Abusive Parents Can Buy Their Children Nice Things

Meteorite Shower Over McCloud Falls, California

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NASA Unveils New, Close-Up Image of Ceres’ Bright Spots

http://www.sci-news.com/space/science-ceres-bright-spots-occator-crater-03223.html

his voice sounds so animated and he’s so cute i want to hug him for a long time

Rocket engine exhaust often contains a distinctive pattern known as shock diamonds or Mach diamonds. These are a series of shock waves and expansion fans that increase and decrease, respectively, the supersonic exhaust gases’ pressure until it equalizes with atmospheric pressure. The bright glowing spots visible to the naked eye are caused by excess fuel in the exhaust igniting. As awesome as shock diamonds look, they’re actually an indication of inefficiencies in the rocket: first, because the exhaust is over- or underexpanded, and second, because combustion inside the engine is incomplete. Both factors reduce a rocket engine’s efficiency (and both are, to some extent, inescapable). (Photo credit: XCOR)

the sunset was violently sudden & spectacular tonight. these pictures were taken abt 2 minutes apart

Funky Light Signal From Colliding Black Holes Explained

Entangled by gravity and destined to merge, two candidate black holes in a distant galaxy appear to be locked in an intricate dance. Researchers using data from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come up with the most compelling confirmation yet for the existence of these merging black holes and have found new details about their odd, cyclical light signal.

The candidate black hole duo, called PG 1302-102, was first identified earlier this year using ground-based telescopes. The black holes are the tightest orbiting pair detected so far, with a separation not much bigger than the diameter of our solar system. They are expected to collide and merge in less than a million years, triggering a titanic blast with the power of 100 million supernovae.

Researchers are studying this pair to better understand how galaxies and the monstrous black holes at their cores merge – a common occurrence in the early universe. But as common as these events were, they are hard to spot and confirm.

PG 1302-102 is one of only a handful of good binary black hole candidates. It was discovered and reported earlier this year by researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, after they scrutinized an unusual light signal coming from the center of a galaxy. The researchers, who used telescopes in the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey, demonstrated that the varying signal is likely generated by the motion of two black holes, which swing around each other every five years. While the black holes themselves don’t give off light, the material surrounding them does.

In the new study, published in the Sept. 17 issue of Nature, researchers found more evidence to support and confirm the close-knit dance of these black holes. Using ultraviolet data from GALEX and Hubble, they were able to track the system’s changing light patterns over the past 20 years.

What’s causing the changes in light? One set of changes has to do with the “blue shifting” effect, in which light is squeezed to shorter wavelengths as it travels toward us in the same way that a police car’s siren squeals at higher frequencies as it heads toward you. Another reason has to do with the enormous speed of the black hole.

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Landing site recommended for ExoMars 2018

Oxia Planum has been recommended as the primary candidate for the landing site of the ExoMars 2018 mission.

ExoMars 2018, comprising a rover and surface platform, is the second of two missions making up the ExoMars programme, a joint endeavour between ESA and Russia’s Roscosmos. Launch is planned for May 2018, with touchdown on the Red Planet in January 2019.

The main goal for the rover is to search for evidence of martian life, past or present, in an area with ancient rocks where liquid water was once abundant. A drill is capable of extracting samples from up to 2 m below the surface. This is crucial, because the present surface of Mars is a hostile place for living organisms owing to the harsh solar and cosmic radiation. By searching underground, the rover has more chance of finding preserved evidence.

Read full article.

I can’t believe Mars has more water than California.

Celebrate the Saturn V’s Birthday by Watching the Largest Rocket in History Fly

The Saturn V rocket is objectively the most badass vehicle ever made. Screw your SR-71 Blackbirds. To hell with your Maglev trains. Shove your hoverboards up your butt. The Saturn V, flagship of the Apollo Moon landings, has them all beat for style, performance, and historical impact, hands-down, end of story.

No doubt the launches were even more incredible to witness in person, but this visual mosaic of all 13 blast-offs is bound to give you a contact high nonetheless. Watch on, and pay your respects to this masterpiece of engineering, which repeatedly burned up in the atmosphere so that we didn’t have to.

You heard it right: That’s Walter Cronkite, arguably the most unflappable newsman in history, losing his shit over the raw power of the Saturn V.

“My God, our building’s shaking here,” he says with palpable delight. “Oh it’s terrific, the building’s shaking! This big blast window is shaking! We’re holding it with our hands! Look at that rocket go into the clouds at 3,000 feet! Oh, the roar is terrific!”

We feel you, Walter. A lot of rockets have come and gone since the Saturn V was retired in 1973, but none have ever exceeded the sheer explosive wonder of this Apollo Age champ. It remains the largest and most powerful rocket of all time, standing 36 stories high and weighing about 6.2 million pounds when fully fueled. For comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, slated for its first flight next year, will stand 22 stories high.

“It has more capability than any vehicle in history,” Elon Musk said of the Falcon Heavy, “apart from the Saturn V.”

Alas, the Saturn V rockets were also expendable launch vehicles, meaning that only the tiny command modules carrying the returning Apollo astronauts ever made it back to Earth. But though we don’t have many physical remains of the beasts that gave us our first boosts to another world, we have plenty of nostalgically sepia-toned footage recording their pyrotechnic departures from our planet.

Mad props, Saturn V. You’re the real MVP.

Source: @vicemag​ [x]