Dry-Earth Views <= Bathymetry & Mars Colors

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Oooh... don't suppose the asteroid belt is available as an ssc file, is it?

[t00fri]

Oooh... don't suppose the asteroid belt is available as an ssc file, is it? ;)

Yes, of course. The original files are all on Bruckner's site (look up URL on the main Celestia page), but the site seems dead right now. There is the full length file (7309 asteroids) as well as a much reduced one that only lists the asteroids with radius above 50KM. The letter strains the CPU much less than the former;-)

I have all files at home. I may have a look how big the sizes get if packed. The reduced one should be no problem, at least. Is your email visible somewhere?

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Dr Ganymede,

And if you want some smaller catalogs, a couple of people have generated Celestia SSC files from some of the special categories of asteroids that are listed on the Harvard/Smithsonian Minor Planets site.

See, for example, Ortolan's list of Kuiper belt objects at http://www.skullcave.com/celestia/kuiper-belt.ssc
Some other lists are at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/minor-planets.html

[Darkmiss]

I have an outer Asteroid belt file
Grab it here if you want it http://www.bt.homepage.btinternet.co.uk/Files/Asteroid-Belt.zip

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Yeah, I'v got some of the 'special asteroid' sscs already, thanks to that Celestia addon search engine someone posted earlier.

Darkmiss - that's the Kuiper Belt you're talking about there, right? Either way, I downloaded it and it looks rather fine

[Rassilon]

Nice WIP Fridger...I would have to agree the ocean floors would have a different coloration due to the mineral content and other effects water has on land masses...in a general sense...

[t00fri]

Nice WIP Fridger...I would have to agree the ocean floors would have a different coloration due to the mineral content and other effects water has on land masses...in a general sense...

Hey old friend!

I knew you would be coming down from the stars one day;). How have you been...?

OK, the first few dry-earth images were just "quick Sunday morning work" without much thinking, just taking the colors of Mars. Into my most recent dry-earth image above , I put a little bit of 'lonelyness' and some further color corrections. No science arguments yet;-). There will sure be a further round...

Bye Fridger

[Rassilon]

Nice WIP Fridger...I would have to agree the ocean floors would have a different coloration due to the mineral content and other effects water has on land masses...in a general sense...

Hey old friend!

I knew you would be coming down from the stars one day;). How have you been...?

OK, the first few dry-earth images were just "quick Sunday morning work" without much thinking, just taking the colors of Mars. Into my most recent dry-earth image above , I put a little bit of 'lonelyness' and some further color corrections. No science arguments yet;-). There will sure be a further round...

Bye Fridger

'╙▐╘???'

Altarian for hello earthman

Can't wait to see the finished product...

[Darkmiss]

RAS.... great to see you again

[Don. Edwards]

Yah, just a small anti-matter bomb. Say one or two atoms of the stuff. I think that would scorch the Earth real well. Any more and we would blow the planet apart.
But then the Earth would probably reform due to gravity and we would just end up with Earth Mark III. But there would hardly be enough time for life to get a good foot hold before the Sun got to it.

[marc]

If anti-matter were that powerful we would have already blown ourselves up.
Find the mass of a hydrogen atom, then use E=mc^2 and do the math.
I read a book called mirror matter a while ago. If i remember correctly anti- matter has been manufactured and successfully stored (though in tiny tiny amounts). The efficiency of mirror matter production is about 0.03 percent or something like that and is produced in those gigantic particle accellerators. The book finishes with ideas of a particle accellerator built around the moon to create anti-matter fuel for space flight.

[Evil Dr Ganymede]

Mirror matter isn't the same as anti-matter. Mirror matter is more like dark matter - it can exist in our universe, but doesn't interact with normal matter at all and is currently totally undetectable - it doesn't blow up when it touches normal matter. Another one of those wacky physics ideas, in other words .

[t00fri]

Mirror matter isn't the same as anti-matter. Mirror matter is more like dark matter - it can exist in our universe, but doesn't interact with normal matter at all and is currently totally undetectable - it doesn't blow up when it touches normal matter. Another one of those wacky physics ideas, in other words ;).

Actually, what we particle physicists call 'mirror matter' is matter that has opposite 'parity' (and possibly other mirrored quantum numbers) compared to normal matter. Is is that what you were referring to?

Bye Fridger

[marc]

Looks like im out of my depth for this thread. The book was called mirror matter, and it was about mirror matter (reverse spins etc) and had some stuff on anti-matter. Its been about 5 years since I read it, I've got it in a trunk somewhere. Whether they are related or the same thing, I dont know, Im no expert. Ill try and find the book and give a proper reference.

[granthutchison]

I think you're referring to Robert Forward's book "Mirror Matter" which dealt with the potential uses of antimatter for power and propulsion.
From what you're saying Fridger, do I take it that antimatter would be a subset of the possible different kinds of "mirror matter"?

Grant

[t00fri]

I think you're referring to Robert Forward's book "Mirror Matter" which dealt with the potential uses of antimatter for power and propulsion.
From what you're saying Fridger, do I take it that antimatter would be a subset of the possible different kinds of "mirror matter"?

Grant

In professional terms: NO.

Mirror matter is meant to represent parity-reflected matter in the first place, i.e. particles (not /anti/particles) that carry the opposite 'handedness' (spin...) to their already known counterparts.

[Looking at your right hand in a mirror makes it look like your left one (inspected in analog position). The corresponding abstract operation in particle physics is called /parity/ operation]

Example: an electron has negative electric charge, its anti-particle, the positron has the same mass as the electron, but positive electric charge. Both electrons and positrons also have spin (1/2) (<=> an intrinsic angular momentum vector that is characterized by a direction ('handedness') and a value (1/2)). Correspondingly, both electron and positron occur each in 'right handed' and 'left handed' varieties.

The /anti-particle/ of the left(right)-handed electron would be the right(left)-handed positron,
So you see going from matter to anti-matter echanges the handedness like for mirror particles, but it also exchanges the electric charge /unlike/ mirror matter!


As Consty ('Evil') pointed out correctly, matter and mirror matter would in general not annihilate (while matter and anti-matter does). Anti-matter of a particular type by definition has exactly /all quantum numbers/ opposite to the ones of the corresponding matter type, such that the two can indeed annihilate into the quantum numbers of the vacuum! The electric charge of the vacuum is ZERO.
However, a right-handed electron together with its left-handed /mirror/ particle gives a total electric charge of TWO, thus the two cannot annihilate into the vacuum (charge ZERO), since electric charge is strictly conserved!

Bye Fridger

[Guest]

In professional terms: NO.

Good explanation - thanks.
When you allowed

... (and possibly other mirrored quantum numbers) ...

I wondered if "mirror matter" might be a catch-all term for all the various possible reversals, singly or in combination.
I confess I've only ever run into the term in Forward's pop-sci writings.

Grant

[t00fri]

Another most interesting kind of "mirror" matter may be new particles required within /SuperSymmetry (SUSY)/. Such particles are among the 'hottest candidates' for explaining the large amount Dark Matter needed in the universe.

SUSY is an amazing symmetry that transforms Fermions into Bosons or in other words changes the /spin/ of particles by 1/2 unit (cf my explanation of spin above).

SUSY leads to a redoubling of the known spectrum of elementary particles in form of SUSY particles that are characterized by another kind of 'parity': so-called R-parity!

normal particles have R=+1
SUSY particles have R=-1,

[hence SUSY particles must always be produced in pairs if R-parity is a conserved (multiplicative) Quantum number...]

Bye Fridger