17 January 2011
Ask an Astronomer (Live)!
Posted by Ryan Anderson
Do you have burning questions of an astronomical nature? Or do people come to you with those sorts of questions? About the zodiac perhaps? Well, my friend, you need to go spend some time on the Ask an Astronomer site that my fellow graduate students at Cornell run. Over the years, we have received thousands of questions from interested people, and those that we think might be of interest to others get posted on the site. I am a delinquent and haven’t answered any questions for the site in a while, but plenty of other grad students are still active question-answerers so don’t hesitate to ask one!
Lately we have also started doing Ask an Astronomer Live events at Pixel Lounge in Ithaca. The way that these work is that four grad students from the department grab a beer and a microphone and field questions from the audience. I’ve been in the audience for the past few, but coming up on February 5 I get to be one of the panelists! So, if you happen to be in the Ithaca area, come on by, bring a friend, and ask me your burning astronomy questions in person! You can find more info about the event at this link.
If you wanted to use the neutron star as a time machine so you could time travel in to the future with gravitational time dilation. But I think it is important how close you are to the surface of the neutron star the closer you are the faster you speed up. And if you are orbiting to close to to the surface of the neutron star around 200 to 400 kilometers away from the surface a human can not survive this. But a human can survive being 1000 kilometers away. So does it make a difference in terms of how close you are to the surface of the neutron star to how much gravitational time dilation you will receive, will you get the same amount of gravitational time dilation being 1000 kilometers away as you would being 400 kilometers away or as close a human in a rocket ship could orbit the neutron star. To put it more simply will a rocket ship orbiting a neutron star get the same rate of gravitational time dilation for it to slow down enough to time travel into the future, orbiting 1000 kilometers away from the neutron star as well as it orbiting 400 kilometers away from the surface of the neutron star. Does matter at all the rocket ship being 400 or 1000 kilometers away will the rocket ship time travel into the future at the same rate with gravitational time dilation. Could you be orbiting 2000 kilometers away from the surface of the neutron star if possible, and still get the same rate of gravitational time dilation slowing you down. I am still learning about gravitational tides and orbits so sorry if this question does not make sense a bit. Thank you for your help with this question.
are all stars above the horizon for the same length each day
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