makes it the closest star to Earth for a much longer period than human beings generally care about. Eventually even the Alpha Centauri system including Proxima won't be the closest stars to Earth and the time frame for that isn't all that much larger than a Proxima "year". In less than 3 Proxima years Gliese 710 will pass only 90 Light Days from Sol.
Oknight t1_jboub3m wrote
Reply to I just learned that the known shortest DNA in an “organism” is about 1700 base pairs in a certain virus. Is there a minimum amount of “code” required for an organism (or virus) to function in any capacity? by mcbergstedt
I understand a virus to be more like a chain letter than an "organism" -- a package of information that induces an information processing system to make copies of itself, but I believe you need the information processing system functioning, like a living cell, to make the copies or the virus doesn't do anything.