morningsong said:

I have no where to post these. So here is as good as any I guess. Sciencey and stuff.

What you think? The design, not the girl.

I like the girl better

"Our analysis suggests that abiogenesis could be a rather rapid and probable process for other worlds, but it also cannot rule out at high confidence that abiogenesis is a rare, improbable event," Spiegel said. "We really have no idea, even to within orders of magnitude, how probable abiogenesis is, and we show that no evidence exists to substantially change that."

http://www.princeton.edu/...opstories


What if we are a rarity?

Tonight Venus and Jupiter will merge and form a "double star".

On June 30, two astronomical objects are destined to meet: The planet named after the Goddess of love, Venus, and the planet named after the God of Thunder, Jupiter. On Earth, they will appear so close together that they will look like a dramatic "double star."

This phenomenon will be visible to the naked eye in the Western sky. If you have a pair of binoculars handy, or, better yet, a telescope, you can have a peek at the pair and hopefully even see Jupiter's four moons.

This converging in the sky is known as a conjunction. A conjunction between Jupiter and Venus is not unusual; the duo were last seen close together in the sky on August 18, 2014.

Fortunately, if you miss this sighting and you missed the one in 2014, Venus and Jupiter have scheduled another date for the morning of October 26, 2015. On this day, they will be separated by 1°. And if you still can't see this meeting, then next year, on August 27, the planets will reunite once again. Here they will be separated by a stunning 0.1°.

I never read that stuff about those people that believe the earth is flat, but after reading "some" of this (there's attachements and such I haven't gotten to) I'm beginning to wonder, about their thinking. What these people sit around their "coffee bars" and talk, geesh.

Some physicists believe we're living in a giant hologram — and it's not that far-fetched

...The idea isn't that the universe is some sort of fake simulation out of TheMatrix, but rather that even though we appear to live in a three-dimensional universe, it might only have two dimensions. It's called the holographic principle. (Dammit, the links as far as I can see, don't transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/..._principle)...

...One solution, proposed by Susskind (hm, sometimes they work) and Dutch physicist Gerard 't Hooft in the mid-'90s, was that when an object gets pulled into a black hole, it leaves behind some sort of 2D imprint encoded on the event horizon. Later, when radiation leaves the black hole, it picks up the imprint of this data. In this way, the information isn't really destroyed...

...But could our universe actually be a hologram — or does the idea only apply to hypothetical ones?

That's still a matter of active debate. But there's been some recent theoretical work that suggests the holographic principle might work for our universe too — including a high-profile paper by Austrian and Indian physicists that came out this past May...

http://www.vox.com/2015/6...-universe

eh, go to the links yourself.

2013

2014

2015

According to Hollywood, humans are REALLY trying to get off this planet lol

morningsong said:

Pluto needs to be airbrushed out.

A little dot of a black Sharpie and *poof* gone.

But we'd miss it nontheless. The solar system has 9 planets end of discussion.

Can't wait for more detailed shots next week. For the first time since its discovery in 1930, we finally see what the dwarf Pluto and its moons look like - sweet!

http://www.sci-news....luto-02990.html

That the new Disneyworld ride?

cool thread, thanks for excellent links morningsong. i love living in an era when space exploration is possible and we can dial up the net to look at the images. think of all those brilliant atronomers in years gone by who had nothing more than highly polished glass telescopes. little peephole windows. now we're sending unmanned exploration craft to distant targets. way cool. first littlest steps out and about.

NASA‘s New Horizons proposals will use fictional characters and locations, including from Tolkien’s Middle-earth, to name features of Pluto and its moons next week.

In their proposed themes for Pluto, they have “Underworld beings” which includes Morgoth and Balrogas suggestions; for Charon a theme is “Fictional Origins and Destinations” which includes Shire andMordor; and for Hydra the theme is “Legendary Serpents and Dragons” which includes Smaug.

It’s not just Tolkien that features, though. Other notable suggestions include: Niflheim in the “Underworlds and Underworld Locales” theme; Heracles in the “Travelers to the Underworld”; Kirk,Spock, Skywalker, Dorothy and Alice in “Fictional Explorers and Travelers”; Gallifrey, Krypton, Hoth,Tatooine and Vulcan in “Fictional Origins and Destinations”; Tardis, Argo, Dutchman, and Galactica in “Fictional Vessels”; and Toto in “Dogs from Literature, History and Mythology”.
HT: NBC News


Makes sense, Pluto being the Greek god of the Underworld, (not Hades "exactly" a bit more interesting).

It took me forever trying to figure out why people were making Mickey Mouse comments in discussions regrading Pluto. smh People have lost their minds, I swear.

uPtoWnNY said:

morningsong said:

Pluto needs to be airbrushed out.

Pluto is the force....stop hating, you must....

morningsong said:

It took me forever trying to figure out why people were making Mickey Mouse comments in discussions regrading Pluto. smh People have lost their minds, I swear.

My baby daddy....

^ he is tasty.

Oh now they tell us.



July 13, 2015: New Horizons is flying by Pluto on Tuesday, July 14! But we won't hear a word from it...This is Pluto in a Minute.
After nine and a half years and 3.26 billion miles, New Horizons is finally making its closest flyby of Pluto tomorrow, on Tuesday, July 14, but, the spacecraft will be silent all day. Because, of all the moving parts on New Horizons, the antenna is not one of them. The New Horizons spacecraft features a large dish antenna, and when it's facing the Earth it can do one of two things: it can either receive commands as an uplink or downlink data for scientists to analyze. However, because the antenna can't move, the spacecraft can ever be pointing its antenna towards the Earth or looking at Pluto to take observations. In short, the antenna can't go like this, so the entire spacecraft has to go like this.

And because the spacecraft is going to be really close to Pluto for just about 22 hours, the mission team decided they much rather it be gathering data than talk to the Earth.

And the spacecraft is going to be doing a lot of looking. The New Horizons spacecraft will gather spectroscopic data as well as color images as well as hi-res black and white images. So, when it does talk to the Earth again after the flyby, we're going to have some amazing views of Pluto.

Yeah.

Well, in the meantime, time for reflection.



“The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

~ Carl Sagan

Okay, enough of that. Onwards...

Professor Johann-Dietrich Woerner has been in his new job as Director General of the European Space Agency (Esa) for a week. In charge of a €4.4 billion annual budget, the former Chair of the German space agency is ultimately responsible for everything at Esa. Europe’s new observation, weather, communication and navigation satellites; astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS); missions to Mars, Mercury and Jupiter; and a sleepy lander on a duck-shaped comet all come under his remit.

When I ask him about his intentions for Esa, I expect a predictable and politically nuanced answer about the economic and social benefits of space or maybe the importance for science of exploring the unknown Universe. Instead, Woerner surprises me with a vision for a future of space exploration that is both ambitious and audacious.

“We should look to the future beyond the International Space Station,” he tells me. “We should look for a smaller spacecraft in low-Earth orbit for microgravity research and I propose a Moon village on the far side of the Moon.”

Yes, a village on the Moon.

A Moon village shouldn’t just mean some houses, a church and a town hall – Johann-Dietrich Woerner

Just the sort of daring vision that took Nasa from a standing start to the Moon in the 1960s, but today – possibly constrained by its political masters – the US space agency appears to be lacking ambition.

“A Moon village shouldn’t just mean some houses, a church and a town hall,” says Woerner. “This Moon village should mean partners from all over the world contributing to this community with robotic and astronaut missions and support communication satellites.”






Did I just read a challenge in there somewhere?

morningsong said:

Yeah.

Well, in the meantime, time for reflection.



“The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

~ Carl Sagan

Been reading the Pale Blue Dot again?

mordang said:

morningsong said:

Yeah.

Well, in the meantime, time for reflection.



“The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

~ Carl Sagan

Been reading the Pale Blue Dot again?

Just an extreme soft spot for Astronomy. And the quote is the truth.

I found one so far from the flyby....don't tell Uptown or Imma hafta hurt him.


http://time.com/3956938/n...uto-flyby/

From Pluto to the Sun

A Field Guide to the Solar System

NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Pluto caps more than 50 years of exploring our nearest celestial neighbors. Here’s a chance to look back at the moons, planets, asteroids and comets photographed by Earth’s farthest-flung probes.