Latest Posts by starlost - Page 8

who was the fool who was tasked with naming the galaxy and the only adjective they could think of was ‘mmmmmmmmmmmmilky…’

It was a huge disappointment as a child to fall in love with the stars and then find out how much math it requires to get anywhere near them. 

Consider this: You can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato. The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photo-receptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it.

NASA Lunar Science Institute, 2012 (via cylon)

Retrograde motion of Mars in the night sky of the Earth.

The Solar System!

to celebrate our seven new exoplanets, i made a pastel nasa logo!

@nasa please launch me to these newly discovered habitable planets, i’m done with earth

some of my favourite absolutely SICK facts about the trappist-1 exoplanets: - theyre all very close to one another and to their star, so the length of a year on them varies from 1 to 20 DAYS - since they’re so close, the star appears a lot bigger than our sun from earth, and from one planet you could easily see the rest, some would even appear bigger than the moon from earth. you could literally see the surface of another planet with a naked eye!!! - they’re tidally locked to their star like our moon is locked to earth, meaning only one side of a planet ever faces the star, and on the other side it’s always night. the sun never sets or rises on any of the planets - the star is red, so the sunlight is red/orange, meaning if, for example, plants were to grow there, they could be black and that’s just what we know now, imagine how much cool stuff we have yet to discover about the trappist-1 system

I’m so fucking emotional about the 7 planets of Trappist 1. 

Imagine living so close to another habitable planet that it’s like a moon in the night sky. Imagine that for six other planets. Imagine hypothetical aliens in their equivalent of the renneisance, mapping orbits and studying the sky, starting to notice each other through their telescopes. God that’s so cool. Imagine knowing something is there so soon and slowly working towards getting to know them. 

Heck, even just being able to see your neighbour planets that close, even without life, makes the solar system so obviously devastatingly lonely by comparison.

NASA Telescope Reveals Largest Batch of Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planets Around Single Star

lionsinthezoo.com 

The 3 best pictures of space objects Ive taken with my telescope [4974 x 3308]

Source: http://i.imgur.com/x4ZbSyA.jpg

We are nothing but space dust trying to find its way back to the stars.

Love And Space Dust (via story-dj)

The horizons of Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, and Titan.

Source: http://i.imgur.com/A1gIYXdl.jpg

LOCKSCREENS ALIENS AND ROCKET MAN

Por Favor LIKE/REBLOG se salvar

NOS SIGA NO TWITTER: @fancylockxcreen

please do not disrespect the moon

Planet Earth, April 16, 1972, as seen from the Apollo 16 spacecraft as it journeyed toward the Moon. (NASA)

Sext: let's talk cosmic microwave background ;)

Your fave is problematic: Aliens

first off: I just chose this title so you would read this post… what I really mean is all extraterrestrial life, microscopically small, big, existing and non-existing.

Are we alone?

Right now it is assumed that most stars in our galaxy have at least 1-2 planets. This would mean that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy. With an estimated 100-400 billion stars, you do the math…

Data from the Kepler Space telescope reported in 2013 that there may be about 40 billion planets in their stars’ habitable zone in our galaxy. we also found evidence that there were already first traces of life on Earth shortly after it began cooling. this suggests that it is very easy to start life (as we know it) on a planet, even if it leaves no traces.

So, if life is that easy to create, why don’t we see aliens?

the conditions to create life might be common to exist, but for them to last long enough to create intelligent life… 

the field of exoplanets is very young. we have just recently discovered how to properly measure that they exist, and where.

image if you have a street light shining outside and there’s a single mosquito flying around it… kinda hard to spot even if you look closely.

Ok, so other planets are hard to see. But why don’t we hear from aliens through radio waves?

this question is often asked and has several assumptions:

aliens are exactly like us, and have the same senses and shape and form

aliens are currently as evolved as we are and have developed the same technologies

aliens are trying to contact other worlds

these assumptions already give you the answer: the odds are just like, really fucking small. alien life might be entirely, incomprehensibly different. they might have sent signals 40 000 years ago when we were still gathering berries. they might send signals in 400 years when we have nuked each other to death. they might be communicating entirely different. humanity is just really not that advanced and we haven’t been around for very long. especially, we haven’t been listening for very long.

space is VAST. for another civilization to find our radio waves, they could only be 100 light years away and would have to point directly at us. like… imagine.

why haven’t we be visited by aliens?

s.a.: space is VAST. imagine how far a single light year is. visualize. a light year is the distance light travels in a year. light speed is 300,000 kilometers per ONE second. that means that in a year, light travels about 9 trillion kilometres. 

my point is that it is impossible to travel at light speed and incomprehensibly difficult to even reach a couple of percent of light speed.

the closest “habitable planet” (tbh, that means shit. a habitable planet might still be a roaring fireball where it rains acid, we don’t fuckin know) is 14 light years away.

the chances of a civilization to find us, want to visit us, have a space ship that supports their form of life for decades, maybe centuries or millennia, they don’t kill each other in that time frame… y’all.

summary: intelligent life and simple life might exist but also might not exist. they might care about us or they might not. they might be so advanced that they are watching us sending rockets to each other countries and bombing each other and were like NOPE. they might be so different from us that we can’t “hear” each other. also watch this video. 

overall the situation is fucked or they’re assholes and are like “fuck you”

Your fave is problematic: Galaxy GN-Z11

this old object is the oldest fucking galaxy that we have discovered thus far

thanks Hubble space telescope

Gn-z11 is 13.4 billion years old… fuck

now you’re like, wtf, the universe is only 13.8 millions years old??? YES. This galaxy was observed by hubble as it was just 400 million years after the Big Bang

at this point in time, a cosmological baby

tricks people into thinking that she is 13.4 billion light years away… think again

Gn-z11 is actually 38 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AWAY

how can that be, you say, in a universe that’s “only” 13.8 billion years old? is the speed of light not the fastest thing in the universe?

well, given that Gn-z11 is so immensely old, and the universe is always expanding, space has expanded to a distance of 38 billion light years during the 13.4 billion years it took the light of Gn-z11 to reach us

keep in mind that when we observe old objects like the universe, we see them as they were then

time travel, so to speak

summary: time traveller, voyaged far, very wise, maybe a forest witch

Cosmic Web

The concept of the cosmic web—viewing the universe as a set of discrete galaxies held together by gravity—is deeply ingrained in cosmology. Yet, little is known about architecture of this network or its characteristics. Our research used data from 24,000 galaxies to construct multiple models of the cosmic web, offering complex blueprints for how galaxies fit together. These three interactive visualizations help us imagine the cosmic web, show us differences between the models, and give us insight into the fundamental structure of the universe.

An awesome work of the Center for Complex Network Research

This is very cool and a pretty big deal. Find out why.