Starship Asterisk*

Now this is what happens when you try to reverse temporal trajectory in your TARDIS without first pausing and offsetting your physical coordinates by at least one external diameter. Your time capsule overlaps itself while traveling in opposite temporal directions, paradox ensues, and the picture sho...

The title "Barnard Stares...." hints at something about Barnard's Star, not Barnard's loop.

What about "Barnard Looks....", "Barnard Leers....", "Barnard Glares....", or something else alliterating with "loop" or at least not with "star"?

Canis Minor and Canis Major are his dogs, the one in front is called Procyon. They chase Lepus, the hare, although Hyginus says some critics thought this too base a prey for the noble Orion and have him pursuing Taurus, the bull, instead. The Mithraic iconography features Mithras killing a bull, su...

inertnet wrote:They might think that they're unique too.

Goldilocks thought that only Little Bear's stuff was "juuuust right!"

But Papa Bear's stuff was just right for Papa Bear, and Mama Bear's stuff was just right for Mama Bear.

That aspect of the "Goldilocks" story is worth remembering.

This histogram depicts the estimated fraction of stars that have close orbiting planets of various sizes. The number of Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits is surely much less,.... Closer orbits around colder stars, or more distant orbits around hotter stars, should provide ...

I'm having a mental block trying to envision Usain Bolt hitting 11 m/s wearing either magnetic or velcro shoe-soles. A slight refinement: electromagnetic soles, with a future high-power battery-pack at the waist, and sensors connected to automatic toggles to turn off each shoe's toe and heel magnet...

If you think of an object falling through the atmosphere toward the surface of the Earth, much the same phenomenon is happening, at a different scale. The object accelerates toward the sold mass, also initially the mass of the atmosphere, but as it passes each layer/shell/height of atmosphere, the e...

neufer wrote:But it would be a real challenge getting any sort of footing with just 860 MICRO-g.

Magnetic shoe-soles and ferrous racetrack surface.

Second choice: velcro.

What if Phobos has a dense round core that's worked its way entirely loose from the thin shell? Should it be renamed "Tinklebell"? Interesting that the "freshly uncovered" surface should be a silver-gray, unlike the Mars-reddish of the other impact areas. Almost as though the cap...

Our most cherished space photos in the future will be pictures of "ourselves" in (soon to be fully documented) alien landscapes. A cartoon immediately springs to mind, fully drawn on imaginary paper: airless cratered landscape with occasional tall sharp spires and a visibly curved horizon...

Tourists and vanity: it afflicts even our machines . Travel all the way to an alien world, stop in the middle of an alien landscape, and take a photo of yourself . (Well, technically, take 55 partial photos of yourself, to be stitched into one -- each time photographing where your arm isn't . But no...

I didn't think Mickey's dog was all that bright. Or even Goofy.... Exactly :!: :!: That's why i can't see it. :yes: ... but the reason you can't see Mickey's dog is that, having buried it all in the backyard, he now rules the underworld of wealth. Hence the term "plutonian". (Whereas you'...

It's just that in this physical realm, i just can't see as far as Pluto. You can see a whole lot farther than Pluto, viz. any stars you see in the night sky. Perhaps if conditions were just right, with a brand new super nova off in the distance behind Pluto... Nah! I still wouldn't be able to see P...

...a really big kaboom like the Big Bang and this star has been traveling ever since, in various forms ? gypsy of a strange and distant time traveling in panic, all direction blind ... oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh oh left without a hope of coming home -- Justin Hayward / Moody Blues

Beyond wrote:That doesn't work for me. I'm not far sighted enough to see Pluto.

Tsk, in the spirit of a true Beyonder, you could have tried standing on your toes atop a footstool.

Yeah, well, maybe sometimes you'd have to wait for that pesky ISS to move out of the way....

One thing I thought odd, given Phobos's presumed origin as a captured asteroid, was its similarity in reddish color to Mars. A number of other asteroids have been photographed, and appeared to be gray. Was this only due to monochrome film?

This is sheerly gorgeous, Owlice. I'm printing copies for myself and friends.

I also see this when I look at other static images, especially of stars and galaxies, but I know they couldn't be moving. Does anyone else see this? That's a characteristic of certain types of "optical illusions" -- and lots of people see them, which is why the term exists. Here, for inst...

owlice wrote:

neufer wrote:So the male dancers were called 'RINOS

No.

Not unless they were also liberal Republicans.

Which is why Ron Reagan may have confused the discussion a bit....

What a great picture of the two hurtling moons of Jasoom , a fine match in every way for the two hurtling moons of Barsoom (Thuria/Phobos and Cluros/Deimos)! So... the big one's "Luna"... and the little one's what, "Fortuna"? ("... velut Luna ...") Should we presume any...

You're right of course, and it is inspiring to reflect on everything we've been able to figure out. But there is a consistent human bias toward overconfidence in what we "know". Ignoring or glossing over the unknown, unreliable, and uncertain, we cling to certainty at the expense of truth...

Red alert. Incoming Pluto fans ready to beat the planet semantics horse again. Protect the horse! It does seem strange: here we are, a planet with one moon; and there Pluto is, a "non-planet" with FIVE moons. Is Pluto not a planet because it "hasn't cleared its orbit"? Of, say, ...