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kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:27 pm

Michael829 wrote:
Quote:

The probability that a space probe would cause an issue with the sun is about the same as the probability than the sun will spontaneously turn itself into a giant meatball


That's doubtful, but irrelevant. Spontaneous events are out of our hands.

As I've been repeating, there probably won't be harm.

Quote:

-- neither is going to happen.


Probably not. As I've been repeating, there will probably be no harm.


In this case, the probability of us harming the sun is less than what in mathematics is known as "arbitrarily close to zero". That is, zero.

Michael829 wrote:
Quote:

If we could grab Mars and drop it into the sun, the only noticeable effect would be from the impact. And we'd have to be watching very closely to see that.


Be sure to use adequate filtration.

As I've been repeating, there will probably be no harm.

Quote:


I'd be surprised if objects larger than the space probe didn't fall into the sun on a regular basis. Even large objects on occasion.



Quite possibly. And the composition and configuration of their matter is identical to that of the Parker probe, right?

Quote:

A couple of decades ago, a comet hit Jupiter. The results? Minor disturbances in the cloud cover that disappeared quickly. It is quite possible that it would have never been noticed if we had not already knew it was going to hit Jupiter.


As I've been repeating, there probably will be no harm.

And, as I also have already said, my objection is largely aesthetic and a matter of principle.

You know, the Sun doesn't belong to any country, least of all to any agency of any country. Intrusive experimentation on something that isn't owned by the experimenter should require some consensus. That's just obvious.

A lot of people here like science, and that's a good thing. But many people who like science feel a duty to defend any science, any proposed experiment, as long as it isn't prohibitively expensive, or very likely to bring disaster.

...as part of a duty to defend science from the anti-science heathens.

The Sun isn't just another object, like planets, moons or asteroids, to dump on and experiment on. Go outside. The Sun is an essential part of that environment that you walk into when you go out the door. ...aside from the fact that it's what makes life on Earth possible at all.

It's bizarre that it's being regarded as just another thing to intrusively experiment on.

Yes, every time you get in a car and go on the road, you're taking a much greater risk than any risk to you from the Parker solar-corona probe.

It's about principle and aesthetics, not just risk.

Michael Ossipoff


Principle and aesthetics? That is absurd. There's no question of principle and aesthetics at all. Whatever we might dump into the sun would be gone. It would not damage the sun. It would not clutter up the sun. The sun would be merely a few pounds heavier.

The only way principle would be involved is if we were proposing to shoot living bodies into the sun and that would come from the killing of the humans or animals, not because of the sun.



Last edited by kokopelli on 07 Dec 2017, 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:30 pm

Michael829 wrote:
Tollorin wrote:
Michael829 wrote:
The Sun, with about 100 times the Earth's diameter, and a million times the Earth's volume,[...]

This is the reason why you shouldn't be worried about it. There is no reason why a probe with less mass that a small car would have any effect on the Sun whatsoever.


...probably.

There's something called a "chain-reaction". A small object entering a much larger object, can start a process that soon propagates throughout the larger object.

Examples:

Dropping a rough-surfaced pebble into a large pot of superheated water.

Cloud-seeding.

Yes, before you say it, the ratio of masses, between the Parker probe and the Sun is greater than the ratio of masses between a boiling-chip and a pot of water, or cloud-seeding material and a cloud.

The point of my comment is that, via a chain-reaction, a small object can influence a much larger one.

Michael829


There would be no chain reaction. Whatever we dropped into the sun would merely vaporize and become part of the sun.



kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:39 pm

For what it's worth, the cost of launching trash into space so that we could drop it into the sun is so great that you don't have to worry about your sensibilities being offended by us dropping our leftover garbage into the sun.

I do imagine that some people would love to have their bodies dropped into the sun after their death so that their bodies could shine out into the heavens as light.



Last edited by kokopelli on 07 Dec 2017, 5:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Michael829
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07 Dec 2017, 5:39 pm

Kiprobalhato wrote:
i’m pretty sure the sun would almost instantly destroy anything we have to throw at it.

there’s nothing we can do to harm it with our current technologies.


Probably not.


Quote:

yeah, we don’t know what would happen 100%


Exactly.

As I said elsewhere, every time you get in a car and go on the road, you take a much greater risk than any risk to you caused by the Parker probe. But it's an aesthetic matter, and a matter of principle. Do you really think the Sun is something for us to intrusively experiment on? ...just because you're sure that we can get away with it?

Quote:

, that’s true...but we sent a probe to venus once and that melted almost right away no harm done. so IMO it’s safe to say the more intense and massive star would hardly bat an eye.


Probably.

Quote:

as for your analogy between hurling a tiny probe into THE SUN and spitting on a biker - i have no words.


The biker-spitting would be much more likely to result in serious physical harm.

But neither is very respectful.

Michael829


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07 Dec 2017, 5:40 pm

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Parker Solar Probe: Humanity’s First Visit to a Star
NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

Quote:
Why do we study the sun and the solar wind?
The sun is the only star we can study up close. By studying this star we live with, we learn more about stars throughout the universe.
The sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. The more we know about it, the more we can understand how life on Earth developed.
The sun also affects Earth in less familiar ways. It is the source of the solar wind; a flow of ionized gases from the sun that streams past Earth at speeds of more than 500 km per second (a million miles per hour).
Disturbances in the solar wind shake Earth's magnetic field and pump energy into the radiation belts, part of a set of changes in near-Earth space known as space weather.
Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes, or interfere with onboard electronics. The more we learn about what causes space weather – and how to predict it – the more we can protect the satellites we depend on.
The solar wind also fills up much of the solar system, dominating the space environment far past Earth. As we send spacecraft and astronauts further and further from home, we must understand this space environment just as early seafarers needed to understand the ocean.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/pa ... -to-a-star

This is good useful science we need to better understand the universe around us. Without this kind of science we would live in ignorance and that can potentially have grave consequences.

If OP is worried about litter I suggest you gather up some plastic littering you're local neighbourhood and then influence others to do the same :) Plastics has become a huge problem for the marine environment which humans and other species relies on. Cleaning it up and influencing others to do the same as well as getting the medias and politicians attention on the problem would actually be useful.

I also suggest learning more about how science really works and why it is so important. I can recommend this podcast for some fun and educational information about science and critical thinking: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/

And for space stuff I can recommend Phil Plait's blog (he's an actual astronomer)
http://www.syfy.com/tags/bad-astronomy



Last edited by Enceladus on 07 Dec 2017, 5:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Michael829
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07 Dec 2017, 5:41 pm

kokopelli wrote:
Michael829 wrote:
Tollorin wrote:
Michael829 wrote:
The Sun, with about 100 times the Earth's diameter, and a million times the Earth's volume,[...]

This is the reason why you shouldn't be worried about it. There is no reason why a probe with less mass that a small car would have any effect on the Sun whatsoever.


...probably.

There's something called a "chain-reaction". A small object entering a much larger object, can start a process that soon propagates throughout the larger object.

Examples:

Dropping a rough-surfaced pebble into a large pot of superheated water.

Cloud-seeding.

Yes, before you say it, the ratio of masses, between the Parker probe and the Sun is greater than the ratio of masses between a boiling-chip and a pot of water, or cloud-seeding material and a cloud.

The point of my comment is that, via a chain-reaction, a small object can influence a much larger one.

Michael829


There would be no chain reaction.


Probably.

Of course you're an expert on the mechanisms of the Sun, right? Thank you for your assurance. Why don't you share your expertise with other scientists, so that they can save the expense of the Parker probe (They seem to think that there are things that they don't know about how the Sun works.)

Michael829


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kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:44 pm

Michael829 wrote:
Kiprobalhato wrote:
i’m pretty sure the sun would almost instantly destroy anything we have to throw at it.

there’s nothing we can do to harm it with our current technologies.


Probably not.


Definitely not.



kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:51 pm

No matter how much we learn about anything, there is always more to learn.



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07 Dec 2017, 5:53 pm

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I also suggest learning more about how science really works and why it is so important.


We can't all be a science-expert like you :D

As a typical Science-Worshipper, you feel a mission and a duty to defend science from the anti-science heathens, but supporting all science, every experiment, as long as it isn't prohibitively expensive or very likely to be dangerous.

...because anyone who questions the desirability of any science activity must not know "how science really works". :D

It's the scientific people like you versus the anti-science heathens, right? :D


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kokopelli
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07 Dec 2017, 5:58 pm

Michael829 wrote:
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I also suggest learning more about how science really works and why it is so important.


We can't all be a science-expert like you :D

As a typical Science-Worshipper, you feel a mission and a duty to defend science from the anti-science heathens, but supporting all science, every experiment, as long as it isn't prohibitively expensive or very likely to be dangerous.

...because anyone who questions the desirability of any science activity must not know "how science really works". :D

It's the scientific people like you versus the anti-science heathens, right? :D


It is kind of obvious that you are no expert on science. Not even an amateur on science.



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07 Dec 2017, 5:59 pm

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Principle and aesthetics? That is absurd. There's no question of principle and aesthetics at all. Whatever we might dump into the sun would be gone. It would not damage the sun. It would not clutter up the sun. The sun would be merely a few pounds heavier.


I'm talking about aesthetics and principle regarding the act itself.

When I speak of aesthetics and principle, I'm not referring to damage or lasting clutter.


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07 Dec 2017, 6:01 pm

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It is kind of obvious that you are no expert on science. Not even an amateur on science.


Then share your expertise with us.

Feel free to specify something incorrect that I said about a matter covered by science.


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07 Dec 2017, 6:05 pm

Ha ha, I tend to agree with you, Michael829.

I do think that the exploration of space is important, as is all scientific inquiry - but people, even scientists, seem to want to believe that they don't have to think things through before they implement them, they don't have to worry about contamination, and if they mess up, or mess up the environment, then they want you to look the other way. NASA isn't immune to that!

2011:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45511362/ns/t ... inAnEqnGUk

2015:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... sity-rover

The mars rovers were sold to the public, in part, as a way to determine if there is, or ever was, life on Mars. But NASA failed to follow protocol for sending clean equipment, then sent the rover anyway because it would have been expensive and time consuming to clean the equipment, and now they expect the public to forget that contaminated equipment was sent.

This article, 2015:

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why ... quid-water

says that the rover will stay 50 kilometers away from the water/ice area in question.

As if I've never heard of "wind". As if I can't imagine a microbe traveling 50 kilometers on the "wind".

I'm sure that they're sorry, but this is an error that can't be fixed. Now if we find life on mars, it will always be questionable whether it was there to begin with, or if it hitched a ride on a contaminated rover which NASA chose to send anyway, because of the expense of acknowledging their error, and addressing it before sending the rover.

It was their choice to ruin their own project. Therefore, I have trouble being impressed with their project.

Even if the solar probe you mention doesn't damage the sun - it could easily damage the advancement of scientific understanding if sloppy methods are acceptable for NASA.

As an aside . . . I can't believe how unconcerned most people are regarding pollution, and trash, in this day and age. Used to be that people argued that it was totally fine to dump tons of waste into the ocean, because the ocean was "so big" that it would never matter. We can see how that worked out. The sea life is rapidly dying due to our waste issues, the pollution washes up on our shores every second of every day, and we have no way to repair this overwhelming destruction.

It matters.

It dismays me that folks are now using the same, "it's too big to be affected by trash, and won't ever matter" argument regarding the sun.

When will it end? Our pollution reaches from the depths of the oceans (about 35,000 feet below sea level) to the edges of the exosphere (about 6200 miles up into the sky, if you only consider satellites, and well beyond if you consider all of the trash left behind in the wake of 'missions' to the moon and elsewhere).

Science is one of my favorite subjects, but I disagree that scientists should be allowed to poison the environment and not have to worry about cleaning up their messes. I don't think it's funny, at all.



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07 Dec 2017, 6:49 pm

Thank you, plainjain, for showing that not everyone here supports unlimited unaesthetic and principle-offensive invasive-experimentation and pollution, in the name of "science".

(If the invasive pollution will be absorbed without harm, that doesn't make the polluting act any less repugnant.)

"The sky's the limit"? Evidently not.



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07 Dec 2017, 7:26 pm

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(If the invasive pollution will be absorbed without harm, that doesn't make the polluting act any less repugnant.)


Agreed.

I highly doubt that there's no harm done from ceaselessly poisoning the environment. The burden of proof for that lies upon the shoulders of those making that claim. I can't just believe that the only effect of a comet slamming into Jupiter was that it went behind some clouds, or that the only effect of sending a probe to Venus was that the probe melted. These are just things which people have imagined, aren't backed up by proof, and don't take into consideration effects which are not physical, or impossible to predict or confirm, either. Sounds reasonable, but doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

From https://www.dartmouth.edu/~toxmetal/tox ... story.html:

Quote:
The copper pollution of the Roman days still haunts us today. One former Roman copper mine and smelting site in Wadi Faynan, Jordan is still — two thousand years after it ceased operations — a toxic wasteland littered with slag from copper smelting. Researchers have discovered that vegetation and livestock in Wadi Faynan today have high copper levels in their tissue.


Melting/smelting metals can leave toxic pollution that lingers for thousands of years. That's fact.

Cause and effect, the butterfly effect, extraordinary claims, etcetera . . .



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07 Dec 2017, 7:47 pm

plainjain wrote:
Ha ha, I tend to agree with you, Michael829.

I do think that the exploration of space is important, as is all scientific inquiry - but people, even scientists, seem to want to believe that they don't have to think things through before they implement them, they don't have to worry about contamination, and if they mess up, or mess up the environment, then they want you to look the other way. NASA isn't immune to that!

2011:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45511362/ns/t ... inAnEqnGUk

2015:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... sity-rover

The mars rovers were sold to the public, in part, as a way to determine if there is, or ever was, life on Mars. But NASA failed to follow protocol for sending clean equipment, then sent the rover anyway because it would have been expensive and time consuming to clean the equipment, and now they expect the public to forget that contaminated equipment was sent.

This article, 2015:

https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-why ... quid-water

says that the rover will stay 50 kilometers away from the water/ice area in question.

As if I've never heard of "wind". As if I can't imagine a microbe traveling 50 kilometers on the "wind".

I'm sure that they're sorry, but this is an error that can't be fixed. Now if we find life on mars, it will always be questionable whether it was there to begin with, or if it hitched a ride on a contaminated rover which NASA chose to send anyway, because of the expense of acknowledging their error, and addressing it before sending the rover.

It was their choice to ruin their own project. Therefore, I have trouble being impressed with their project.

Even if the solar probe you mention doesn't damage the sun - it could easily damage the advancement of scientific understanding if sloppy methods are acceptable for NASA.

As an aside . . . I can't believe how unconcerned most people are regarding pollution, and trash, in this day and age. Used to be that people argued that it was totally fine to dump tons of waste into the ocean, because the ocean was "so big" that it would never matter. We can see how that worked out. The sea life is rapidly dying due to our waste issues, the pollution washes up on our shores every second of every day, and we have no way to repair this overwhelming destruction.

It matters.

It dismays me that folks are now using the same, "it's too big to be affected by trash, and won't ever matter" argument regarding the sun.

When will it end? Our pollution reaches from the depths of the oceans (about 35,000 feet below sea level) to the edges of the exosphere (about 6200 miles up into the sky, if you only consider satellites, and well beyond if you consider all of the trash left behind in the wake of 'missions' to the moon and elsewhere).

Science is one of my favorite subjects, but I disagree that scientists should be allowed to poison the environment and not have to worry about cleaning up their messes. I don't think it's funny, at all.


Science is one of your favorite subjects but you worry about scientists littering the sun with space probes?