Ratnagiri Petroglyph, India. 10,000 BC...

from Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’

Here’s a great explanation of language usage in sci-fi literature for all those who cannot keep their nit-picking to themselves:

Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using terms that are familiar to you. Those words should be understood as mere equivalents of alien terms-that is, a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader. So when the people of Kalgash speak of “miles,” or “hands,” or “cars,” or “computers,” they mean their own units of distance, their own grasping-organs, their own ground-transportation devices, their own information-processing machines, etc. The computers used on Kalgash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York or London or Stockholm, and the “mile” that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5,280 feet. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly Kalgashian terms.

In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful. The essence of this story doesn’t lie in the quantity of bizarre terms we might have invented; it lies, rather, in the reaction of a group of people somewhat like ourselves, living on a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail, as they react to a challenging situation that is completely different from anything the people of Earth have ever had to deal with. Under the circumstances, it seemed to us better to tell you that someone put on his hiking boots before setting out on a seven-mile walk than to clutter the book with quonglishes, vorks, and gleebishes.

If you prefer, you can imagine that the text reads “vorks” wherever it says “miles,” “gliizbiiz” wherever it says “hours,” and “sleshtraps” where it says “eyes.” Or you can make up your own terms. Vorks or miles, it will make no difference when the Stars come out.

-I.A.

-R.S.

I tried to draw the moon in 3D @joaovitornart

The Most Hardcore Period in Earth’s History, or the Permian, was preceded by a complete ecosystem collapse, and featured three different major mass extinction events - including the largest in earth’s history, the Great Dying, which lead to nearly all life on earth dying out. 

During the Permian, all the land on Earth was in one supercontinent, called Pangea; and all the water was in one ocean, called Panthalassa. This meant that life intermingled and expanded all over the world, more so than it was able to in other periods (besides the Triassic, which also featured a single continent and a single ocean). 

Pangea, and the Permian, was characterized by extremes. The beginning of the Period featured the end of the Karoo Ice Age - the poles were filled with ice caps, the center of the continent was dry, and temperature extremes were found throughout the land and ocean. The end featured multiple mass extinctions and a rapid warming of the continent, reaching the extreme heat of the Triassic period. 

By @franzanth​ 

The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse was primarily caused by an intensification of that ice age - leading to the start of the Permian featuring dry, harsh, extreme climates. This time period featured the rapid diversification and specialization of some of the earliest animals adapted for a dry existence - prior to now, life almost entirely existed in the oceans, or in the forested and swampy world of the Carboniferous. This was the first truly dry time for (at least some) life.  

By @alphynix​

Olson’s Extinction marked a change from that initial habitat in the Cisuralian epoch to the next, the Guadalupian. As the world began to rapidly warm after the Karoo Ice Age ended, this lead to a major extinction of plants and vertebrates especially. The vertebrates would not fully recover before the Triassic; however, it did lead to many new forms, especially among synapsids, appearing in the new vacant environmental roles. 

(By @paleoart​) 

The Capitanian Extinction was caused by the explosion of a moderately sized laval flow system, the Emeishan Traps, which lead to immediate global cooling followed by rapid global warming. This greatly affected ocean chemistry, making it far more acidic than previously. Many reef animals were killed by this extinction, in addition to brachiopods; many vertebrates were also affected. 

(By @paleoart​) 

So the Permian was a hard, broken world when the Siberian Traps - one of the largest lava flows in Earth’s History, and one of the largest volcanic events known - exploded, leading to even more dramatic climate change and extremely rapid global warming. This lead to acidification of the ocean’s and a dramatic drop in ocean oxygen. Almost every group of organisms was dramatically affected, and this extinction was the largest known in Earth’s History, with between 85-96% of life on Earth dying out (and some researchers thinking it may have even been higher), leading to this extinction being dubbed The Great Dying. Many groups utterly disappeared, despite having been features of the entire Paleozoic Eon (the eon that the Permian was at the end of) - trilobites, eurypterids, “spiny sharks”, tabulate and rugose corals, and blastoids complete disappeared, as did many other groups. Brachiopods, Gastropods, Ammonites, Radiolarians, Foraminiferans, Crinoids, and most Parareptiles also went extinct, as did many synapsids and amphibians. It was an utter catastrophe. 

(By @paleoart​) 

The Permian was a time of extensive hardship, dramatic changes, and extinction event after extinction event. Life was truly on the brink - just as it was beginning to settle into terrestrial existence. So new animals, from insects to amniotes to conifers, spent their school years in a prehistoric hunger games - and only a few species managed to reach the weirdness kiln of the Triassic. 

Welcome to the Permian. 

The Most Hardcore Period of Earth’s History. 

Dear @thought-cafe team, we need more Crash Course Astronomy episodes! Can you please do a Season 2? Dr. Phil Plait is awesome, and we miss him!

If you’re excited about the juno news today, sink your teeth into a Crash Course episode that’s all about Jupiter! 🔭  https://youtu.be/Xwn8fQSW7-8

The city lights of Pakistan and India by NASA Johnson

March 2015 Solar Eclipse by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

A Giving Hand, vdB9 // DocRx

Voyager: The Golden Record

It’s the 1970s, and we’re about to send two spacecraft (Voyager 1 & 2) into space. These two spacecraft will eventually leave our solar system and become the most distant man-made objects…ever. How can we leave our mark on them in the case that other spacefarers find them in the distant future?

The Golden Record.

We placed an ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The Golden Record Cover

The outward facing cover of the golden record carries instructions in case it is ever found. Detailing to its discoverers how to decipher its meaning.

In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in.

The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how the pictures contained on the record are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of the picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to ordinary television. Immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered “interlace” to give the correct picture rendition. Below that is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 52 vertical lines in a complete picture.

Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.

The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the solar system with respect to 14 pulsars, whose precise periods are given.

The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.

The Contents

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University and his associates. 

They assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales and other animals. To this, they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.

Listen to some of the sounds of the Golden Record on our Soundcloud page:

Golden Record: Greetings to the Universe

Golden Record: Sounds of Earth

Songs from Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are included on the golden record. For a complete list of songs, visit: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

The 115 images included on the record, encoded in analog form, range from mathematical definitions to humans from around the globe. See the images here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/images/

Making the Golden Record

Many people were instrumental in the design, development and manufacturing of the golden record. 

Blank records were provided by the Pyral S.A. of Creteil, France. CBS Records contracted the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, CO to cut the lacquer masters which were then sent to the James G. Lee Record Processing center in Gardena, CA to cut and gold plate eight Voyager records.

The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record’s cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

Learn more about the golden record HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Picos de Europa, Spain - by Arturo Garcia