Follow the reluctant adventures in the life of a Welsh astrophysicist sent around the world for some reason, wherein I photograph potatoes and destroy galaxies in the name of science. And don't forget about my website, www.rhysy.net



Sunday 12 February 2017

Ask An Astronomer Anything At All About Astronomy (XXXII)

Whew, we've survived enough to 2017 to make it to another batch of questions ! Hurrah ! This was delayed by a week due to a work trip. With any luck we'll survive another week for the next batch...


1) What's your take on Verlinde gravity, Rhys ?
I don't like it.

2) Does the Bullet Cluster rule out very weakly interacting dark matter ?
No.

3) Can you take as good a picture with a smartphone as you can with a 500m telescope ?
No of course not, you twerp.

4) How come we can detect planets around other stars but have such lousy low-resolution images of ones in the Solar System ?
Sorry, what ?

5) Is there sound in space ?
This one is actually more complicated than Randall Munroe gives credit for, simply stating it in the "weird (and worrying) questions from the inbox" section of his otherwise excellent What If ? book without actually answering it. Here I correct this oversight, because the answer is a definite maybe.

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