An astronomer in progress since the age of seven
I'm basically a talking monkey on an organic spaceship flying through the universe at the speed of around 29 km/s. Ooh ooh ah ah.
If you want to kill me, you should do that by throwing me into a supermassive black hole. The tidal force wouldn’t kill me instantly.
Hey Peter
Currently reading: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
"When I was growing up it was really cool to be a scientist or engineer. We need to make science cool again." -Sally Ride
bUT ARE THEY ACTUALLY MAKING A MOVIE ON A HUMAN MISSION TO EUROPA
How Bilinguals Switch Between Languages
May 20, 2013 — Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate “sound systems” for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.
The combination of Titan’s low gravity and thick atmosphere would allow a human to fly by strapping “fake wings” to their arms.
The second-largest moon in the solar system, Saturn’s Titan is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere, which is much deeper than Earth’s. It’s so thick and the gravity so weak, in fact, that you could strap wings on your arms and flap them like a bird to fly. The air is mostly nitrogen, but the rest is mostly hydrocarbons, giving Titan’s atmosphere a thick orange smoggy haze that is opaque to visible light. Cassini studies Titan in infrared light (which can penetrate the haze) and with radar — and in 2004, via the Huygens Probe, an atmosphere probe became the first spacecraft to transmit from the surface of a moon other than our own. Titan is remarkably earthlike, apart from being so cold that water is as hard as rock; in addition to the atmosphere, it is the only place other than Earth known to have bodies of liquid on the surface — lakes as large as the Great Lakes, except that it’s not water: it’s probably methane or ethane. The climate is probably similar to some of our deserts, with gigantic monsoons perhaps once a decade or more, and long droughts between. NASA scientists are working on a mission called Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) specifically to study the lakes of Titan.
Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/ It’s Raining on Titan! Illustration Credit & Copyright: David A. Hardy (AstroArt)
do you ever just absentmindedly scroll down your dash but then you see some certain blogs that you follow and you go
oh, hello friends. you have good stuff
and then you actually look at what they’re posting
Carl Sagan’s The Cosmos S1E1
NYC as seen from different planets
Take a trip around the solar system and bring the entire city of New York with you in these captivating drawings showing how the atmospheres of other planets would interact with the iconic metropolitan skyline.
The images were created by artist Nickolay Lamm of StorageFront.com, who employed the help of astrobiologist Marilyn Browning Vogel to get the details right. Lamm said the idea came to him while looking at pictures that NASA’s Curiosity rover took of Mount Sharp.
Image credit: Nickolay Lamm
Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield Adapting to Earth and Fame
The awe that Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield beamed back from space was real. The fame that he racked up while orbiting Earth was just an idea that he didn’t fully understand until shortly after he landed in Kazakhstan earlier this week.
He is adapting to it slowly, just as his body is adapting once again to gravity The transition has left that the 53-year-old astronaut feeling like an elderly man as he is subjected to medical tests and a rehabilitation program to conquer his dizziness, poor circulation and weakened bones and muscles.
“My body was quite happy living in space without gravity. It’s a very empowering environment where you can touch the wall and do summersaults, where you can move a refrigerator around with your fingertips and never worry about which way was up,” he said. “All that suddenly changed when our Soyuz slammed back into earth, and my body is catching up with the change.”
Dr. Raffi Kuyumjian, the Canadian Space Agency’s chief medical officer, said Hadfield’s aches and pains prove that spaceflight is a great aging simulator — for every month in space, astronauts lose 1 per cent of their bone density.
For now, he said, Hadfield shuffles when he walks, has soreness in his back and neck after being weightless for five months, and is experiencing dizziness that makes it difficult navigating corners and means he is often bumping into walls as he waddles through NASA’s hallways.
Hadfield himself described it as feeling like he had just finished a particularly intense rugby match.
Follow His Recovery
6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism
Despite enormous progress in recent decades, women still have to deal with biases against them in the sciences.
In April, National Geographic News published a story about the letter in which scientist Francis Crick described DNA to his 12-year-old son. In 1962, Crick was awarded a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, along with fellow scientists James Watson and Maurice Wilkins.
Several people posted comments about our story that noted one name was missing from the Nobel roster: Rosalind Franklin, a British biophysicist who also studied DNA. Her data were critical to Crick and Watson’s work, but as several commenters noted, Franklin was robbed of recognition. (See her section below for details.)
Stargazing At The Elqui Domos Hotel In Chile | Designed by RDM Arquitectura | Photos by James Florio
In the heart of the mythical Elqui Valley in Pisco, surrounded by the Andes Mountains, 500km north of Santiago in central Chile, lies a magical place that allows for star-spangled dreams beneath the clear pure sky. Combining stargazing and specialized astronomic tours with night-time horseback riding, meditation and even tarot readings, Elqui Domos is a hotel quite like no other.
It was completed in 2005 to fulfil its owners’ desire to observe and enjoy the grandeur of the one of the world’s most star-filled skies. It is one of only seven astronomic hotels around the world and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere, offering breathtaking views of the magic skies draped over the Elqui Valley (the valley is renowned for its sharp, clear skies, as it happens to sit under one of the clearest atmospheres in the world). The lack of rain and pleasant weather all year round set the perfect conditions for astronomic tourism, where guests can gather to enjoy a unique chance to liaise with the stars.
(via Yatzer)
Pics I’ve taken at the observatory. A 4 second exposure on a 14” reflector (yeah we have a really old TV). Click pics for descriptions if you please
reasons to learn to cook:
- to cook while wearing this apron
it needs to be mine.
