Six days into the Chemistry Advent Calendar! Missed any so far? Catch up here: http://www.compoundchem.com/2015advent/
(photos by Robdogbird)
clouds on mars, photographed by mars express, 16th january 2014.
around 43°s 258°e, one the eastern icaria planum. details from a sequence of 5 monochrome images, colourized with a bit of art and a bit of science.
image credit: esa. animation & colourization: ageofdestruction.
This is me
i dab every morning when i wake up
That feel when you’re so drained of creativity that you have to ask your friend to just pick a number from 1-44. Yeah this hasn’t been my greatest week in terms of art so I’m very this isn’t that great. ANYWAYS Teddy Roosevelt is the literal embodiment the shark from the body building ad from that one spongebob episode (I overdosed my add meds today so I’d like to apologize ahead of time). But yeah, sick of being the scrawny asthmatic kid he was, Teedy (he was actually called that) wanted to buff up and oh my god did he freaking accomplish that. He turned out to be basically invincible stopping a bullet with his chest at one point while being charismatic as fuck, but he would basically just disappear into the void whenever someone would say a dick joke. Also, apparently he didn’t swear on the bible when taking office when McKinley was assassinated so that’s why he’s saying oh my god.
@wingmanoftheuniverse: thank
Sci Fi Concept Art by Huang Frank
In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the first confirmed planet around a sun-like star (aka exoplanet), a collection of some interesting exoplanets has been put together. Some of these are rocky, some are gaseous and some are very, very cold. But there’s one thing each these strange new worlds have in common: All have advanced scientific understanding of our place in the cosmos. Check out these 10 exoplanets, along with artist’s concepts depicting what they might look like. For an extended list of 20 exoplanets, go HERE.
1. Kepler-186f
Kepler-186f was the first rocky planet to be found within the habitable zone – the region around the host star where the temperature is right for liquid water. This planet is also very close in size to Earth. Even though we may not find out what’s going on at the surface of this planet anytime soon, it’s a strong reminder of why new technologies are being developed that will enable scientists to get a closer look at distance worlds.
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2. HD 209458 b (nickname “Osiris”)
The first planet to be seen in transit (crossing its star) and the first planet to have it light directly detected. The HD 209458 b transit discovery showed that transit observations were feasible and opened up an entire new realm of exoplanet characterization.
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3. Kepler-11 system
This was the first compact solar system discovered by Kepler, and it revealed that a system can be tightly packed, with at least five planets within the orbit of Mercury, and still be stable. It touched off a whole new look into planet formation ideas and suggested that multiple small planet systems, like ours, may be common.
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4. Kepler-16b
A real-life “Tatooine,” this planet was Kepler’s first discovery of a planet that orbits two stars – what is known as a circumbinary planet.
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5. 51 Pegasi b
This giant planet, which is about half the mass of Jupiter and orbits its star every four days, was the first confirmed exoplanet around a sun-like star, a discovery that launched a whole new field of exploration.
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6. CoRoT 7b
The first super-Earth identified as a rocky exoplanet, this planet proved that worlds like the Earth were indeed possible and that the search for potentially habitable worlds (rocky planets in the habitable zone) might be fruitful.
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7. Kepler-22b
A planet in the habitable zone and a possible water-world planet unlike any seen in our solar system.
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8. Kepler-10b
Kepler’s first rocky planet discovery is a scorched, Earth-size world that scientists believe may have a lava ocean on its surface.
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9. Kepler-444 system
The oldest known planetary system has five terrestrial-sized planets, all in orbital resonance. This weird group showed that solar systems have formed and lived in our galaxy for nearly its entire existence.
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10. 55 Cancri e
Sauna anyone? 55 Cancri e is a toasty world that rushes around its star every 18 hours. It orbits so closely – about 25 times closer than Mercury is to our sun – that it is tidally locked with one face forever blistering under the heat of its sun. The planet is proposed to have a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a “supercritical” state, where it is both liquid and gas, and then the whole planet is thought to be topped by a blanket of steam.
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Via his very first tweet, Jeff Bezos announced that his spaceflight company has accomplished a historic first. It sent a rocket to the edge of space and then landed that rocket’s main fuselage gently on dry land.
Most things humans have sent into space are pushed up there by a disposable rocket. Once the rockets do their job, they fall back to earth, usually worse for wear. They have to be rebuilt each time (though sometimes their parts can be reused). That’s an expensive process, especially if you are a private company hoping to bring tourists to space. Virgin Atlantic, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin all want to do just that.
And now Blue Origin has paved the way, landing its rocket on its second attempt (the propulsion module was destroyed when they first tried). Here’s the video in full:
Elon Musk responded to the news on Twitter. He pointed out that it requires much greater speed to actually reach orbit than it does to reach the edge of space. (Phil Plait has some good analysis of the exchange over on his Bad Astronomy blog.)
Still, it’s a pretty amazing accomplishment.
You don't need piercings to be hot >^<
>/////< omg thank
"I don't know who will read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe in a hundred years or so." -Mark Watney
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