[X] My Assistant

[SFJCody]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7968

[DDAVIS]

[quote=ljk4-1,Sep 8 2005, 04:21 PM]
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/2005.08.28_...l#1125582509708

An Infrared Hunt for Artificial Kuiper Belt Objects

Fascinating, sounds like something Carl Sagan might have published in Icarus when he was editor. Kinda like SETI but a lot closer. I always thought that advanced propulsion ideas should be studied for traces of their use that could be detected from a distance and those signs searched for, such as Bussard ramjets and nuclear pulse vehicles. It is said that the 'loudest' radio traces fro Earth by far were the above ground nuclear tests. Such radio signitures coming from the tests (or wars) of other civilizations may be long reaching signals worth looking for.

Don

[ljk4-1]

[quote=DDAVIS,Sep 8 2005, 12:09 PM]
[quote=ljk4-1,Sep 8 2005, 04:21 PM]
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/2005.08.28_...l#1125582509708

An Infrared Hunt for Artificial Kuiper Belt Objects

Fascinating, sounds like something Carl Sagan might have published in Icarus when he was editor. Kinda like SETI but a lot closer. I always thought that advanced propulsion ideas should be studied for traces of their use that could be detected from a distance and those signs searched for, such as Bussard ramjets and nuclear pulse vehicles. It is said that the 'loudest' radio traces fro Earth by far were the above ground nuclear tests. Such radio signitures coming from the tests (or wars) of other civilizations may be long reaching signals worth looking for.

Don

[/quote]

According to G. Lemarchand in his 1992 article Detectability of Extraterrestrial Technological Activities:

Elliot estimated the distance at which the United States "Starfish" nuclear test could be detected by our present technology of X-ray detectors. Assuming that the energy of the explosion is equivalent to 1.4 megatons and that the X-ray pulse was equally intense in all directions, he found that this explosion should be detected from a distance of ~400 Astronomical Units, about ten times the radius of Pluto's solar orbit.

Supposing that all the terrestrial nuclear powers [3] pooled their nuclear weapons stockpiles to produce a single explosion in space (E~2x10 to the 4 power megatons). Considering that the X-ray pulse could be concentrated into a conical beam of about thirty degrees in angle with no loss of radiation, a typical terrestrial X-ray detector should be able to detect a signal from a distance of ~190 light years.

3 - In 1989 the United States and the Soviet Union had almost 55,000 nuclear warheads with a combined destructive power of 15,500 megatons (Source: Bulletin of Atomic Scientist, 1990).

The full article here:

http://www.coseti.org/lemarch1.htm

Along with Orion, this could be another "good" use for nuclear weapons.

[ljk4-1]

Here is an article by G. Matloff that is quite similar to the previous one on searching for artificial KBOs.

http://www.nidsci.org/essaycomp/gmatloff.html

Interesting quote:

"If starships have crossed to our solar system within past eons (perhaps accelerated by solar sails and decelerated by a combination of magnetic reflection of interstellar ions and solar sails), they may have created a myriad of artificial worldlets from asteroidal and cometary material. We may live within a "Dyson Sphere" (53) of millions of space habitats, each masquerading as a small comet nucleus or asteroid.

"In the absence of directed radio transmissions from the extraterrestrials to the Earth, detection will be challenging, but not impossible. One method of detection might be a search for excess infrared emissions from asteroidal objects (5)."

[abalone]

http://www.nidsci.org/essaycomp/gmatloff.html[/url]
We may live within a "Dyson Sphere" (53) of millions of space habitats, each masquerading as a small comet nucleus or asteroid.

Why dont they just eat us and live on Earth??

[Bob Shaw]

Why dont they just eat us and live on Earth??

Earth just isn't suitable for life - apart from the obvious fact that it's gravity is far too high for life to develop, the surface is largely molten, and the high-temperature resistant silicon materials normally found below the H2O rock crust on proper planets are constantly attacked by the free oxygen and even - amazingly - molten rock 'rain' in it's super-dense and ultra-hot atmosphere. Oh, and there's the radiation flux from the sun, and some hints that the planet itself may have extensive radiation belts, too. No, life on Earth is just a foolish fantasy entertained by the ignorant!

[abalone]

No, life on Earth is just a foolish fantasy

Ahh!! I knew that there was a logical explanation.

On a slightly different point I recall that one of the Pioneers or Voyagers was subject to a detectable deflection by a TNO when it was beyond the orbit of Pluto. Can anyone recall any detail about this event or am I just dreaming?

[SFJCody]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...TL&type=science

Although when he first reported Xena's discovery on July 29, he did call it the solar system's 10th planet, he now says he's happy if people want to stick to the traditional nine planets

[SFJCody]

Work continues on solar system's new objects

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/09solarssytem/

[SFJCody]

Distant solar system body may be cigar-shaped

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn7968

[SigurRosFan]

Work continues on solar system's new objects

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/09solarssytem/

Thanks for the new article.

--- The three objects were all detected with the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory by a team composed of planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Gemini Observatory, and Yale University. ---

Official identification - Nickname

2003 EL61 - Santa with the moon Rudolph

2005 FY9 - Easterbunny

2003 UB313 - Xena

--- If indeed Xena reflects 70 percent of the sunlight (similar to that of Pluto) reaching it, as does Pluto, then Xena is about 2700 kilometers in diameter. ---

Spitzer data: --- At any rate, the researchers hope that infrared data returned by the Spitzer Space Telescope over the weekend of August 27-28, in addition to recently obtained data from the 30-meter IRAM telescope in Spain, will help nail down Xena's size. ---

[tedstryk]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4230056.stm

This makes for a good flyby target - you could map the whole thing at high resolution with one NH spacecraft, and it would be interesting to see the effects such a spin would have on the surface.

[David]

"Santa is crazy, and it's my favorite -- by far the weirdest of the three," Brown said. It is significantly larger than Pluto, it's shaped like a huge cigar, and it rotates end-over-end every four hours; it also has a single tiny moon about 60 miles in diameter orbiting around it.

His observations from a small telescope in Chile show that Santa is a fast-rotating cigar-shaped body that is about the diameter of Pluto along its longer axis.

It was discovered in July 2005 by a team of Spanish researchers, who used its apparent brightness to estimate that it might be larger than Pluto.

These statements are just not compatible.

[Mongo]

Distant solar system body may be cigar-shaped

I am not at all sure that I buy this.

I can see at least two alternative explanations. The first possibility is that we are looking at a strong difference in albedo between the two hemispheres, similar to the case of Iapetus. This would also produce the observed light-curve shape, and seems a lot more physically plausible to me.

The second possibility is that we are looking at a very close binary system. The limiting case would be a contact binary with two equal-sized bodies, each one 35% of the mass of Pluto. Given a 3.9 hour orbital period, we would have a center-of-mass to center-of-mass separation of 1450 km, allowing for a radius of each body of up to 725 km. A body with 35% of Pluto's mass and a radius of 725 km would have a density of 2.87 times that of water.

The other limit is the case where all the mass is concentrated in one body with 70% of Pluto's mass and a radius of 1450 km, giving a density of 1.47 times that of water.

At Pluto's density of 2.1 times that of water, a combined mass of 70 % of Pluto, and a center-of-mass to center-of-mass separation of 1450 km, a contact binary would have one body with 63% of Pluto's mass and a radius of 980 km, and the second body having a mass of 7% of Pluto and a radius of 470 km, for a mass ratio of 9 to 1 (compared to the Pluto/Charon system with a mass ratio of 7 to 1). The secondary object would have a radius 48% of its primary, compared to Charon having a radius 52% of Pluto.

Bill

[Byran]

I'm interest precovery bright TNO. Help me add its table.

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