FalloutJack said:
{1} Here's the article [http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4675] that the Escapist was linked to when this space peanut was reported. As you can see, it's a two-lobed hunk of rock. Given what it does indeed take to form planets and asteroids, I admit befuddlement at seeing a formation like this outside of science fiction. How does this sort of thing occur?
Now, I'm not entirely sure, but here's my hypothesis: During a collision in outer space, it's not uncommon for things to get hot to the point of melting. The asteroid in question could be something leftover from a collision on a planet long ago during the formation of the solar system. Perhaps it was ejected molted slag kicked off of some planet and somehow the way it was spinning could have given this odd blob shape that looks like a peanut as it cooled down. Sort of like how if you were to spray water and freeze it quickly.
{2} So, tell me if this is a fitting analogy to see if I understand right. The energy behind the wave or force of Event One - dark energy - is still present and exerting force, in the equivalent manner that an object has made ripples in a pond, BUT an equivalent matter with a gravitational 'friction' to exert on its surroundings - dark matter - is akin to the forces involved in gradually reducing the ripples to nothing when in water, thus preventing the ripple from going on forever while there is still yet movement in the 'water', which is space in general Am I close to an understanding here?
Hmmmm.... I've never heard of this interpretation of this, but I do follow. If we consider the center of the universe to be the point at which the dark energy would propagate outwards like a wave, then the analogy works.
The catch with dark matter is that it's just mass, so it will only interact gravitationally. We don't really know the connection, if any, between dark matter and dark energy. They are only names given to mysterious items that we have yet to probe more deeply. I wouldn't really call it "friction" as that implies that there's something in the way that's slowing Dark Matter down. The question for the scientists is that is there enough mass to exert enough gravity on fleeting galaxies to pull them back in. We estimate that there's going to be dark matter that's attracted to the masses of galaxies. But we don't know if there's huge clouds of dark matter that are hovering in the void. That and the fact that gravitational effects propagate outward at a finite speed, namely the speed of light, also falls into this question.
{3} I am indeed thinking it's too thick, pretty much on the grounds that I know these two places to be cold and generally unmarred by external forces, much as our permafrost areas of Earth have densely-packed and difficult to break through layers of ice. There is, of course, technology to break through. It's just that packing it on with a probe that lands on the planet or moon may require it to be a smaller model that takes a LONG time to break through. Funding is indeed always the problem, but even worse is needing the right tool and maybe not having it. Even still, the other question in there is unanswered. There may be a sealed environment down there under the ice that has never seen air or unfiltered (if any) light. What effect might opening it up have on such an environment?
One solution that might be implemented would be to measure the variations of gravity around the moon or planet. This was done with the Magellan space probe around Venus, which used fluctuations in its accelerometer to figure out the gravitational tug. This in turn could tell scientists how thick the crust of Venus was without having to drill anything.
Your question is a tough one to answer because we only know of one biology. From our experience we might estimate that if life was underneath the surface, it might be present in layers that aren't too thick, allowing for the atmosphere to mix in with the fluid beneath. Another possibility is that the ice could house cryophiles, which are organisms that thrive in cold environments. Such organisms can be found on Earth as well.
{4} Could you explain about anti-matter being just another matter? I was under the impression that it was referred to as anti-matter because its material does not occur within this matter area for reasons of its sudden annihilation when in contact with matter. To wit, isn't it not matter by any definition because it it cannot exist in congruity with matter? I have studied and read a great deal on the nature of elements and chemical bonds, knowing that there are a number of elements and masses which occur only temporarily due to pressure or atomic change on their way to a more stable form of matter, but...as I understood it, the anti-matter we have made is a form OF our matter with an opposing charge that burns out in contact with its local version in close proximity. I'm not aware of it being a rarified material that occurs in nature (albeit briefly). Could you shed some light on that at all?
When the Dirac equation was first introduced by combining special relativity with quantum mechanics, out popped two solutions. One solution was for a particle of matter, and the other for anti-matter. This was first prediction that suggested a mirror twin particle for every particle that we know. We labeled them as "anti-matter", because of their annihilation effects as well as the solutions to the Dirac equation. But now that label has been called into question. One of the largest questions that physicists have been wanting to answer is "If creation of matter implies an equal amount of anti-matter, why don't we see an equal amount of antimatter in the universe?" We just now might have an answer to that. What's been found is that certain anti-particles
don't exhibit mirror-like properties of their matter counterparts. This is what's known as CP-Violation (Charge Parity Violation), which is a property of the weak nuclear force. It might just be the "imperfect twin."
