Recent content by Meteoric Marmot

The "photo" of the black hole produced earlier (last year?) suggests that the answer to that is "No" as stars should have been visible through the hole. The data was heavily massaged to produce the image, so it is definitely not definitive proof of the negative.

Babylon 5. It's been described by some as "Shakespeare in Space." That may be going a bit too far, but it was a show that dared to be "big." Big ideas, big conflicts, etc. What was important to me is that they took the time for "slow" episodes where they developed the characters into real beings.

A suspended-animation module.

The short answer is that it depends on the mass of the black hole. A stellar mass hole would have no effect because the force would be tiny, as rod points out. On the other hand, a galactic-core-sized super-massive black hole would be a different story. Gravitational force varies as the square...

From an engineering standpoint, Titan is the best choice because it has an atmosphere that the Huygens probe already successfully used for aerobraking. Enceladus and Europa have no atmosphere so you have to carry fuel to brake and land. Then you're faced with many kilometres of ice to tunnel...

I'm curious as to how the scientists derived the fine distance data that I assume is necessary to construct a 3D image. I think 6000 ly is too far away to use Earth's orbit to get parallax information. Is it based on Doppler shifting?

So why UK and US only? While I'm used to encountering contest rules like this, I still find it insulting and it makes me less likely to visit a site,