NASA's Spacecraft "Touched The Sun" - What Does That Mean?
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- čas přidán 16. 12. 2021
- The Parker Solar Probe is dipping towards the sun, less than 10 million kilometers from it, closer than anything else built by humans. And this week they announced that the scientific data coming back shows that the spacecraft 'touched the sun'.
That's actually a pretty good metaphor to describe the transition from the region of the solar system where the solar wind flows freely into a region where the solar magnetic fields dominate the plasma's motion in the solar Corona.
So let's try and explain the visible layers of the sun and why they appear different and distinct to each other.
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/ scottmanley - Věda a technologie
This was one of my projects. I was on the small alignment team which was responsible for measuring the placement and pointing of each instrument and, more importantly, the heat shield. Our alignment tolerance for the heat shield was 0.040" and we nailed it. I spent quite a long time positioning the 6 kinematic mounts for the heat shield. I had to hand place them to within 0.002" via laser tracker. It was intense knowing the launch schedule was days away and the importance of the heat shield.
We measured the spacecraft countless times with optical theodolites, laser trackers, and portable CMMs with laser scanners. I was one of the last people to see it before it was launched at the Cape. When you see pictures of the rocket there is a logo on the side. That logo is about 70% life size so it gives you a reference of massive that rocket was to get the kind of speed PSP needed.
This is definitely one of the coolest projects I've worked on.
Wow! If the tolerance is just 0.040", I'd never use nails to attach it 😆 SCNR
that is VERY cool, did you get to monitor it when it entered sol's atmosphere?
Good job then
Congratulations bruh
Kudos
It’s amazing how the voyagers still provide us with data after all this years. That’s some real engineering.
V'jer will come home someday.
Is it? I'm really asking. I'm trying to conceptualize what physical attributes to the components denotes it's ability to maintain functional longevity?
@@Allenmarshall It is mostly about temperature problems. The other nice bit is the reactor itself. That the reactor is continuing to provide energy decades after it's intended lifespan is a testament to engineering of the highest order.
Likewise, that the computer has not simply stopped operating because of the seriously extreme temperature difference across the mother board is another testament to engineering.
@@willierants5880 If we can catch up to them with future spacecraft, then it's possible for us to make it to them.
It was a Star Trek movie reference @@Andre83572 . You might have missed it.
minds me of the time our "substitute" finance instructor, turns out he was the chair and an advisor to the world Bank, accidentally got onto a pet equation during class. in about two minutes, he was gone. he had completely evolved into geek-speak. we had no idea what he was saying, let alone talking about; and the equations, oh my! machine-gun rattling, furiously scribbling, chalk-board after board. he was so obviously having such a good time, so thoroughly engrossed in a passion; we sat enthralled. no-one had the heart to interrupt him. I have no idea what he said, then or now, but I really enjoyed watching him say it.
Scott, Awesome job explaining the "Touched the Sun" announcements. Very clear and helpful. My Dad worked on early NASA geomagnetic satellite measurements, i.e., Explorer, OGO, etc. And while in college I worked at GSFC and programmed an 1802 CPU to run the Solar Wind Ion Composition Experiment, on the ISEE-C satellite (later re-tasked to ICE). So I greatly enjoyed the update on the Parker mission. Keep up your amazing work!!! Thanks.
That experiment continues to do wonders for our understanding of the sun; it's coming back into mention as we find /the Earth/ can synthesize every element up to iron; supernovas are getting put out of business here!
Off topic, but nice to see another 1802 programmer. I cut my teeth on that chip.
@@heikkilevanto5929 *software "engineers" bowing*: we're not worthy!!!
@@anthropicandroid4494 wait, what? The Earth is creating these elements? How? (Is there a specific term I should search Google for to learn more about this?)
@@HunterGeophysicsAustralia "Earth creates elements" gets me a bunch of articles, likely pointing to the same studies; there's also evidence of fusion on the surface of white dwarfs, IIRC
“My wife took this photo…”
“…while it’s not a very good photo…”
Scott, my dude…
Gotta pump her up!
A True Goddess already knows...
I facepalmed at, "this is a much better photo!"
It was clearly a test to see if she watches his videos 😂
@@markwilson7013 if we never get another video then we know she watches them
Scott thank you for taking the time to put this together, it is fascinating content and you have made it possible to understand the big picture! I hope you are able to follow the news around the Parker Solar Probe and keep us informed about what is learned, have a great day!
Yes - it's explorations like these that make one glad to have lived long enough to witness them. It's an outstanding time to be a scientist, or any kind of curious sentient on this third rock from the Sun....
We have the same profile picture
Ii
Ii
As always, Scott, you make the extremely complex seem simple. That was a very enjoyable explanation of the Sun.
I wasn't that simple.
@@WWeronko
I feel like I've drunk one hour of 2nd year astronomy class straight out of a can of concentrate.
NASA: "Nothing can fly to the center of the Sun."
Parker: "And I took that approximately."
To the Parker Solar Probe: Fry safe !
While I understand the definitions they are using there, it still seems very weird to say it "touched the sun" and in the next breath say it's 9 solar radii away. Those shouldn't be simultaneously true.
Ok brony cringe
Seeing the Sun, it looks like a solid body, but as a presenter about the Sun at my astronomy club explained, heat aside, you would have to reach a significant ways into the Sun before you could feel anything that felt like a substance. In our everyday existence it’s hard for us to appreciate an object of that immense size with that sort of characteristics.
yeah and this gets weirder and weirder with these super-hyper-whatnot-giant stars, that can be light hours across and very luminous (I think Betelgeuse would still be brighter than our own Sun if it were place 4 lightyears away, where Proxima C is) but whose mass does not scale up likewise... these stars are actually quite thin.
our Sun by the way is much smaller than these superstars, but it is _not_ a small star --- almost all stars are in fact smaller than our sun.
You forgot to mention the coolest part of that flyby of the solar surface and that's you can briefly see the Milky Way's Spiral Arm passing by the camera's view. It's all cool.
When I hear the probe’s name, I can’t help but remember Matt Parker and think what’s wrong with the spacecraft so it got in with the Parker square
hard same
So cool to see us increasing our knowledge in this area and to see how challenging it is to get close to the sun.
IF U BELIVE THIS U NEED TO GET OF THE DRUGS LOL
@@starseedrelaxation1589 NEGATIVE STARSEED I AM CURRENTLY INSIDE OF THE DRUGS
@@starseedrelaxation1589 FCK YEAH CAPS LOCK!!!!1111oneone
At that speed a piece of dust would make that bad boy EXPLODE if! it ran into it
@@General12th CAN CONFIRM, I SEEN U THERE, SITTING ON A GIANT FLOATING PURPLE BEAN BAG, BETWEEN BOB ROSS AND JIMI HENDRIX.
I've learned more about the sun in this video than the 30+ years of videos consumed being a space nerd.
If I understood him correctly, then a couple hundred kms below the sun's surface it is dark? Like I always assumed it would get brighter/more luminous the deeper you went into the sun. Like if you bury a camera in soil it would be dark, but if it could withstand high temps/pressure if you tossed it in a volcano and it 'sunk' I'm pretty sure the lava would be luminous... Thought the same for the sun.
seems like there is something about a saying: "compression is a sign of intelligence"
@@HansWaldenmaierNo, it is not dark, it is optically thick. What I mean can be best represented by thinking about a very thick fog or very murky water. When you're in the fog you might not be able to see the light of a torch more than some tens of meters from you, since it is absorbed or refracted away, so you would be in the dark with respect to that torch. Imagine now that the fog were to emit light of its own, then you would be surrounded by an uniform amount of bright light. That's how you should imagine being inside a star: being surrounded by a terribly bright uniform light all around that is emitted just a few meters from you, while not being able to see light emitted from elsewhere within the star.
Your comparison to being in the lava is, in fact, correct. You see only the light emitted from the layer of lava nearest to you, while the light produced behind it is absorbed before it can reach your eyes.
@@samuelecolombo1861 great explanation!
@@samuelecolombo1861 thanks for the clarification. That's what I originally thought, but when I misheard or misinterpreted what he said I thought the new (wrong) idea was kinda cool... And was a little excited by the idea that inside a star it's dark... But that kinda went against stuff I had heard about it taking a really long time for photons created in the star center to migrate to the corona and escape... Anyway...
Fascinating indeed. Hannes Alfvén was a Swedish electrical engineer, plasma physicist, and winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on magnetohydrodynamics. As Scott mentioned briefly, he described the class of MHD waves now known as Alfvén waves.
I think they are detecting plane waves too.
And most amazingly, the paper for which he got the Nobel prize is just 1 column in Nature, just under half a page...
He also adhered to the theory of electro-plasmic origins, which states that (in the title of the popular explanation book by Eric Lerner) "The Big Bang Never Happened." It is a book that I recommend most highly.
@@craiga2002 A sad example of Nobel disease. The prize cannot be awarded posthumously (the reason for which is rather subtle) but I am starting to wonder if awarding it to somebody who is still alive is not just cruel.
So early. Always love hearing Scott explain this stuff.
The second I heard about this spacecraft "touching the sun" I immediately tried researching these very topics. Thanks for putting this together in an easily accessible and digestible format!
"touching the sun" _still_ makes more sense than "touching the sky"
At 147 km/sec, the spacecraft was moving at about 0.05% of the speed of light, in addition to being very close to a deep gravity well. It would be interesting to know how much time dilation it experienced in a Relativistic sense.
If we assume it experiences 0.05% of the speed of light all the time, that's not too difficult to calculate. It's the Lorentz factor minus 1 times the amount of time we have experienced (if we assume we are not experiencing it ourselves). If I did the math right, the Lorentz factor at that speed is 1.00000012, so it experiences time only marginally slower than on Earth, or it loses about 2 seconds every month at that speed.
was seeing this headline everywhere and was waiting for you to explain that correctly, not disapointed as usual, good job
Any time distortion noted from the probe as it went faster and closer to the Sun?
Oh yes, in fact they have to factor that into the orbit or they'd miss their gravity assists at Venus.
@@scottmanley " time distortion" Damn! I *knew* I forgot something in my calculations! "🤪 I shoulda checked with Scott earlier!! 🤔
@@scottmanley So that Einstein fella was right after all, by golly.
@@yes_head It's almost like he put a lot of thought into this.
they'll have to be careful they are not slung back to '69 ...
Theese Videos are better than what NASA made, it looks much more professional / serious. Good video overall!
NASA in general is terrible at public relations with people that are not scientists. their website looks like something I would make in the early 2000s.
@@danilooliveira6580 reason for that might be that NASA are scientists and their primary job is research and gather/interpret data. People like Scott then can take this data and dumb it down for the rest of us.
Really appreciate your in-depth explanation.
It’s really grateful to have thoughtful words.
On a side note, therefore I wish CZcams could better facilitate viewer conversation, sorry to digress, I always feel comment section is lackluster for some reason. For example, lots of time our comment are not received or have not reached the amount of viewer it intends or deserve to reach. Good words or comment deserve to reach more people, but CZcams seems not made comment to function or evolve towards facilitation of intellectual exchange of words or viewership. And lots of comment are not seen or read at all but buried in the ocean of comment-if not deleted or partially deleted-for some reason you can’t post two comment otherwise the first one will be deleted by CZcams. so sometimes I would like to ask, what’s the point. That is one of the reason I barely comment on CZcams because I know CZcams Only post a few short comment on top and rest are just buried in a pile no one read. CZcams really need to change to better facilitate conversation or words in comment and their viewership.
@Robert Nelson Really appreciate your in-depth explanation.
It’s really grateful to have thoughtful words.
On a side note, therefore I wish CZcams could better facilitate viewer conversation, sorry to digress, I always feel comment section is lackluster for some reason. For example, lots of time our comment are not received or have not reached the amount of viewer it intends or deserve to reach. Good words or comment deserve to reach more people, but CZcams seems not made comment to function or evolve towards facilitation of intellectual exchange of words or viewership. And lots of comment are not seen or read at all but buried in the ocean of comment-if not deleted or partially deleted-for some reason you can’t post two comment otherwise the first one will be deleted by CZcams. so sometimes I would like to ask, what’s the point. That is one of the reason I barely comment on CZcams because I know CZcams Only post a few short comment on top and rest are just buried in a pile no one read. CZcams really need to change to better facilitate conversation or words in comment and their viewership.
NASA IS A LIE MY FRIEND
Thank you so much, Scott. Your channel really hits the spot. When I get out of the hospital and start working again, I'm immediately supporting your channel and Kurzgesagt!
This video is so dense with info yet Scott makes it an easy digest. This is all so incredible and fascinating.
*Flying to touch Sun*
Scott: Fly safe.
Very interesting and very well explained! Thanks a lot, Scott, for the effort of putting this together!
I can't even pretend to appreciate the amount of work that goes into making one of these videos. Thank you Scott!
Beautiful and informative.... My favourite kind of Scott Manley video... Keep up the good work & Happy Holidays!
Stunning imagery. Thanks Scott for your analysis.
Extremely interesting! Thank you Scott, for making this available. I have been interested in learning more about the Sun ever since my parents took my sister and I to the Sunspot Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak, NM back in the 1970s. I've been following all the information about the Parker Solar Probe that I can find. This probe, and the information it is providing, is but one example of why I've been a space nerd from way back.
wonderful animation there :-) and great explanations aside - man i love your content! As long as needed and crispy in information quality. You always rock my space day :-)
This was an above-average, high quality, very informative, very interesting video from the Manley video factory. Many thanks!!
Man you sure can put things into perspective and explain them in a way people can understand. Excellent explanation of “touched the Sun”!
It really is fabulous that your videos regularly disseminate the most up-to-date space news in a way that is far better explained than most anyone on the telly ever used to manage, (back in the olden days when I bothered to watch it).
Fantastic as always Scott. We all got a chuckle out of your collar in the last video. Looks like you just threw it on over a t-shirt and started filming which is a+ in our book.
The Parker Solar Probe is one of the most fascinating space craft of all time. Who would've thought that we could build a machine that would survive in those conditions?
It reminds me of a book by David Brin called 'Sundiver' that was about the first manned expedition to the surface of the sun. (Of course, it took some very science fictionous technology indeed to survive there.) But it is a pretty interesting book.
Thanks Scott for another great video!
Read Earth by David Brin... Startide Rising series is excellent as well...
You don't think the JWST is moreso than the PSP ?
One of the earliest proposals to build a solar probe came from Van Allen, in 1958. There were many conferences and proposals since then, especially in 1970s and 1990s. Soviets had "Tsiolkovsky" sun probe that was in development in 1980s. In 1990, Russian and American probes were developed to be launched together on a single Proton rocket. Eventually, the US "Solar Probe" became "Solar Probe Plus", finally got fully funded by NASA, and this is what is flying today. Only relatively recently it was renamed as Parker Solar Probe, to commemorate the scientist who contributed to the studies of the Sun. Getting close to the Sun is a very tricky business in terms of orbital mechanics!
The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018
I think you might have your probes mixed up
There are a few solar probes operating today
Some were launched 20 years ago or more
@The Mighty Sagetto JWST might not even work. And it has cost about $10,000,000,000 so far. That's a lot of money for one telescope. Even if it sends us back a million pictures, each image will have cost at least $10,000.
If it fails to reach its intended orbit, that's $10 billion wasted.
Great work explaining what that "touching the sun" means. I enjoy your videos, even though I have little knowledge of "space". I'm just a sci-fi fan and learning real science about space and space flight is just as fascinating.
Scott, I just have to say this. It's one thing to bring science education to the "big screen," as it were. It's quite another to bring it to the "big screen" in such a way that it excites and invigorates the scientific imagination. As I listened and watched, a thousand curiosities ran through my head. Chief among them:
1) How does this device protect itself from the intense radiation and heat from the sun?
2) How does this device maintain the power it needs in such a harsh environment?
3) How were the ever-descending elliptical orbits of the sun calculated, given all the variables involves?
So many questions, so little time!
Thanks for your insights, Scott. I really appreciate everything you're doing on this channel.
Brilliant vid mate, tied alot of different things up there. Thanks!
Absolutely loved that blue imagery from 2004 of solar mass ejections; where, as material is ejected from the sun, when the puff is headed straight for us, we then see an increase in noise from particles hitting the sensor. Beautiful.
A channel i happyly turn off my adblock for. I think that is the highest praise I can give on CZcams.
Informative and well presented video as ever Scott 👍
Beautifully presented and clear. I really enjoy your style and the way you elucidate even complex issues so that non specialists can follow the argument. Your presentation clearly beats that of a former PhD student of mine who worked on the development of the magnetic field probe and is now in charge of the data acquisition. According to a private pre release comment by him the data that are still coming in from the November flyby are astonishing in heir detail and reveal new depths of understanding. I hope by watching this space Scott will tell us more as the data are released.
Audio from the probe.
" They Might Be Giants - Why Does the Sun Shine? Live (official-audio only) " on the channel " ParticleMen "
More
They Might Be Giants - Meet the Elements (official TMBG video) on the channel TMBGkids
Couldn't have said that any better, Robert. I wholeheartedly agree, and am very much looking forward to Scott breaking down all of the new data drops!
Blimey, Manley, you've surpassed yourself with this one. I've learned more about the Sun in 12 minutes than I had ever previously paid attention to. Which is to say, it was entertaining and informative. That animation from 8:06: did you put that together?
With the PSP barrelling towards the Sun at the speeds it does, it must surely be generating some measurable relativistic effects. Or is 0.064% light speed still too slow to throw up any surprises.
At 11% of the speed of light the difference in kinetic energy from classical vs relativistic equations is 1%, so none of uor probes are close to being considered relativistic.
Note: i did just google and take the second result, it looked fairly sound, so do take with a large grain of salt.
Under another comment Scott pointed out that time dilation effects did indeed affect the probe's orbit and had to be considered for the gravity assist at Venus to work
It's not much, but the effects will definitely be noticeable and accounted for.
GPS has to account for relativistic effects to get the timings sufficiently accurate, and those satellites aren't moving anything like as fast.
@@owensmith7530 While the relative velocity of the satellites is a factor (approx. -7µs per day), the much larger factor is us being further down a gravity well than them (approx. +45µs per day), but both are absolutely critical for the required nanosecond accuracy.
Great video, it's nice to see updates like this!
Prime example of why this is the best channel ever.
Not only new engineering, but new science too.
And your wife took that stunning picture of the sun. She must be an Astronomer I reckon. And you did a great job in explaining to us what she captured. Congratulations to both of you.
So for a lack of a better term it has effectively passed into the atmosphere( for a lack of a better term) of the sun, but not the surface of it.
Superbly explained & illustrated as usual. Thanks Scott!
This is one of the best videos on this entire subject out there-Great Job Scott
hannes alfven was very critical for the missuse of magnetohydrodynamics. here is a quote. In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure.
Hannes Alfven
His work was not initially accepted, but eventually he won a Nobel Prize.
Plasma physicists these days know far more about astrophysical plasmas than Alfven ever did. They know when, and when not, to use MHD. He also got it horribly wrong about magnetic reconnection, which we now see on the Sun, and contributes to the coronal heating.
As for a 'network of currents' .............. nope. We might notice that. Plasmas are quasi-neutral beyond the Debye length. At 1 AU, in the solar wind, that is ~ 10 metres.
In the Sun's atmosphere, MHD is applicable, as Alfven said himself. In fact, it is applicable in more situations than Alfven realised. The magnetic Reynolds number of the solar wind, for example, is ~ 200 000, iirc. That makes MHD perfectly fine to use in most circumstances. Only when the solar wind interacts with another atmosphere, such as at a planet or comet, do we need to look at the applicability of MHD.
It's complicated, but plasma (astro)physicists know what they are doing.
Scott Manley: "Fly safe!!"
Parker Probe: "Hold my beer..."
this video is very very informative, I'm so glad I subbed to this channel few days ago.
thanx man.
I knew I could count on Scott to answer my questions regarding this. Excellent work!
Thank you so much for making this. After 30 years of paying attention to space and planetary science, this is the single most conceptually useful explanation of the sun I’ve ever seen.
I’d call this a quick masterclass. Fantastically well summarized. Thank you!
Really nice post! I love the graphics and explication. Well done!
Scott - as usual your videos are well-considered, so informative and amazing. thanks for all you do to increase space science literacy!
This was one of the most fascinating stories about our solar(...) system I've heard in a long time - perhaps ever! 😀 thanks, Scott!
Watching the footage from the Parker probe is utterly mind-blowing! Incredible to see what we've achieved and the understanding that we've gained.
Another fantastic informative video, thank you scott for making these, always makes my day seeing another video posted by you. Fly safe man!!
Wow, utterly fascinating and educational. Answered many of the questions I had about the sun but was never curious enough to look up. Thank you, Scott!
The image of the eclipse next to a full color spectrum is pretty awesome. Would hang that in my office.
With the right kind of film over your windows, you don't even have to hang it.
Thanks Scott for making this all visible and easy to understand. PLEASE keep the graphics coming, and if possible can you add video links?
I run an astronomy nonprofit and do Sun gazing events with Lunt instrumentation and star parties for the community, esspecially kids to have a positive impact on humanity and the future.
I educate kids teens and adults through classes and lessons and could really use some more graphics to explain things like this. Do you mind if I use your videos?
Reach for the Stars!
Thanks!
It might be helpful to contact him on twitter
Wonderful video. Well done. Very informative!
I uploaded my name onto that memory chip on the side of the probe. I'm guessing it got fried but the shielding arrangements on that thing are pretty impressive.
One of your best videos. I really appreciate how the preamble was relevant to the main topic and gave a wonderful foundation for what was to come. I was able to follow along with the mechanics and by the end I knew exactly what you meant when the space craft touched the sun.
Mission Accomplished!
awsome like always
Top notch really great and informative video, thanks scott!! The world would be a much better place with more people like you. :)
PS: the animations used fitted perfectly with your always expected "fly safe!" :D Parker replying like "meh, its getting pretty hot. Halp! :("
Your excellent presentation certainly got me understanding the gist of it all. But the math... that was a pretty heavy-duty video. I'll have to watch it two or three times more to understand the deeper dives you went into. No other channel does that. Really great!
Thank you for this fascinating video, a really great effort putting all this together, and much appreciated. Truly wonderful images of the sun that I would never have dreamed of seeing a few years ago.
You're such a good communicator Scott. one of your many talents
Thank you for this and all your superb reports on all things space
🍻🚀
Pretty amazing that the spacecraft that are setting records for nearest (Parker) and farthest (Voyagers) from the Sun are all operating concurrently and all contributing to solar science.
Equally amazing is how Scott Manley could combine these two seemingly unrelated engineering marvels taking place in our solar system concurrently into one 11 minute narrative on CZcams. Even more amazing was how he threw his wife's random picture of the sun into the mix and still made a hell of a sense. I congratulate him!
We live in exciting times. 😁
Great presentation Scott , I really enjoy your work !
Thanks Scott.... Another very insightful and educational video... Keep up the good work.. xx
I learned as a child that if NASA went to the Sun at night everything would be okay.
How is the electronics aboard the Parker Solar Probe shielded from the effects of solar wind? As it is literally swimming in a bath of solar wind
Well, it does have a materialised shield in front of it, keeping the electronics just stable enough to work.
It's behind a bright white heatshield. All of the instruments look outward from the sun or parallel to the sun so none of them need to see the sun directly (except one that peaks out from behind the sunshield).
@@Ergzay Yea, it's a teacup-sized measurment instrument. (the one that peeks out)
@@noorspetsialist5547 ...now I imagining small instrument with googly eyes going Yeeeeeah :)
@@randomnickify Cue the KSP-built probes taking a kerbal along to probe the Sun. The Kerbal just peeking out over the rim.
Awesome video. My work sprayed the emissivity coating on the Parker Solar Probe's heat shield, cool to see it preforming well.
One of your best yet Scott.
I really like how ever changing prevalent physics model seems to touch more and more fundamental stuff and change our perspective on how things actually work, but this and voyager probes measurement are like tiny point at the end of human science discoveries log, stating:
- There is more to discover here!
So we built a spacecraft which went with about 0.5 promille of the speed of light. Relativistic effects can sure be measured then!
Also makes you realize the speed of light is not that fast considering galactic spatial scales...
Hi Scott, love your videos and always leave having learned something new.
Thank you Scott, this was a VERY interesting and informative video and although I thought that I knew most of this stuff before, OF COURSE I learned a ton more just now.
NASA: We touched the sun!
Me: oh cool! Literally?
NASA: Yes! We got within 11.1 solar radii!
Me: ...
Scott, this was one of my favorite videos of yours. It’s rare when I learn about so many new things in one sitting. Thank you, sir.
Fascinating content and amazing visualisations! Thanks a lot! 💫
This was a great video, love to see this progress in such a well structured form. Something you can show to anybody and they'll be awed.
Given that Eugene Parker is still alive - I hope he gets to see all of that data. Given that he proposed building the probe in late 50's it must be great to see all of this for him. I hope he is in good health.
As for the probe itself - apart from being a marvel of engineering - it gives us so much new data and insights into physics of the sun. I do have to say that the video it recorded was beautiful and while explanation by Scott was tad more difficult than it is normally - it was still quite understandable if you focused. Which is hard, because every time I see this data I start to daydream how fantastic it is. 😂
I had no idea the Parker in Parker Solar Probe was still with us. Thanks for this I’ll have to do some looking up of this fine person.
@@fensoxx I remember I was amazed he was alive when the project was finally proposed around a decade ago (technically it was 2009 I think, but serious work began slightly later) - and most people wouldn't bet on him living to see the result of his then 50 year old proposition (it's going to be 64 years since he proposed first "solar probe"). He was always "almost famous". If you were interested in Astrophysics - you'd probably at least vaguely remembered his name. If you were interested about Sun - he was one of the experts that you'd know about. But a lay person that "only" looks at stars and is interested in Astronomy... well he never had that much of a name recognition. Which was sad, because he was always a very nice man. Of course now he is famous, but that's because of the probe's name, rather than the idea. If probe was simply named "NASA Solar Probe" - most people to this day would not know of him.
Great video! If I understand it correctly, the fact that it "touched" the sun means that perhaps one of the bubbles may actually have changed ever so slightly in shape because of a wave caused by the spacecraft traveling upstream? While before that the influence of the spacecraft could only have traveled away from the sun.
Yeah the probe probably interfered with the magnetic field lines and produce a tiny sun spot that should have not existed without the probe.
This was perhaps one of my favorite videos yet! Thank you
Remarkable explanation! Its been 45 years since I did any orbital and interplanetary mechanics. Scott's presentation brings everything to life.
oh man, the universe is amazing and so complex my mind just breaks in a good way.
But you know what, we humans are even more amazing.
The journey of knowledge will always be the best choice we ever did as a species.
Literally from beating rocks to deciphering a universe.
Gotta love science
will we be able to leave any of that knowledge behind in a useful form once we are gone?
are there artefacts floating about in the universe that encode the sum knowledge of intelligent species that are long gone?
it sounds like a Star Trek premise, but it is actually a valid and deep question
What amazes me is the probe still functions with the gravity pulling at the electrons flowing through its circuits I wander what shielding its using
chips are more sensitive than old fashioned "macroscopic" components, you know, like we played with in the 70s. I imagine they use such circuitry where they can. also the wires are inserted with gemstones!
Thanks for sharing! The animations really made it easier to understand.
One of your best videos Scott!
I can’t wait to see what they discover when the ESA solar orbiter gets within Mercury’s orbit next April and they can use its measurements in conjunction with the Parker probe’s measurements.
I'm having difficulty interpreting this chart at 5:34. The x-axis is temperature, and the y-axis is distance from photosphere. Yet, the orange area labeled "photosphere" spans the whole width, suggesting that the photosphere temp ranges from -2,000K to 1,000,000K. This doesn't seem right. No idea which of the lines and areas that the secondary x-axis related to either.
It's multiple graphs plotted on one chart, rather confusing...
There seem to be a couple of series plotted, but missing labels or a legend
@@Nainara32 That often happens when an image is plucked from an article, and the legend gets lost.
-2000 is altitude
the temperature is the solid line
the pressure is the dashed line
unsure about the colored mesas at the top, they look like Santa Fe
That magnetic field / probe visualization was pretty nifty. Thanks for the vid.
Awesome video Scott!!..fly safe!!👍👍😎
When you said it was the fastest object ever built by humans, at its peek (192 km/s), it would have reached only 0.064% of the speed of light, which is still a speed of 691,200 km/h! At such a speed, if you disregard acceleration and deceleration, it would take 80 hours to the probe to travel the distance between Earth and Mars, when they’re at their closest, which is roughly the same time it would takes to fly 3 round trips Montreal-Beijing.
The only remaining challenge remains harnessing so much energy that acceleration from and deceleration to respective orbital velocities become possible inside a couple of tens of hours.
Then the trip would be days, not months.
@@daszieher Not just energy... you will sustain a lot of G forces.
@@SilmarilS79 yup, disregard the gee for that assumption.
There could be a way to make the human body withstand (much) higher acceleration without blacking out or physiological damage by immersing the astronauts in liquids about as dense as blood.
Cutting edge g-suits use liquid instead of pneumatics to regulate pressure on the lower limbs.
I can't really imagine what that speed would look like.
It wouldn't. You wouldn't see the probe even if it hit you in the face.
@@samsonsoturian6013 Yes, that was one way I tried to imagined it, like a gun shot from miles away and you never heard, saw, knew a thing... It's not working for me though, 148 km a second is incomprehensible to me.
That speed is almost exactly 1/2000th of the speed of light. Fast enough to get to Proxima Centuri in 8,000 years. Does that help?
@@spamcrud5639 Dunno, never been to Proximi Centuri. I reckon as fast as I think it is I could still double it!
Wwwwwweooooooooooaaaaaaahhhhhhhh ssssssshhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiii...
Scott, an incredibly enjoyable and informative video, you really do crack out amazing stuff. Thank you, for your intelligence, your knowledge, your research and your communication skills.
Fascinating and beautifully explained and illustrated. Thank you