Recent content by DrDaveBoboltz

Hi all, The Space.com forum moderators were kind enough to leave my AMA open an additional day so I could try to respond to all the remaining questions. Thanks again for all of the really insightful questions and discussion, I really enjoyed myself. Hopefully they'll let me do this again...

Thanks @David-J-Franks for the additional info on the thought experiment. To your first point, there is no such thing as a frictionless rod, so you would have to have something driving the hands on the clock in order to maintain the constant speed. That torque would have to be transmitted...

Hi @KC Strom, thanks for the question. Yes, radio observations are affected by both relativity and cosmological redshift. For redshift, one example is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is the primordial heat left over from the Big Bang. This approximately 3000K blackbody radiation...

Hi @suneritz, thanks for the question. I think the magnetic radiation shield discussed in the link you sent is still in the development stage, and wouldn't be likely at least for the early Artemis missions. This article on the NASA web pages talks about how they plan to protect the...

Hi @David-J-Franks it is really my pleasure. Everyone here has posted really thought-provoking questions making me think out of my normal box. You pose some interesting questions. Let's think about them one at a time. For the mechanical clock, let's first assume that the separated dials...

Sorry for the slow reply. For evolved stars the mechanism is thought to be a little different than young stars although there are some similarities. For evolved stars, their outer envelope gets so big (think the orbit of Jupiter) that the plasma is only loosely gravitationally bound. The...

Hi @timallard I'm not really sure what your asking for here. I'm going to take a guess that it is data related to what is collectively referred to as space weather. Check out the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ they have lots of information regarding the...

Interestingly enough, NSF's GONG facility is able to make maps of the far side using a technique called helioseismology. https://nso.edu/press-release/nso-predicts-a-large-sunspot-for-thanksgiving/ https://farside.nso.edu/

Hi @Joel, I think scientific debate is always a healthy thing. I got a very similar question in another thread. Here is the response I posted there. See if it sufficiently answers your question. The way I look at it, the Earth, or for that matter any planet orbiting a nearby star, can be...

The bipolar outflow was actually part of the work I used to do as a radio astronomer. The idea was to study late-type stars to look for asymmetries that might eventually develop into the asymmetric outflows that are sometimes observed in planetary nebulae...

Hi @Terra Australis, I saw your post in the forum just before I started the AMA segment, and wondered if you might ask the question here. The available information on the web indicates that NASA directed that any periodic recovery operations for STEREO-B cease on October 17, 2018. I'm not as...

Hi @Xinhang Shen, thanks for your question. I have to admit this is a little out of my area of expertise. What I will say is that the radio astronomy work that I did at the U.S. Naval Observatory supported the Global Positioning System (GPS) in maintaining the orbital parameters of the GPS...

Hi @Ephasius you are right this is a little beyond my area of expertise, but let me take a crack at it. You can respond if you think I'm off track. I think you are referring to one or both of the two big fusion experiments currently in the works. One is the National Ignition Facility at...

Thanks @Wolfshadw . Glad to be with the Space.com forum community.

Hi @Helio, glad to take your questions. Responses are below keeping your numbering scheme. 1) I'll do my best to answer all of them. ;) 2) DKIST is designed to work at wavelengths from the optical to the infrared. Therefore it is designed to replace, not only the infrared capabilities of...