photon != proton

proton (n): Positively charged subatomic particle found in the nucleus with mass of 1.67 x 10^-27 kg

photon (n): Massless particle travelling at the speed of light as a wave.

Gamma photons are very much real and they are photons. Visible light are photons. Radio, microwave, x-ray, are all photons. The difference is in the frequency in which they travel. Gamma photons (rays) have the highest of frequencies which are in the ballpark of 10^18 Hz.

Also, am I right in assuming that you were thinking gamma radiation was like alpha and beta radiation in which the latter two actually do have mass (beta radiation emits electron and neutrino and alpha emits a He nucleus)?

You're right about alpha particles being the same as a Helium nucleus. But there's two different types of beta particle.


B- decay emits an electron, and B+ decay emits a positron.


In β− decay, a neutron is converted into a proton, an electron and an electron-type antineutrino.

In β+ decay, a proton is converted into a neutron, a positron and an electron-type neutrino.




As for solar radiation...

You're very right in that solar radiation, usually in the form of ultraviolet radiation, is very dangerous. The danger is that you are exposed for a very long time with no protection whatsoever. Being exposed to low levels of radiation for a long time is more dangerous than being exposed to a short burst of high level radiation.

Protecting yourself against that radiation is pretty easy, and the Apollo spacecraft had exactly that. Most of the radiation was in form of massive particles that are easily blocked.

The biggest danger was from solar flares, and NASA did a very good job of planning the Apollo mission to avoid the greatest solar activity.

So the hubble telescope can SEE THROUGH TIME but it can't see the lunar lander? Right.

...see through time....


I can see through time. I'm doing it right now. So are you.


All Hubble does is recieve light. That light may have travelled a very long distance, and light travels at 3.0 * 10^8 metres per second, so the events that Hubble recieve may actually have taken place many years in the past.

Hubble is simply able to magnify that light greatly, and recieves it much clearer than telescopes on Earth.

I was joking, but it's still very powerful, I think if it can see light from far away galaxies it can probably see the moon which isn't really all that far away.

"Is that too spicy for you, Lisa?"
"I can see through time!
"
I will be very happy if there are findings of a neutrino with imaginary mass.

The point is, the Hubble Telescope can see the surface of the moon. It can also be turned around and see the surface of the earth. NASA can read your underwear tags from space. They don't need to but can use Hubble. They have other space telescopes for those purposes. And no, that B.S. they show you people with the blurry greyscale images of Manhattan aren't their full capabilities. They simply show crap like that to make you think that your privacy is safe. This is a fact. I know this because fifty years ago the Soviets could read the back of a penny on the sidewalk from space. The Hubble Space Telescope is an American telescope so they could make up any crap about what they show you on the surface of the moon. But let's pretend they would never do that. I don't believe the Hubble has ever taken pictures of the so-called landing site of the Apollo missions. So until they do...

Oh yeah, and it was either Europe, Japan, or China that were gonna send a satellite to the moon and take pictures of just that region (of course not the only thing) earlier this year, but for some reason they didn't go through with it. Hm.

Only if you bend over. Or if you wear your underwear on your head.


The reason they don't turn Hubble to look at the lunar surface is (probably) the same reason that the satelitte to investigate the moon didn't go ahead.

Because there's no point.

Realigning Hubble would take a lot of time and resources, and there's simply no point in pointing it at the moon. All the data we need to investigate lunar geology and topography can be obtained from terrestrial telescopes.

The same thing goes for your 'privacy' issue. Hubble does not play any part in that. It's too far out to be useful.

Spy satellites have very low, non-geosynchronous orbits.


The reason no-one's taken pictures of the lunar landing area is that there isn't any point. There are far more interesting things out in the Universe more worthy of investigating and observing, following up on baseless crackpot conspiracy garble isn't going to be a priority for anyone.

The only way that man did not land on the moon in 1969 was if the lunar landing display was faked.
No-one has ever come forth with any evidence that suggests this that hasn't already been thoroughly disproven a hundred times over.

Oops! I'd been at a funeral, so I'd had a good few daytime drinkies! My bad!

"That's no moon... its a space station."

This right here is why I don't believe there's anything up there.

"Oh, it's up there, but we're not going to prove it because there's no point."

Reminds me of something aocowner would say.

The Hubble has a resolution of ~.05 arcseconds. This means it can only resolve objects on the surface of the moon that are more than 200-300 feet wide.

*stops, looks over*

"No way!..............That's GREAT!!!!.............WE LANDED ON THE MOON!!!!!!"



/dumb

brought to you by the same people who brought you "when fast predators attack slow fat children"

and dumber

Thats what I figured... The telescope is designed to focus on objects that are light years away. The surface of the moon is far too close for it to effectively focus on.

Also, I am tempted to post the list of everyone who voted no on this poll so they can be publicly ridiculed. :p

I'll tell everyone myself, because there are some things that just don't sit right with me.

Am I the only one that finds it strange that they visited the moon a handful of times, 30 years ago, and have never returned. Why? There's nothing there? Right. We've been living on this planet for thousands of years and we have still not discovered everything, what makes you think we discovered absolutely everything about the moon in around 15 days total. I'll tell you what, get Armstrong on the aids case, and throw him in the cancer labs too. That man must know his research. As a matter of fact, if we get all of the moon astronauts in science labs, we'll have discovered the secret to eternal life by about 3:00 this afternoon.

We "went" to the moon in 1969 for the same reason that bush started talking about mars this year. We wanted to get attention away from out "foriegn affairs."

And don't give me any money nonsense. Nasa could build that crap for about a dollar and seventy five cents today. That lunar lander looked like it was made of tin foil and erecter set.

No.

Actually it had more to do with trumpeting foreign affairs, since it was a race with the Russians :p

We haven't gone back simply because we have no practical reason strong enough to yet. There is only so much dirt and rock you can scrape up and bring back.

The main thing the moon offers us now is as a base station for exploring the rest of the solar system. We're not quite at the point for needing that yet but maybe in 20 years.

...and really, your later comments about the landers, please just go read about them.

I voted No

Oh stop booing me!

Some things about the landing on the moon don't seem right, and to be honest I expected the Russians to get there first. Would've been a lot nicer about it then the Americans!

No.



I really do hate "get all scientists to work on cure for cancer!!!!!!" type arguments.

Astronomers and physicists know little more than you do about biology and genetics.
"then get them to retrain!!!!!" is the usual reply.
Well, why don't you get to work on a cure for cancer?

Science is about furthering human knowledge, in all fields, simply for the sake of human knowledge. Answering questions simply for the sake of having those questions answered. It doesn't matter if it isn't immediately 'useful'. What is discovered today may become 'useful' in 100 years time. Just trying to meet short-term demands isn't a good idea.

No, moving everyone into one field of science is unlikely to actually help that field in any way at all. What would be useful, however, would be to provide more funding to those that are already working on it. You know, like bumping up taxes?




Converted into today's money, the Apollo mission cost $70 thousand million. That's 70 billion dollars, for you.
The majority of that cost is fuel, probably. It needs to burn a lot of fuel to provide the force to escape Earth's gravity.
That isn't going to have changed over the last 30 years.

that and what the **** do when were up there... and it does cost way more money then you would assume to lets say build something like a station. There is no reason to go the moon right now.. it would not benefit our economy and last time i checked


in the hole 1.6 trillion

Yes.

Mort-hog you do realise that, although your right and not all scientist should work on cancer cure etc etc, it would take an average of 10 years to get the cure of cancer to a market including the procedure, and that doesn't include the research to get near the cure.

People don't have that long so you have to understand some peoples frustration over this.

Also considering the statistic 1 in 3 contract cancer thats a lot a people wantin a cure

Also mort-hog is probably right on the moving all scientists to labs wouldn't help move things along to quickly, however I don't think America made it to the moon when they first publicised they did, probly a bit after:

People had been dieing of smallpox for thousands of years before Jenner. In those thousands of years, humanity developed mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, physics..
Should all those great minds have put everything on hold just to work on smallpox?

Those great minds explored the faucets of the Universe that those great minds were interested in. A geologist is interested in geology, he has no interest in biology, so sticking him in a lab and saying "find cure for cancer! now!" isn't going to make him happy and it isn't going to make him work.

The work of Kepler in describing the motion of the planets in 1600 wasn't 'useful' to humanity for 360 years, but it was invaluable for NASA when working out the correct trajectory to launch satellites to the moon and beyond.


Will a cure for cancer ever be found? Probably*. But it will be found by a great mind who is interested in and passionate about biology, and that may be in 10 years or it may be in 10 000 years. Until then, all we can do is crack down on the causes of cancer, and help prevent it, and that is the realm of government policy and health care. Much like folks did for thousands of years when avoiding smallpox.


* (From what I understand of the biology of cancer, I don't understand how there can ever be a universal "cure" for cancer. Normally, cells grow and divide only when the body needs them to, and when cells grow old and die, new cells replace them. Random mutations cause new cells to form when the body doesn't need them and old cells don't die when they're supposed to. This forms a mass of tissue, a cancerous growth.
You can't stop cells from mutating, they will always mutate. How are you ever going to "cure" cancer, how can you ever 'cure' such a process?
All you can do is use lasers to burn out and destroy all the cancerous cells. Or you can give medication to help ease the symptoms.)

Well the cure would be something that prevents those mutations... But who knows what will be able to do that.

God... brain fart.

My brain just lumped together cancer and aids...

i never realised that. It is like they have either forgotten abput thopse other missions or are hoppoing that we didn't learn about them.

I voted no. If I didn't, I meant no.

Also, there is no cure for cancer. There's a treatment that sometimes works that we have now. The only solution is prevention, and you're all contributing to the cause.

MANY things are carciniogens (the trigger of mutations). Melanoma (skin cancer) is most often caused by too much exposure to the sun. The preventative measure is to use sunscreen to thwart UVA light. But it is not 100% effective in stopping Melanoma.

In the post-industrial now turned high-technology era, we are exposed to VAST amounts of compounds that human physiology has not adapted yet. Formaldahyde is a carcinogen. And I bring you the utmost famous of carciniogens since the 1600s

Nicotine

why

Apparently, to him, the Soviets had super spy equipment in space in 1954 (Sputnik was launched in '57), but the U.S. couldn't put a man on the moon by 1969. I really wish I could meet his history teachers, I bet they have the best "facts" about WWII.

Hell yea im the 100th person to vote YES.

And the people who make these docos and movies need to be shot because they almost had me beliveing that no-one landed on the moon. Infact I wasnt 100% sure if anyone landed there until I read this thread.

I think you're on the right track. Unless we ever develop Borg-like nanoprobes that can reproduce and automatically destroy any viruses, bactera, cancerous growths, etc.

Well, I've been thinking about it some more...


..My thoughts are, when that mutates and becomes cancerous, it must... look different. It must have some characteristics that make it unique, different to non-cancerous cells, some strand of DNA, something.. I don't know enough biology to pinpoint what exactly would be different, but because they behave differently, there ought to be something physically different about them too. The problem is working out what is different, and then being able to identify that difference in a cell.

The problem here, though, is that there could be lots of different mutations that might cause the cell to become cancerous, so there's lots of different characteristics you're looking for. And the different types of cells (resulting in the different types of cancer) probably have different characteristics to look for too.

I don't think nanotechnology is necessary for the cure, though.. I think cells, phagocytes or lymphocytes or something of that order, could be genetically engineered to destroy cells that have the above characteristics. The huge danger here is discovering that non-cancerous cells might have the same characteristics and that they are being destroyed by these cells.

Well, that's just my common-sense analysis of it.

Thats worrying tho, that whole nanotechnology thing, although apparently a lesser form is now used in some sun-creams (weird).

I would rather never see Nanotechnology in the form that is wanted but this is starting to go a little of the space topic?

I do think they can form a cure for cancer one day, and to be honest every human is a mutant some mutations should be expected

So when do you think they'll send flying nano-tech humans to the moon!
(yer right)

Why?

Prince Charles, of all people, is most outspoken about nanotechnology, usually giving vague references about "playing God", or "grey goo". It's laughable that he caused up such a stir.


The nanotechnology in suncream is simply Zinc oxide particles larger than the wavelength of the sun's rays, to reflect the light. There's nothing "controversial" about this, there's nothing dangerous. It's small, it's simple, and it works.

Nanotechnology is the way forward.




Does it matter?

Actually, nanotechnology is going to be EXTREMELY helpful to the space program: it is probably about the only practical way to build a space elevator.

Another considerably less interesting advantage is that nanotechnology could result in much lighter, stronger and safer spacecraft, built of diamondoid fibres that nanotechnology can produce. Tiny flaws in manufacturing wouldn't occur when created through nanotechnology.