When Cosmos showed the asteroid belt Sunday night, I noticed that, taking some artistic license to quickly get a point across, they showed it as crammed with asteroids. Anyone familiar with the real asteroid belt knows that's not accurate. Even in the belt, asteroids are lonely rocks. When you think of the asteroid belt, you … Continue reading Why the Asteroid Belt Doesn’t Threaten Spacecraft
Tag: Solar System
NASA planning a robotic mission to Europa
Related to my last post on Europa Report, a movie I discovered when I read these articles earlier today, and also in the category of things I somehow missed, NASA is planning a robotic mission to Europa. This is exciting since, as I noted in the movie review, Europa's underground ocean makes it currently the … Continue reading NASA planning a robotic mission to Europa
Europa Report, a review
Somehow I completely missed the release of this movie. It seems to represent the beginning of something I've hoped to see for a while: small independent productions that make use of the lowering cost of CG technology to make narrow genre films. Most film science fiction is, unfortunately, garbage scientifically. The cost and risk of … Continue reading Europa Report, a review
If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system
Wow! We've talked before that humans can't really comprehend large numbers, or very large or very small distances. We have to deploy metaphors to handle them. At this link is an image of the solar system, drawn to scale, including all the empty space. If you think you've ever seen that, you may be in … Continue reading If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system
Kepler’s Latest Exoplanet Hoard, Graphed
Ok, so if you're like me, you probably didn't pay much attention to the latest announcement of the number of exoplanets that had been found by Kepler. It seems like those kinds of announcements have become old hat. This reaction must have been common, and must have annoyed someone at NASA, so they created this … Continue reading Kepler’s Latest Exoplanet Hoard, Graphed
The space age is in full swing, for robots
Yesterday I made the observation that it was much cheaper to transmit information than to travel to an interstellar destination, observing that sending a microscopic robot able to use raw materials in the destination system to bootstrap manufacture what it needs. The Leather Library pointed out that this applies as well to destinations in our solar … Continue reading The space age is in full swing, for robots
Why is the solar system flat?
Machines Like Us and others linked to this cool video explaining why the solar system is flat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmNXKqeUtJM I'm not entirely sure the four dimensional stuff was necessary, although it was interesting. One thing to realize though, is that while the solar system is flat, it's not flat in the same orientation as other solar systems, … Continue reading Why is the solar system flat?
Ask Ethan #20: Is the Mars One crew doomed? – Starts With A Bang
What Mars One is counting on is that they can safely land a heavier payload than ever before, that they can do it more precisely than ever before (as in, within just a few hundred meters of previous successful landings), and they can do it for only 12% of the projected costs, with a total … Continue reading Ask Ethan #20: Is the Mars One crew doomed? – Starts With A Bang
UChicago researchers use Hubble Telescope to reveal cloudy weather on alien world | UChicago News
Weather forecasters on exoplanet GJ 1214b would have an easy job. Today’s forecast: cloudy. Tomorrow: overcast. Extended outlook: more clouds. That's the implication of a study led by researchers in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago who have definitively characterized the atmosphere of a super-Earth class planet orbiting another star … Continue reading UChicago researchers use Hubble Telescope to reveal cloudy weather on alien world | UChicago News
Reinstalling Eden : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
Eve, I call her. She awakes, wondering where she is and how she got there. She admires the beauty of the island. She cracks a coconut, drinks its juice and tastes its flesh. Her cognitive skills, her range of emotions, the richness of her sensory experiences, all rival my own. She thinks about where she … Continue reading Reinstalling Eden : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
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