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I live in the UK , a program called Horizon : what happened before the big bang This was a great program . It had 5 -6 different scientists discuss their thoughts on what happened. Its probably on BBCi player if you fancy watching. My favourite part was Michio Kaku trying to create nothing. Sounds weird but is very interesting . In the US they have built a massive vacuum room , but even when emptied of matter , it still has properties . If anyone watched , then please comment I found a link on youtube part 1/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bGx3UB-Slg

http://phys.org/news/2014-02-distant-asteroid-revealed-complex-mini.html

Anything to do with the big bang theory is welcome here!

So, recently on my degree we've been looking at quantum mechanics; and the idea that information can travel faster than the speed of light using entanglement. My lecturer used the analogy of a particle decay and sending 2 emissions that are exactly the same in opposite directions towards two detectors. An observer of detector 1 can use this information to gain access to information about the particle at detector 2, even though there is not enough time for light to travel between the 2 detectors, and thus no information can be transferred from one detector to another. So how does the observer of detector 1 gain accesss to information about the particle at detector 2? My lecturer said this unanswerable, and this is "basically" what quantum theory is My question is this though; as my lecture is fairly incompetant at the best of times: By gaining information about particle 1 at detector 1, I understand that we can gain information from detector 2, which could, for arguments sake, be millions or billions of light years away; instantaneously. However, I do not believe that this transfer of information is instantaneous, but instead, it was already known, at the time the two emissions left the source in the middle. Why is this idea wrong? If I'm massively off with my understanding of quantum physics then feel free to slaughter me, or even better, explain/correct me. p.s. Might be interesting to know what everyone's thoughts on quantum physics are, not just the "correct" one

Following up on the stuff about Saturn on Stargazing Live last night, I found some amazing images at the NASA JPL Cassini mission website. For example, this animated gif of the North polar region!

Laser communication looks like it has a lot of potential in space. http://www.popsci.com/article/science/year-science-2014

I am going to make a tournament and please leave your name if you are interested in joining!!! chessman_calum

Has anyone read "A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence M. Krauss? Any good? Or if you'd like to recommend a book, that would also be welcome.

This is the paper which began some time ago on this group: http://vixra.org/abs/1311.0047 love to hear comments.

Sodom, Gommorah, and neighboring cities were wiped out by a large asteroid air burst.

Here is my photo's as promised, I have a Celestron C11 Schmidt-Cassegrain compound telescope(as seen in photo) im new to astrophotography but with my first few attempts(photos shown) I am really pleased with the results, please enjoy :-)

This thread is inspired by an article from Australian Geographic Magazine, which contains images such as this: Have you any favourite astronomical images?

Not directly, but they have seen the lensing affect of a big glob of it.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 is back! http://uk.news.yahoo.com/asteroid-1998-qe2-giant-rock-passes-earth-231351508.html#3UQcThH

I'm on a university degree at the University of Glamorgan, and while I'm not here (between june and mid-september), I'll be looking for work experience in the astronomy/geophysics/physics area of the job market. To get down to it - does anyone (preferably England) have any contacts I'd be able to get in touch with to organise work experience? Or even more helpfully - would anyone (again, preferably England) take on a work experience student if you work in these fields as your job? Hope this is allowed here, please say if it isn't as I can just as easily remove it, but I'm doing no harm! Calum. :-)

When the Open University enlists David Mitchell to narate 12 1 minute videos on astronomy, the result has surely got to be worth 15 minutes of anyone's time. (Well, they are a bit over a minute). Of course, you smart guys here will know most of the facts already, but still highly recommended for the cartoons! [Full screen is best, IMO] http://www.youtube.com/course?list=EChQpDGfX5e7CSp3rm5SDv7D_idfkRzje-

Hello All, I'm thinking of buying a new telescope. Aperture, portability, a GOTO mount and price are my primary concerns. Also, I don't want alignment with the celestial sphere to be too cumbersome of a process or be extremely sensitive to any alignment errors. From a little research it seems that the Orion SkyQuest 8xti IntelliScope (approx $700) meets my price and aperture requirements. Does anyone have experience with this telescope and/or mount, or with Orion telescopes/personnel in general? To find an object in its data base with this scope you follow prompts in the form of arrows on the handheld guide mechanism. That sounds OK, but I wondered how practical it was in the real world. I'm not sure that this is allowed in this forum. If not, my apologies, and any admin can delete this post. Thanks, Mark Beckner

With everything in the universe moving , I guess we measure our planet/solar system/ galaxy to other objects in space to determine our velocity through space. So the earth goes round the sun , sun round galaxy and the galaxy is moving at some 600km/s relative to the CMB. So , we are travelling at a tremendous speed. If humans ever managed to leave our galaxy and got into a position where we were under minimal influence from other objects. How would this effect our life span as time on earth would be different ? What I'm getting at is , if we were not moving , then would we live longer or shorter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21468116 So how about that? Windows were destroyed by the sonic boom and people were supposedly thrown off their feet by the force of impact! Apparently there is no connection to the asteroid we have a rendevous with later today; different trajectories. Can't imagine there are many reported instances of space-debris injuries in history!

I know its not directly associated with astronomy but is there a trick to factorising the quadratic: ax(to the power of four) + bx³ + cx² + dx + e My actual problem is: z^4 + 2z^3 - 4z^2 - 2z + 3. All help appreaciated! :)