The object is composed of 73 quasars and spans about 1.6 billion light-years in most directions, though it is 4 billion light-years across at its widest point.
(via scinerds)
Source: mothernaturenetwork
In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission toMars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on such a project at a time when so many children were starving on Earth.
Stuhlinger soon sent the following letter of explanation to Sister Jucunda, along with a copy of “Earthrise,” the iconic photograph of Earth taken in 1968 by astronaut William Anders, from the Moon (also embedded in the transcript). His thoughtful reply was later published by NASA, and titled, “Why Explore Space?”
The only thing I know for certain,” [Michael] Collins writes, “is that starting a human colony on a second planet will cost much less than the weapons we buy to destroy the first one.
Source: airspacemag.com
The scale of Phobos
A depiction of Phobos hovering over the town of Grenoble in the Alpes (eastern France). Phobos’ dimensions are 26,8×18,4 km. If you carefully look at the center of the picture, you’ll see 2 helicopters, still quite far from the “big rock”.
(via likeaphysicist)
Source: davinci-marsdesign.blogspot.com
A Game-Changer in the Search for Alien Life: “All stars have planets”
Astronomers working with the Kepler spacecraft have announced new evidence suggesting that there are far more potentially habitable planets in our galaxy than we had believed. And just as surprisingly, these planets emerged much longer ago than expected — a revelation that could have profound implications in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The complete study has been published in the journal, Nature.
Inset images via SETI
An uptick in a certain kind of deep-space cosmic particle on Voyager I’s detectors this week means that it is thiiiiiiiiiiis close to leaving the Solar System. The probe has been in transit from Earth since 1977, and now sits 17.9 billion kilometers from Earth. Its radio signals take seventeen minutes to reach Earth at light speed!
It sits now at the border of the heliosphere, which is not really a border at all but more of a large fuzzy transition zone. This is the point at which hydrogen and helium carried by the solar wind are overtaken in force by interstellar cosmic particles. It’s the “outer” in “outer space”.
This humble hunk of electronics was built by us. We packed it with a golden message from Carl Sagan. We strapped it to a tube of fire and shot it to the edge of interstellar space (with the aid of a few complex math problems). What will happen when it enters the beyond? Like the marks we left on the Moon, will this be mankind’s footprint on the dusty surface of the unknown?
We don’t know what to expect. But I can’t wait to find out.
(More at The Atlantic)
Ray Bradbury reading his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been”
In November 1971, we were locked in yet another space race, albeit a quieter one. Americans had already begun to grow bored with the Apollo program, as the final two missions were to be launched in 1972, those primarily being very expensive geology expeditions.
Then Mariner 9 was launched. We were in a race with the USSR to put a spacecraft in orbit around another planet. In November of 1971, we did it. I’m not sure that Americans were by any means excited about it, but they should have been. Just as we must stay excited about our progress yet to come.
Ray Bradbury joined Arthur C. Clarke, Carl Sagan and others at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs in Pasadena to commemorate the mission’s success. Here he reads his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been”, an ode to exploration, and a fitting tribute to his legacy as a writer and dreamer. In full above (with a captivated Sagan included) and excerpted below:
O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measure out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam’s finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,
And God’s great hand come down the other way
To measure Man and find him Good,
And Gift him with Forever’s Day?
I work for that.
Short man. Large dream. I send my rockets forth
between my ears,
Hoping an inch of Will is worth a pound of years.
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall:
We’ve reached Alpha Centauri!
We’re tall, O God, we’re tall!
(via Boing Boing)
Does our universe show “bruises” where it collided with other universes?
The eternal inflation model says that there’s an infinite number of...
Lagrangian points, I like it how you can see that the center of gravity isn’t at the center of the star.
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