The Astronomy Thread

[Matty]

tidal lock ftw

 

[Mudcat]

So there's this. Click and drag on Mars and whatnot.

 

[roguejuror]

Why they call it Namib when we already have an awesome Namibia down here. Fuck the Martians.

How do you call planetary discrimination?

 

[Mudcat]

I kept clicking and dragging up into the sky to see if I would come out upside down on the other side - but no.

 

[Matty]

It's just a static 360 panorama. I want some movement, some drama, some lasers, something.

 

[Mudcat]

It's odd in that you can do the panorama stuff whether the YouTube vid is playing or not. Pausing it makes no difference.

Strikes me as odd anyway.

Probably not really odd.

 

[roguejuror]

GoPro did a moving one driving around Times Square.

 

[Mudcat]

GoPro thinks it's so smart.

 

[roguejuror]

Solar eclipse from a plane

 

[Mudcat]

I wonder if that guy that is talking the whole time realizes what a complete tool he is.

 

[Mudcat]

Suppose something happened to the moon. Like suppose something big hit it and changed it's trajectory and it drifted away and out of sight.

Would that bother you?

Like I'm not talking about the tides and whatnot; I'm thinking more the romantic angle. The moon is cool. We all know the moon is cool.

I like the moon. A big part of the reason I studied astronomy is the weird gooey feelings I can get from all the shit that's going on in space - and no bigger part of that than the moon.

But if it was gone, I think I would get over it pretty fast.

 

[roguejuror]

I would complain about it waiting in line at the bank, and blame a politician.

 

[Mudcat]

Those fatcats in Washington!!

 

[Mudcat]

Something crashed the fuck into Jupiter.

Now Jupiter is very large and there is no one there so it probably doesn't matter for anything - but yap.

 

[eggs]

I think it was valorem. His ex threw him.

 

[Mudcat]

He definitely doesn't care about her any more.

 

[Matty]

 

[Mudcat]

Stephen Hawking: Astrophysicist Announces $100 Million Project to Search for Aliens in Deep Space

Hawking teamed with Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner in announcing the Breakthrough Starshot mission to send nanocraft on a 20-year journey to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.


Today, at the One World Observatory in New York City, Yuri Milner and I launched a mission to the stars. Mark Zuckerberg lent his support by joining the board of our new initiative, Breakthrough Starshot.

Within the next generation, Breakthrough Starshot aims to develop a nanocraft a gram-scale robotic space probe and use a light beam to push it to 20 percent of the speed of light. If we are successful, a flyby mission could reach Alpha Centauri about 20 years after launch, and send back images of any planets discovered in the system.

Albert Einstein once imagined riding on a light beam, and his thought experiment led him to the theory of special relativity. A little over a century later, we have the chance to attain a significant fraction of that speed: 100 million miles an hour. Only by going that fast can we reach the stars on the time-scale of a human life.

It is exciting to be involved in such an ambitious project, pushing the boundaries of ingenuity and engineering. - SH