I Sure Can’t Wait Until Asteroid And Lunar Mining Become Real_industries Someday!
I sure can’t wait until Asteroid and Lunar Mining become real_industries someday!
More Posts from Aspergers1044 and Others
Snow covered House in Winter
Here's a chart of Bumble Bees of The Eastern United States with a chart of Bumble Bees of The Western United States located right below it.
Nearby Exoplanet is 'excellent' target in The Search for Life.
I remember These! I wonder what has ever happened to Them?
Really excited for this. Sadly, I’ll be working, but I strongly encourage others (especially on the East coast) to not only watch, but to participate in this awesome opportunity.
Also, if you hate how the mainstream media treats subjects you care about, then this is doubly important. It shows tv outlets that there’s a hunger for real talk about real issues… and if they don’t cover it, citizens will continue to move toward alternative media outlets.
Highlights:
On the evening of Jan. 23, Sanders will host a 90-minute “national town hall” on proposals for universal Medicare, streamed by the progressive video outlets NowThis, Attn:, and the Young Turks. …
“The mainstream media continues to ignore how income inequality and the lack of a decent health-care system devastates the middle class,” said Ana Kasparian, a co-host of the Young Turks’ flagship series. …
The senator will host three segments: one on the current state of health care in the United States, one on the potential economic impact of universal Medicare, and one on how single-payer works in the rest of the developed world. …
Peace Corps.
Colorin colorado, este cuento se ha acabado
July 1, 2016
It feels like an impossible task to condense all that I’ve learned and experienced and become in the last three years into one final blog post, especially since I’m sleep deprived and feeling all of the feelings. Maybe in the next days or weeks or months I will attempt this. But in the meantime, I leave you with this poem, which begins to speak to my feelings toward Peace Corps and toward the Dominican Republic.
Children Running Through
by Rumi, Translation by Coleman Barks with John Moyne
I used to be shy. You made me sing.
I used to refuse things at table. Now I shout for more wine.
In somber dignity, I used to sit on my mat and pray.
Now children run through and make faces at me.
Thank you for following my journey!
I would sure like to see something like The Hyperloop or Evacuated Tube Technology come to be a common form of Long-Distance Travel someday!
MIT Reveals its Version of Hyperloop Transit Pod
Tired of being stuck in traffic on the highway or waiting endlessly for a delayed subway? Almost three years ago, Elon Musk envisioned the Hyperloop, a new type of public transit that would whisk commuter-filled pods efficiently across hundreds of kilometers in a matter of minutes via tubes; and of course, only second to teleportation in terms of overall coolness.
Among a number of startups trying to get in on the competition sponsored by Musk’s company SpaceX, a student team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology emerged earlier this year as the front-runner when it won the competition’s design phase. On Friday, MIT finally unveiled the prototype pod that it will test this summer at a 1-mile racetrack near SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Photograph by MIT
Driving Policy and Driverless Vehicles.
IT'S TIME AGAIN TO TAKE A CENSUS OF THE U.S. POPULATION.
MAKE SURE THAT YOU'RE COUNTED!
2020 Census: Everyone Counts
It’s that time again. Census time! Once every ten years the federal government counts every single person living in the U.S. of A. in order to effectively allocate representation and resources across the country. It’s an ambitious endeavor, for sure, but one designed to benefit everyone by making sure each community can adequately fund crucial public goods and services, like roads, hospitals, and schools. It determines how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives. Also, congressional and state legislative boundaries are drawn and redrawn based on the data collected. Political representation at the state and federal level hinges on census participation. That’s a big deal!
The census count kicked off in March, with its biggest push for people to respond on their own in April, a.k.a. tax month. Although people in the U.S. pay federal income taxes every year, only once every decade do we have the power to influence how those dollars come back to us
The census is a nine-part questionnaire that takes just 10 minutes to complete. To combat all the misinformation flying around about what the census is and how the collected data is used, we’re gonna bust some of the myths and answer a few of the frequently asked questions:
Is there a citizenship question?
No. The courts have permanently blocked asking respondent their citizenship status and the courts have permanently blocked the Trump administration from adding one. Furthermore, federal law prohibits the Census Bureau from sharing individual census information with any person, organization or government body, including law enforcement. Your responses can only be used for statistical purposes (individual records are released only after 72 years!).
What will you be asked?
The questionnaire asks for basic demographic information such as age, race, type of housing, etc. It will not ask for compromising or sensitive information like social security numbers, bank account numbers, or immigration status.
Who should be counted on the Census?
Every person living in the United States, regardless of citizenship status, including kids and babies!
How can I take the Census?
Great news! Completing the census questionnaire is literally the easiest it’s ever been. For the first time ever, you can complete the census online at 2020Census.gov or by phone at 844-330-2020. Also, by April 1st, every home will receive a mailed notice to participate in the 2020 Census.
When is the deadline?
Ideally, Uncle Sam would like to receive your data by April 30th. But as of right now, you can respond on your own all the way until mid-August. If you don’t respond on your own by the end of May, a Census worker may come to your home and ask to record your answers in person. And while it was funny on screen, please do not behave like Christopher Walken in this classic SNL Census sketch.
Is it safe?
Yes. The census is safe, your information is handled with the utmost confidentiality meaning that no one can take your data and use it against you. Your individual data will not be shared with any person, organization or government body, including other federal agencies or any law enforcement or housing authorities. It’s to your benefit to participate.
Sure, filling out a form sounds boring, but it helps to think of it as an opportunity to make your voices heard in a way that really matters. That sounds exciting, no? Plus, you only have to spend 10 minutes doing it once every 10 years.
Make sure to pass this information to your friends and family in order to stop the spread of misinformation. If you have any questions, please check out the United States Census Bureau Fact Sheet.
Please visit 2020census.gov for more information.
I sure can't wait to see what New Astronomical Discoveries will be made with These New Super_Gigantic Observatories that should come online by The End of December 2022.
Mission to build world’s most advanced telescope reaches major milestone
With the signing last week of a “master agreement" for the Thirty Meter Telescope — destined to be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope in the world — the University of California and UCLA moved a step closer to peering deeper into the cosmos than ever before. Watch: Thirty Meter Telescope (Overview) or via Vimeo
The agreement, signed by UC President Mark Yudof and several international partners, formally outlines the telescope project’s goals, defines the terms of its construction and establishes its governance structure, design and financing.
Work on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), named for its 30-meter primary mirror — three times the diameter of the largest existing telescopes — is scheduled to begin in April 2014 atop Hawaii’s dormant Mauna Kea volcano. The TMT’s scientific operations are slated to start in 2022.
UCLA researchers will play a significant role in the development and use of the TMT, which will enable astronomers to study stars and other objects throughout our solar system, the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies, and galaxies forming at the very edge of the observable universe, near the beginning of time.
The project is a collaboration among universities in the United States and institutions in Canada, China, India and Japan, with major funding provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
"UCLA is taking a lead role in defining the science for this monumental, international project," said Andrea Ghez, a professor of physics and astronomy who holds UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Chair in Astrophysics.
Ghez, who has served on the TMT science advisory committee since its first meeting 13 years ago, described the master agreement as an important milestone for the UC system, UCLA and the field of astronomy.
"One reason why we want to build TMT is to delve into the most fundamental workings of our universe," she said. "It is truly amazing to think about what TMT will teach us about the universe."
Creating cutting-edge instruments for the TMT UCLA professor of astronomy James Larkin is one of those excited about the TMT’s potential. He is the principal investigator for the Infrared Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), one of three scientific instruments that will be ready for use with the TMT when the telescope begins operation.
"IRIS is an imaging spectrograph that perhaps can best be described as a sophisticated camera that takes small images at 2,000 different wavelengths simultaneously," Larkin said. "Or it can be thought of as a spectrograph that takes 10,000 adjacent spectra over a rectangular area of the sky."
The instrument will be able to produce images three times sharper than what is currently achievable with the two powerful W.M. Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea and many times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope, Larkin said. IRIS will image planets that are forming but are often too dim and red to be detected by smaller telescopes, and it will be the only one of the three TMT instruments to magnify images to the theoretical diffraction limit.
"Exploring the universe at this unprecedented resolution and sensitivity means we will be surprised by what we find," he said. "IRIS has a wide range of science objectives, ranging from chemical analysis of the surfaces of solar system moons like Titan and Europa, to following the evolution of galaxies over the past 13 billion years, to searching for the first stars in the very early universe."
With the most sensitive spectroscopy available anywhere in the near-infrared, IRIS will yield the first real understanding the physical nature of these early galaxies, a key goal of research in cosmology and astrophysics.
IRIS is a joint project involving more than 50 astronomers from the U.S., Canada, Japan and China, and many of the instrument’s most crucial components will be designed and built at UCLA’s Infrared Laboratory for Astrophysics, founded more than 20 years ago by Ian S. McLean, who is the lab’s director and a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy.
The TMT, McLean said, will enable astronomers to see not only much fainter objects but also to resolve them in much greater detail.
"Both of these attributes are crucial for almost all of the frontier areas of modern astrophysics, from studies of nearby exoplanetary systems to probing the most distant objects in the universe," he said. "The TMT is precisely the right kind of scientific tool to complement national facilities under development, such as the James Webb Space Telescope. We are all very excited that the TMT master agreement is signed."
In 1989, at the beginning of the era of the twin W.M. Keck telescopes — currently the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes — UCLA set up its infrared astrophysics lab to develop state-of-the-science instruments for them. All four of the currently operational infrared cameras and spectrometers on the Keck telescopes were built entirely or in part at UCLA. McLean expects UCLA’s infrared lab to play a similar role with the TMT.
The concept of a telescope three times larger and with nine times more light-gathering power than the Keck telescopes was first envisaged nearly 15 years ago, and UCLA has played a major role in defining the type of instruments needed for such a telescope. IRIS, under Larkin’s leadership, is one example, McLean said. Another proposed TMT instrument, the Infrared Multi-Slit Spectrometer (IRMS), will be a near-replica of the successful MOSFIRE instrument that McLean delivered to the W.M. Keck Observatory in 2012. With the sharpest and most sensitive images ever taken in the near infrared, the TMT and IRIS will reveal the universe in new ways, exploring everything from dwarf planets at the orbit of Pluto to the most distant galaxies ever explored near the dawn of time, McLean said.
The twin 10-meter Keck telescopes have "attracted many distinguished faculty, trained students at all levels and served the people of California and the world with inspiring discoveries and technological leadership," said McLean. "The University of California will continue that tradition of leadership and excellence with its participation in the TMT project, and UCLA will play a key role through the development and exploitation of infrared spectroscopy and high-resolution imaging technology."
Solving the mysteries of black holes with the TMT UCLA’s Ghez, who leads the development of the Galactic Center project, said her research will be greatly enhanced by the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Ghez and her colleagues discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way that has a mass approximately 4 million times that of our sun. Such mysterious and intriguing black holes, which were predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, provide remarkable laboratories for the study of physics in extreme environments.
The TMT, Ghez said, will identify and map the orbits of fainter stars close to our black hole, extending our knowledge of physics with a fundamental test of Einstein’s theory. Because stars in the vicinity of the black hole will be affected by the presence or absence of dark matter, their orbits will significantly constrain our current model of dark matter, which is central to our understanding of galaxy formation.
TMT will also extend our ability to measure accurate masses of black holes in more distant galaxies and in low-mass galaxies, likely revealing when and how black holes are “fed," Ghez said.
By revealing details about resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies, the TMT and IRIS will directly probe the formation of nearby stellar systems like our own Milky Way. Because it will be possible to measure the mass distributions of stars in a variety of new environments and in galaxies outside of the Milky Way, IRIS will help scientists learn whether stars form differently under different conditions.
In the distant universe, IRIS’s ability to image and study the internal workings of early galaxies will represent a major breakthrough in the study of galaxy formation during the known peak period of star formation.
The Thirty Meter Telescope is a collaboration of the University of California, the California Institute of Technology, the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a consortium of Chinese institutions led by the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and institutions in India supported by India’s Department of Science and Technology.
In addition to President Yudof, signatories of the TMT master agreement are Donald E. Brooks, chair of the institutional council of Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy; Jean-Lou Chameau, president of the California Institute of Technology; Masahiko Hayashi, director general of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; P. Sreekumar, director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics; and Jun Yan, director general of the National Astronomical Observatories of China.
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore and his wife, Betty, established the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support bold ideas that create enduring impact in science, environmental conservation and patient care.
UCLA is California’s largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university’s 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.
via UCLA Newsroom
