In yet another busy week on the Space.com forums, we’ve got a few highlights to catch you up on. The community asks astrophysicist Joe Pesce their most burning questions. We also imagine what it would be like to be an alien. But first, we kick things off this week with our latest giveaway!
Own a piece of Mars!
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Let us know what you think of SpaceX, science fiction and more in our Space.com Forums here!
Today, we’re launching a special giveaway. To celebrate how prevalent and fascinating Mars has been for space enthusiasts this year, we’re giving away a memorable prize.
Thanks to our partnership with The Space Store, we’re able to offer the community a chance to win a pendant that features granules from the surface of Mars!
Found back in 2011 as part of a meteorite that landed in Morocco, these fragments of the Red Planet represent a piece of science history! For more information, including Terms and Conditions as well as how to enter, head on over to this thread.
Best of this week’s AMA with Dr. Joe Pesce
One of the Space community’s favorite people was back on the forums for another AMA. As expected, we were all pretty excited to have Joe back. Here are some of the best questions asked this week:
Hi Joe. Black holes can hold entire galaxies in form and the speed of gravity is roughly as fast as the speed of electromagnetic waves squared. So could gravity, as one of the four forces in our standard model of particle physics be limited to our universe? – JSNardello
Dr. Joe, It’s well known that galactic “dark matter” measurements rest on Newtonian gravity. E.g. galaxy rotation curves are generated based on a Newtonian model of a galaxy spinning in an otherwise empty universe. There have been some grumblings about this lately; Dr. Becky did a podcast on it. It seems almost impossible that these two short-cuts–using Newton’s laws in an empty universe–could account for dark matter. Any comments? – PBWilson
Joe, do you know why it is taking so long to get the James Webb Telescope up into space? I’ve been hearing about it for several years. – Logicagal175
What would you do if you were an alien?
More specifically, what would you do if you were an alien and were meeting the human race for the first time? This fascinating question was posed by, fittingly, alien117. Here are some of our favourite responses:
Oops. Wrong number, I have to go. – TheSchnitz
I would smile and say “hello, then goodbye” and exit a.s.a.p. Next question on my way out of Earth’s gravity and missile range, I would ask God, (or what passes for an alien god), “Why me? What have I done to deserve meeting humans”? – sam85geo
“So, is there any intelligent life on this planet? – Pogo
Head over to this thread for the full conversation.
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