Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 September 12 
Posted on 09/12/2016 5:59:07 AM PDT by ThomasMore
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2016 September 12
Explanation: A little spacecraft that was presumed lost has now been found. In 2014, the Philae lander slowly descended from its parent Rosette spacecraft to the nucleus of Comet C67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. At the surface, after a harpoon malfunction, the lander bounced softly twice and eventually sent back images from an unknown location. Earlier this month, though, Rosette swooped low enough to spot its cub. The meter-sized Philae is seen on the far right of the main image, with inset images showing both a zoom out and a zoom in. At the end of this month, Rosette itself will be directed to land on 67P, but Rosette's landing will be harder and, although taking unique images and data, will bring the mission to an end.
(Excerpt) Read more at apod.nasa.gov ...
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Looks like the thing that popped out of Hillary’s pants-leg as she was being taken away.
Unbelievable, the things Man has achieved.
Does this mean they’ve found a philandering comet?
(Too bad it wasn’t comet 69...)
But to the microaggressed crybullies this is all nonsense because the project engineer wore a shirt with sexy girls.
I notice they can find the Philae Lander but they can't find any ice on the "dirty snowball". . . LOL!
Electric Universe — PING!
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The solar system is thought to be ~5 billion years old, and indeed, these are the maximum ages of material we’ve sampled.
However, good observational evidence indicates that the Milky Way is ~11by old, and that the universe in general is ~14-15by.
My question: Why is it that we see only material of the age of the solar system, but no older? It certainly seems possible that older material would come drifting through, and should occasionally land on Earth as meteorites. Yet, we don’t see this.
One would think that iron, nickel and some of the heavier elements found on Earth and throughout the solar system, would have to have been processed in an earlier, more highly energetic stellar system, as they could not have been produced in the Sun.
What kind of “sorting out” processes is at work here?
Good question...
I would expect that distances associated with expansion of the universe would almost preclude anything traveling at sublight speed from reaching here from older, more distant (and ever-retreating) sources.
Of course though, the atomic constituents - proton, electron, neutron, etc. - are as old as the universe itself.
Still a perplexing problem nonetheless.
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You specified, "material" -- not "matter".
AFAIK, we (as yet) have no way of determining the age of fundamental particles of matter ( or, if they even do change detectably with time).
Again, AFAIK, it is only "agglomerated materials" we can "age" -- often by determining the residual half-life of unstable isotopes that were captured when they were agglomerated...
BTW, I like -- and enjoyed -- your question; it stimulates several interesting avenues of thought...
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