Space News 23 August 2023 NASA is getting the probe ready which is going to fly to the asteroid Psyche. The asteroid could be the richest one out there. It is thought other than its trillions in values for the minerals it contains, it might present us with info on the core of a planet which it may have come from. The probe is going to use solar electronic propulsion and take about six years to reach its target after it is launched into space by SpaceX. Some day what seems like very long trips to us today, will be like nothing after we figure out how to break the light speed barrier or warp space. If someone or some country can figure out how to mine this asteroid they will have found untold riches. It is said the asteroid has about 10,000 quadrillion dollars in riches. It has so much riches it makes me wonder if we were to mine it, and dump all these riches into the economy would it drive the value of things like gold and diamonds down? First, we were talking if dark matter actually exists, then we said it makes up most of the universe, and now we are saying it is in a different type of star known as a dark star. Ironically, a dark star is said to be brighter than a galaxy. I have a suggestion for the scientists, rename them. Scientists are saying they have identified three dark star candidates. They had thought they were galaxies but not any longer. They now believe they might be enormous dark stars. It is amazing how the James Webb telescope is changing our ideas about things. Scientists tell us dark matter has to exist in large quantities, some say 85 percent of the universe, and others say even more and if it didn’t the galaxies would not rotate, because there wouldn’t be enough matter in the universe to affect them this way. I always wondered about this. I thought there might be some unknown force which has nothing to do with matter, which might have a chance of being responsible, but I am not a scientist. It is just when scientists get too sure about things, sometimes these ideas come crashing down when new discoveries are made. I wondered about the expanding universe and what is really keeping it going and the true age of the universe. Recently, it is being suggested that the universe is at least twice as old as thought. Could this mean the earth is older too? A bizarre object has been found which is orbiting a star and doing so at an incredible speed. That is not the only notable thing about it. It turns out it is hotter than our sun. it has mystified astronomers because it seems to blur the difference between stars and planets. The object is known as a brown dwarf. It is thought of as a protostar. A brown dwarf is usually somewhere around 13 to 80 times the size of Jupiter, our largest planet. The funny part of this is Jupiter is sometimes called a failed star because it is mostly hydrogen like a star, but too small to start a thermonuclear reaction. NASA’s budget for returning Mar’s samples is being attacked and it looks like congress thinks it is outrageous. A new estimate has been made for the cost of returning a few rocks to earth and it is between 8 and 9 billion dollars right now and will surely increase. It is not worth it. That money could be used by NASA for some other more worthy project, like the new refractor space telescope which would be far more powerful than the present James Webb telescope. As I said before, new discoveries in thin refractor lenses are making this possible and we should jump at the chance to build a telescope which could gather 100 times or more the amount of light the James Webb telescope can. Apparently NASA has made mistakes in its plans when the estimate was made and when they were corrected, the true cost came out. When a scientific expedition came back from a hunt for an object that crashed in the ocean, they didn’t find a spacecraft which had crashed, but they did find something very unusual. Magnetic particles were found in the debris. They were perfectly round balls of metal. Some scientists have said spherules are sometimes created when asteroids crash to earth. They were mostly created from iron, magnesium and titanium. A scientific study has come out relating to what I said above about the expanding universe. It suggests it is not expanding and we only think it is due to a mirage. I think this illustrates another thing I spoke about and that was how scientific opinions change. Scientists have been saying for quite a long time the shift in light to the red proves the universe is expanding. This theory is the further something moves away from us, the redder its light gets. A couple of years ago scientists were surprised to find a couple of ancient galaxies near the end of what we can see and they had not shifted to the red. Companies are on the move and getting ready to build more permanent structures in space. It is only a matter of time before we see a space hotel in orbit or a port for rockets and maybe even a facility for constructing spacecraft in zero gravity. A company named Arkisys want to built that port. It would be smaller than the International Space Station, much smaller, according to an officer of the company. The company wants to build a satellite about 6 ft long which will work like a Lego block where other devices can be attached to it. This is not exactly the port I was talking about above, but could be useful nevertheless. What is being called a ground breaking study was released that shocked the scientific community. The conclusion of the study was earth formed a lot sooner than originally thought. It was said it only took a few million years for the planet’s formation. The study was released by the University of Copenhagen. This has all sorts of implications. One of them is there was far more time for life to develop and disappear, and new types of live to appear again and again. This means this process could have been the same for all, or most of the planets in the universe. It means the chance of alien life developing has increased. I would just like to add one thing. We may find many races have existed and disappeared and their ruins are not only on a planet, but in space.
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