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“Probably no stars will physically hit each other. There’s just so much space between the stars, but when Andromeda collides with us it’ll have a huge impact on the Milky Way. Some things will get thrown into the black hole in the middle, some stars will get ripped off and thrown away into space, so it’ll be dramatic. And the entire night sky will change.” - The Universe S1E9 Alien Galaxies
(Source: galactic-centre, via n-a-s-a)
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Space Oddity: Astronaut Ends Mission With Music Video
Wonderful tribute to a Bowie classic. Have a safe trip home, Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko!
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High ResolutionIt’s time to get serious about going to Mars, says NASA
Landing humans on Mars would be a multi-stage process, and there’s not much time if it’s to be done by 2030.
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"The constants of nature happen to allow us to exists. That’s not so surprising. What would be more surprising would be if they didn’t but we existed anyway."
- Lawrence Krauss, on “fine tuning” -
High ResolutionWhat the Death of the Sun Will Look Like
About 1.1 billion years from now, the sun will begin to change. As the hydrogen fuel in its core is used up, the burning will spread outward toward the surface. This will make the sun grow brighter. This increased radiation will have a devastating effect on our planet. Here’s what that might look like.
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Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars
See on Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the future
Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs.
See on phys.org -
Meteorites on Mars
The sky falls on Mars, too, just as it does sometimes on Earth. In its long crosscountry drive over the pool table expanse of Meridiani Planum, Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has encountered more than a dozen meteorites, all of them iron or stony-iron in composition.
Meteorites found on Mars are curiosities, but they can be something more than that, as a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research points out. A team of scientists led by James Ashley (Arizona State University) notes that because we have samples on Earth of the same kinds of meteorites found there, scientists can use the weathering seen on the Martian examples to probe bygone Martian climates.
The paper details three of Opportunity’s Mars meteorites, dubbed Block Island, Shelter Island, and Mackinac Island. Block Island was found by Opportunity on sol (Mars day) 1961 (July 31, 2009), Shelter Island on sol 2022 (October 1, 2009), and Mackinac Island on sol 2034 (October 14, 2009).Scientists are naming rocks of scientific interest after islands on earth.
What’s most distinctive about these meteorites is that they show evidence for repeated episodes of weathering. For example, Block Island (an iron meteorite) shows two dramatically different faces: one smoothed, probably by sandblasting, and the other deeply pitted, probably by acidic corrosion. The corrosion likely occurred as thin films of water encountered iron sulfide minerals commonly found in iron meteorites.
Both Block Island and Shelter Island show evidence for multi-stage weathering. Close examination of their surfaces show that both have lost through weathering the fusion crusts that meteorites commonly develop as they speed through the atmosphere. Then exposure to water (or probably ice) created an oxydized (rusted) outer layer. This in turn has been largely scoured away by wind erosion.
There’s no way at present to determine how long those meteorites rested on the surface before Opportunity rolled by. But the weathering is unlikely to have happened recently, given Mars’ current arid, cold climate. Yet scientists know that over the last half million years at least, the planet’s spin axis has changed its tilt with respect to the Martian orbit. This has produced periods when snow and ice have come down from the polar regions and accumulated near the equator, probably including Meridiani Planum.
Credit: NASA/JPL
(via itsfullofstars)
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High ResolutionClick to enlarge
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The Last Pictures: A collection of 100 photographs that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc and sent into orbit on board the Echostar XVI satellite this month. It is a time capsule that is meant to outlast the Sun itself, a permanent record of our civilization. Read more about it @brainpickings.
(via ikenbot)
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High ResolutionLadies and Gentlemen, We Have Left the Solar System
Thirty-five years after its launch, Voyager 1 appears to have travelled beyond the influence of the Sun and exited the heliosphere, according to a new study appearing online today.
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In Focus: The Mars Desert Research Station
In the vast open spaces of southern Utah, Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart recently paid a visit to the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS). Built and operated by a space advocacy group called the Mars Society, the research facility is investigating the feasibility of human exploration of Mars, using the Utah desert’s Mars-like terrain to simulate working conditions on the red planet. Since 2000, more than 100 small crews have served two-week rotations in the MDRS, conducting research in an on-site greenhouse, observatory, engineering area, and living space. Urquhart was able to accompany members of the Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission inside the MDRS facility, and on a simulated trip to collect Martian geological samples.
See more. [Image: Reuters]
(via itsfullofstars)
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If you were to move all of the matter in the universe into one corner, how much space would it take up?
It’s hard to answer this question exactly because there are some unknowns. But if you are willing to accept three assumptions, we can come up with an answer that sounds reasonable.
The first question is, “How big is the universe?” No one knows, but this Question of the Day assumes that the universe is a cube that is 30 billion light years on each side. That means that the whole universe contains about 2.7E+31 cubic light years.
The next question is, “How much matter does the universe contain?” The mass of the universe is a source of debate right now because there is no easy way to put the universe on a scale. This NASA page and this “Extension, Age and Mass of the Universe” article discuss different techniques that scientists use to estimate the mass. The latter article also includes an estimate of about 1.6E+60 kilograms for the mass of the universe. Other estimates give other numbers, but all are in that ballpark.
The next question is, “What density do you want to assume the mass will have once you push all of it into one corner?” Now, if you were really to do this - if you actually did move all of the mass of the universe into one corner - it would condense instantly into a black hole and potentially ignite another big bang. But let’s say that you could keep it from doing that, and you were somehow able to keep all of the mass evenly distributed at the density of the sun. According to “Magnitudes of Physics”, the density of the sun is about 1,410 kilograms per cubic meter. (For comparison, the density of water is 1,000 kilograms per cubic meter.)
If you are willing to accept these three assumptions, then:
1.1E+57 cubic meters of matter in the universe
A cubic light year contains about 1E+48 cubic meters. So all of the matter in the universe would fit into about 1 billion cubic light years, or a cube that’s approximately 1,000 light years on each side. That means that only about 0.0000000000000000000042 percent of the universe contains any matter. The universe is a pretty empty place!
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"In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited."
- – Neil A. Armstrong, 1999 (via sagansense)(via wildcat2030)
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High ResolutionThe actual distance between the Earth and the Moon.
Perspective.
(Source: thefuckingdotcom, via itsfullofstars)
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High ResolutionAn ambitious private manned mission to Mars aims to launch a two-person crew to fly around the Red Planet and return to Earth in 501 days, starting in January 2018.
This bold undertaking is planned by the Inspiration Mars Foundation, a non-profit company founded by millionaire and space tourist Dennis Tito that was officially unveiled on Feb. 27 after early details leaked. Though the spacecraft would not land humans on Mars or even put them in orbit, it would bring people within a few hundred kilometers of the Martian surface — roughly the same distance between the International Space Station and Earth — and represent a major milestone in human spaceflight. If successful, the mission would go down in history as the first time a private company accomplished something government agencies were unable to do in space.
The mission is extremely ambitious, well beyond anything previously accomplished by the private sector and it faces plenty of obstacles. The company has an aggressive schedule to keep if it wants to hit its 2018 mark and needs to make sure the necessary technology is developed and well-tested. Despite its deep-pocketed backer, the mission has nowhere near the funding it needs to launch and will require raising greater sums than have ever been done for a private space endeavor. Its designers also need to figure out exactly how to keep the crew healthy, both physically and psychologically, for the 501-day duration of the flight as they face dangers from radiation, bone and muscle loss, fatigue, and depression. Mission designers will have to ensure they can get the crew safely to the ground when the capsule returns to Earth at a screaming 30,000 mph.
Yet despite these hurdles, of all the bold announcements from private spaceflight companies in recent years, this one seems the most achievable. “The reason this entire thing is possible is because it’s actually a very simple mission,” said Jane Poynter, president of the Paragon Space Development Corporation, which makes life-support systems and has partnered with Inspiration Mars. “We’re not trying to land, we’re going to fly by and we’re using extant technologies that NASA and the space industry have been developing for years.” (via Private Plan to Send Humans to Mars in 2018 Might Not Be So Crazy | Wired Science | Wired.com)
Divine Irony
is a rich archive of religious delusions, scientific truths and political implications.
"Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
-George Carlin
“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed”.
-Albert Einstein
