Starship Asterisk*

<sarcasm>Hey, astrobiolgists ought to know!</sarcasm> Well, yes. They should. They are the experts we should be looking to. I don't understand why you discount their work so casually. The idea that astrobiologists should be assumed to have special knowledge of the biology of extraterrestrial life i...

Busy for next couple days, but I'll reply to this one posting now and to the others later in the week. Thanks for your thoughts. Three of the four most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. Why is not "VERY REASONABLE" to assume life is based upon those elemen...

The only kind of life we are familiar with, the only kind that we are reasonably able to detect, depends upon water. So the statement is very reasonable. The only view we'd ever had of the sky seemed to show celestial objects spinning around us. So it was a "very reasonable statement" to ...

Cool news! But I don't think you need to be very capricious or speculative to question statements like this: it is close enough to Ross 128 that it absorbs warmth sufficient for liquid water, one of the requisite ingredients for life After a couple Copernican revolutions, it's disappointing that we ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/science/planet-ross-128.html Astronomers announced on Wednesday the discovery of an Earth-size planet around a small red star in our corner of the galaxy. The planet could hold liquid water and conditions favorable for life. The star, Ross 128, is not the closest ...

Damn. Read it four times, thought it said "sound echoes"!

Would sure help if we didn't need to bring our own O2!

" Most recently, ground penetrating radar data from SELENE has been re-analyzed to reveal a series of intriguing second echoes"


...in a vacuum?

alcor wrote:You can argue about when a star is truly a star, but I define them as stars so long they emit electromagnetic radiation themselves without any help from the outside.

By that strict definition, I believe you'd need to consider Jupiter a star.....

The Galactic Home of a Historic Explosion. NOT AN HISTORIC! An is only used when preceding a word that begins with a vowel sound. You're clearly wrong on that. It was just so used. This Yogi Berra-ish oxymoron is the perennial undoing of language pedantry. No one owns language; you may attempt to s...

Scale is quite a thing!

I've done some looking around, but can't find an answer: anyone know the density? I.e., how many particles per cubic mile in a typical dark cloud?

Chris, i'm not going to be able to come up with a reference, but I've read multiple articles on next wave flight designs not including windows for efficiency/aerodynamics/cost reasons. They're counting on advanced presentation methods to simulate views and prevent claustrophobia. I can't say for sur...

I guess no windows because they'll be projecting or otherwise portraying the outside views. Maybe this is naïve and Luddite-ish of me, but I think directly-perceived reality (i.e. windows) will always feel distinct.

I was glum about missing out on totality, but observed the partial here in NY with my snazzy glasses. As I prepared to view, figuring I still had plenty of time, I noticed a certain harsh glare to the ambient light. And when I donned my glasses, I saw that the sun was already significantly eclipsed ...

Even at greatest variance, they're still pretty damn close. Is it stupendous coincidence, or reasonably expected per some angle I'd not considered?

Can anyone explain why it's not a steep coincidence that moon and sun are so very closely matched in apparent size?

Boomer12k wrote:Any bets on IF and WHEN it may disappear?

I asked that here in 2014 and was told 40 years. So....37?

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 16#p226116

That was great.

We're accustomed to static, calm astronomical images, because we're invariably looking across great distances at large things. It's easy to forget how dynamic it all actually is.

======== The spacecraft zipped through this region at speeds of about 77,000 mph (124,000 kph) relative to the planet ======== That's double the current speed of Voyager. Is this the fastest a human object has ever traveled? Edit: Just learned that New Horizons was "the fastest spacecraft ever ...

1. Four orbits in seven months? Is that entirely because of Jupiter's huge size, or is it also orbiting slowly? 2. Jupiter may have a solid core? Wuhhh? We'd have to rewrite a lot of textbooks if that turned out to be true (Wikipedia doesn't even raise the possibility yet, sticking entirely with the...

What are those two structures on the left? Photo bombers?

I'd imagine that our descendants will be extraordinarily interested in salvaging and examining this next time it circles back. Even wrecked, it will be a far better preserved example of 21st century tech than anything on earth. Imagine if the ancient Egyptians had crashed a spacecraft on a comet soo...

I was a kid during the total eclipse of March 7, 1970, and remember it lasting over three minutes. I was taught at the time that "total" meant total. So how can this total eclipse be a minute shorter?

I'd have prefered more foreground coverage on the effects re: man-in-the-moon marigolds.

Our gut is a Universe to 100 trillion bacteria that are beneficial to our health.... Take your probiotics... :---[===] * Actually, recent scientific study shows that the mere millions of cooties in yogurt, acidophilus, etc. do not make a meaningful difference at this scale. To loop it back to the g...