Joy for the 🌍
Jeremy Hansen:
“We have a term in our crew that we coined a long time ago, the ‘joy train’..We’re not always on the joy train, this crew..but we are committed to getting back on the joy train as soon as we can. And that is a useful life skill for any team trying to get something done.”
Radio astronomer’s critique is that FAST is a spectacular but narrow giant, cyclopean its single-dish design gives it poor imaging res, limited sky access, & weaker survey flexibility than interferometric arrays like MeerKAT & the SKA, it can read as prestige hardware than future-proof workhorse.
Atari video game based on 1982 Clint Eastwood film (based on book) about stealing a mythical MiG-31 Firefox, a Soviet stealth jet with 🧠 controlled weapons. When the book was written, the IRL MiG-31 was still secret Soviet project so the author had to invent its capabilities & NATO reporting. 🔥 🦊
NGC 3310: A Starburst Spiral Galaxy
NGC 3310 is a starburst spiral galaxy. A collision ~100 million years ago ignited widespread star formation, still active today. This demonstrates that intense periods of star birth can persist for extended astronomi…
Credit: AAO ITSO Office,
Gemini Obs./AURA &
T. A. Rector
(U. Alaska Anchorage)
“…There are languages that count, ‘One, two, three, many,’ and that’s it. And those are human languages. So to say, ‘Math is a universal language,’ I’m already not totally on board there.”
Einstein showed space can curve, but data reveals a flat Universe
According to Einstein, space can take on any curvature depending on what's in it: positive curvature, negative curvature, or zero (flat) curvature.
So why is our Universe so flat?
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #astro #physics
What a panel of luminaries - such wide-ranging topics. Re Hawking, I think he later abandoned dream that the universal phytsical laws must be a single, timeless, fixed, perfectly unique set of equations existing in a straightforward way “before” the universe.
This song - a hyper-fast explosion of audio pixels, the chorus of a multitude DMT machine elves, mischievous intelligence. Love it! #flyinglotus
Webb Telescope Reveals a Bizarre Planet With a Giant Ocean of Magma Just 35 Light-Years Away Astronomers have discovered a bizarre exoplanet with a giant underground ocean of magma that traps sulphur and may represent an entirely new class of worlds.
Before GPS, bombers and missiles used star trackers to lock onto known stars and correct drift in inertial navigation systems. The B-52 MD-1 is described as an automatic astro navigation system. Like a mechanical eye for the stars. It looks like an imperial droid!
🔭
Titled Etude 1, the unfinished 1960s computer artwork includes a piece of fax paper with an image on it and an accordion-folded, pencil-annotated printout of Fortran code dated Oct. 24, 1967. #computerart #2015
Vibe-coded this visualization of Van Allen Probe A & B just as Probe A burned up over the eastern Pacific near the Galápagos. Not a menace, just the quiet end of a radiation-scarred #NASA robot. Its twin still loops through Earth’s invisible magnetic donuts. 🌏💫🧲 #opus46
Updated Space Force reentry prediction from Van Allen Probe A: sometime between 0250 UTC Mar 11 (20 min from now) and 2050 UTC Mar 11. Reentry will be somewhere in the latitude band 10S to 10N.
Van Allen Probe A re-entering tonight flies a ~10° inclination orbit aligned with Earth’s magnetic equator to slice through the radiation belts. Its eccentric orbit (600 km to 30,000 km) carries it from inner belt to outer belt and back, a radial core sample of the magnetosphere twice per orbit.
Did any or you see that glowing cloud in Washington State’s sky (USA)? A SpaceX Falcon 9 2nd stage venting propellant 550 km up after delivering Starlink satellites. It catches sunlight after sunset. We can see whenever a Florida Starlink launch happens 1-3 hrs before sunset. I vibe coded bad sim.
Thanks, Klaas! I will read it. Always curious about deeptime storage.
“…Microsoft’s Project Silica have now demonstrated a similar glass-based technology that might lead to long-lasting glass data libraries in the near future.”
The mission architecture for America’s Artemis 3 lunar program is in disarray and has created an opportunity for China project alternative vision of humanity’s future in space. Less sophisticated but steady/stable progress compared to the US. The proverbial rabbit and the hare (non) race.
LAUNCH at about 0357 UTC Feb 7 of a CZ-2F from Jiuquan with the fourth flight of the Chinese robotic recoverable spaceplane (usually thought of as comparable to the X-37B).
One year ago today, the #ngVLA prototype antenna dish was LIFTED onto its pedestal. 🏗️📡 Raise your hand if you watched that livestream last year!
mtex antenna technology | Liebherr
📸 Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/Desert Drones LLC.
Learn more: ngvla.nrao.edu
#Astronomy #RadioAstronomy #NRAO
It’s been a very gentle winter here in the US Pacific Northwest. We’re expecting cold to set in next week. Sunset, from the city of Edmunds, Washington State. This is the Salish Sea, which connects to the Pacific Ocean.
