Showing posts with label Beyond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beyond. Show all posts
14 March 2019
Beyond the Cradle ~ Media Lab x Outer Space!
Excellent to see the third year of Beyond the Cradle organized by the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab today! Great talk by Nobel physicist Prof Sam Ting this morning plus SF panel featuring Daniel Suarez (of Daemon, FreedomTM, and Influx fame, with Delta-v coming soon!) among others! See live video!
21 July 2018
Giant Leaps ~ Celebrate Past, Ask What's Next?
On 20 July 1969, Astronaut Neil Armstrong made One Giant Leap For Mankind!
"When the lunar module lands at 4:18 p.m EDT, only 30 seconds of fuel remain. Armstrong radios "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Mission control erupts in celebration as the tension breaks, and a controller tells the crew "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we're breathing again." [...] At 10:56 p.m. EDT Armstrong is ready to plant the first human foot on another world. With more than half a billion people watching on television, he climbs down the ladder and proclaims: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Aldrin joins him shortly, and offers a simple but powerful description of the lunar surface: "magnificent desolation."
20 August 2017
Eclipsed Dreams ~ Future Tourism That Wasn't...
The Atlantic spotlights What Would the Solar Eclipse Look Like From the Moon?
P.S. Here's the real thing from Mon 8/21/2017...
"In 1989, [artist Pat] Rawlings was working on illustrations for a collection of children’s science books by the science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Using acrylics, he painted a view of a solar eclipse as seen from the moon, and named it after the date when the next eclipse would cross over the continental United States: August 21, 2017. This week, Rawlings tweeted a photo of the painting, which is at the top of this story. “I actually thought 28 years in the future tourists might watch the eclipse from the Moon,” he wrote. “Sigh.”
P.S. Here's the real thing from Mon 8/21/2017... "Scientists at UW–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) observed the eclipse through the eye of one of the world’s most advanced weather satellites, GOES-16. The eclipse images from the satellite were taken at a rate of one every five minutes. Stitched together, the images show the shadow of the moon tracking west to east across the continental United States."Plus here's a previous eclipse seen in March 2016 over ASEAN + Pacific region via the Himawari-8 Spacecraft in Geostationary orbit!
26 December 2014
Tsunami 2004 ~ Recalling Boxing Day Disaster...
The Boxing Day 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean -- ten years ago today, December 26th -- was one of the biggest natural disasters in modern memory, killing over a quarter-million people without (much) warning within 4-6 hours in at least a dozen countries -- and triggering unprecedented humanitarian relief efforts. There are several retrospective documentaries of note, but here's a sampling... For those interested in quantifying the catastrophe, first note this NOAA simulation of the tsunami wavefront... 
Second, look at this seismographic plot from around the world showing the Earth literally ringing from the rupture of the Sunda megathrust off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia...
We're learning ever more about quakes and tsunamis and NOAA's research and warning system is on the frontline... Nevertheless, the colossal power of plate tectonics is only one of the deadly natural perils mankind faces. Just one modest-sized asteroid hit, say like Eltanin or Chicxulub, would create quakes and tsunamis that make the Boxing Day disaster seem like ripples in a puddle. Simulate this for yourself via ImpactEarth! For civilizational survival, we need to figure out how to move humanity well beyond our cradle, ASAP.
Second, look at this seismographic plot from around the world showing the Earth literally ringing from the rupture of the Sunda megathrust off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia...18 July 2014
Moonwalk One ~ NASA's Epic Apollo 11 Docu!
io9's Mika McKinnon points out that NASA shares Moonwalk One...
"This documentary gives an in-depth look at the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. NASA archival footage, as well as reactions to the mission around the world, shows the enormous impact that the moon landing had."
16 January 2014
Scale of the Universe ~ Huang's Epic Infographic!
NASA APOD spotlights Cary & Michael Huang's epic Scale of the Universe interactive infographic!
05 December 2013
World Outside ~ ISS Views Timelapse!
io9's Robert Gonzalez spots The World Outside My Window - Time Lapse of Earth from the ISS by David Peterson & colleagues...
04 December 2013
Curing Aging ~ de Grey on Healthy Longevity!
Thanks to Johnny Boston at H+ for spotlighting Galactic Public Archives interview with a genial modern-day Merlin, Dr Aubrey de Grey, on addressing the world's most important problem -- the diseases and ravages of aging -- via Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence or SENS... This is especially important in light of the neo-luddite anti-gerontechnology movement festering in our society, for instance Daniel Callahan's screed in the NYTimes On Dying After Your Time.
23 November 2013
Planetary Resources ~ Mining Asteroids & More...
Brian Wang at NextBigFuture spots Planetary Resources infovideo...
26 October 2013
Saturn & Apollo ~ All Launches & Lunar Landings!
Robert Sorokanich at Gizmodo spots all 13 Saturn V rocket launches! And here's all six Apollo Lunar landings too!
22 October 2013
12 October 2013
Remember Sagan ~ Cosmic Inspiration & Ideas!
Just a few nuggets in memory of Carl Sagan... And here's the ultimate tribute -- the 'illions supercut!
21 September 2013
31 August 2013
Cosmic Caterpillar ~ DM Spots Cygnus Squiggle!
The DM's Ellie Zolfagharifard spots the Cosmic Caterpillar...
"The light-year-long cosmic squiggle is currently collecting material from an envelope of gas surrounding it. [...] A previous study has called the object, which lies 4,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, a ‘tadpole in an interstellar pond.’ Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this 'wanna-be' star, named IRAS 20324+4057, and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape."
17 August 2013
Leaving Earth ~ Messenger Rearview Timelapse!
Wow, NASA APOD shows what Leaving Earth looks like via Messenger spacecraft rearview perspective 24 hour timelapse!
31 July 2013
Eskimo Nebula ~ NASA APOD Combo Image!
NASA APOD serves up Eskimo Nebula combining X-Ray imagery from Chandra and visible from Hubble! 
20 July 2013
Epic Lunar Landing ~ Apollo 11 Success at 44!
23 March 2013
28 January 2013
23 January 2013
Cosmic Storm ~ Tree Rings Spot AD 774-5 Event
Thanks to Time's science writer Michael Lemonick for spotting The Ancient Space Storm That Struck the Earth...
...and now another team offers an explanation, A Galactic short gamma-ray burst as cause for the 14C peak in AD 774/5.
"Sometime between the spring of 774 A.D and the summer of 775, a cataclysmic event happened somewhere out in the cosmos -- and we felt it here, as a spike of radioactive carbon-14 and beryllium-10. The isotopes were taken up by growing Japanese cedar trees and there they remained."A Japanese team revealed the anomalous 20-times-normal concentrations last year in a Nature piece, A signature of cosmic-ray increase in ad 774–775 from tree rings in Japan...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
