>check this out>
optimism, pessimism; fuck that, we're gonna make it happen
tracking oswaldest
non lucror, exposita scientia, ad astra
David Attenborough’s Final Statement for Mankind in The Life of Mammals
Saturn’s eight largest moons
Click through the photos for their names (they are arranged from largest to smallest).
These are the Most Incredible Photos Shot by NASA’s Cassini Probe
The Cassini space probe has captured its fair share of eye-popping photos since launching in 1997 and arriving in Saturn’s orbit in 2004.
Here’s a collection of some of Cassini’s most remarkable photographs. You can find a massive collection of Cassini’s photos in the mission gallery on NASA’s website.1. Saturn’s gradation and rings. 2.Saturn casting a shadow on its rings. 3. Three of Saturn’s moons (Titan, Mimas, and Rhea) captured in a single photo. 4.A storm on the north pole of Saturn. 5. Four moons huddling around Saturn’s rings. 6. Saturn’s moon Rhea hovering in front of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. 7. Saturn, its rings, and its moon Dione. 8. Saturn casting its shadow on its rings. 9. A massive storm stretching across the surface of the planet. 10. Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.
The Cassini camera team keeps an eye out for images that will be gorgeous in addition to scientifically valuable during planning.
I used to work on the Cassini science planning team, mostly planning flybys of Enceladus; this weekend’s final Enceladus flyby feels very bittersweet to me.
Questions not only shape the nature of our knowledge, but deepen it as well. Isaac Asimov, prolific science-fiction author and biochemistry professor, was propelled by a curiosity to write across a variety of subjects: from astronomy to math to religion. Even today, the questions he asked continue to enrich our understanding of the human condition.
gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
The real problem with people fussing over Pluto all the time is it represents the priorities of the public - preserving traditions rather than accepting facts. The pursuit of science is about building a sustainable catalog of truths, and there is no advantage in altering truths to appease nostalgia.
did carl sagan make this text post? cause it sure sounds like it.
im tired of cisphobia. theres nothing wrong with having your corresponding structural groups on the same side of the double bond.
Pop Philosophy: one post everyday, open to discussion
A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism, and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.
“Those who see the cosmic perspective as a depressing outlook, they really need to reassess how they think about the world. Because when I look up in the universe, I know I’m small but I’m also big. I’m big because I’m connected to the universe, and the universe is connected to me.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson
(Image credit: ‘The Mirrored Night Sky’ by Xiaohua Zhao taken at the world’s largest salt flat in Bolivia)
