dominochan | Entries tagged with astronomy

I have much more to choose from for this entry. Right now, I'm flipping through Weird Las Vegas and Nevada. The research is spotty, but it's entertaining. It also lists some great hidden gems for visitors that like to go off the beaten path. The other one I'd recommend is for my fellow astronomy nerds. Atlas of the Universe. Seriously. It's gooood.

( Sixteen! )

And now for ze bonus meme:

Reply to this post, and I'll tell you one reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, and spread the love.

Current Mood: stuffed

This is an easy one, if not a tad long. It comes from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot". It was based on a photograph that was taken in 1990 from the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

"Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

( 25 More Days )

It's practically been confirmed:

Mars once had oceans.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070613_mars_oceans.html

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: White Zombie - More Human than Human

We interrupt this program for a special news report:

-A giant lake of water ice has been discovered on Mars, thus providing more evidence that Mars once had flowing water. It's located at the south pole of the planet. And from the pics I've seen, it's HUGE.

-Cassini, the probe inserted into Saturn's orbit, has confirmed the presence of liquid lakes on Titan. Titan, the only known moon with a nitrogen-rich atmosphere, has a methane lake that's roughly the size of the Caspian Sea. It's not the only lake as other smaller lakes have been discovered as well.

And that's all for the astronomy update.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program of stuff.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Bjork - It's oh so Quiet

I read some of the headline stories on Yahoo! today and one of them was about car wrecks. It said certain astrological signs are more prone to accidents than others. My initial thought was, "haha the worst are probably Libras". And what did the article say?

You guessed it. Libras are the worst next to Aries.

That's awesome. XD The guy went on to say that he'd rather get in a car with a 24-year-old Leo than a 25-year-old Aries.

Now for the really cool article. Recently I've been getting back into researching stuff about space exploration, so the National Geographic article about Saturn's Cassini probe piqued my interest. The article said that the moon Enceladus might have liquid water geysers like on earth along with water ice. The evidence came from a photo taken of a plume that shot out of the moon's surface. From that along with other bits of info scientists wanted to explore Enceladus a bit more, as the moon had the factors needed for life. Another article today claimed to debunk that theory, saying it was something else that caused the plume and not water. Either way I think Enceladus could house life, mainly because our definition of what needs to be present for life may not be the same as the rest of the planets out there. Not all life will be carbon-based. Of course I don't think we should colonize this moon. It's about the size of the UK.

My money's on Titan for that. ;D

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Robert Palmer - Addicted to Love

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Entries tagged with astronomy

Day 14 - A Non-Fictional Book and a Bonus Love Meme!

Day 5 - Favorite Quote

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And now for a moment with the astro-nerd

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