Anonymous asked: do u ever cry abt space rovers bc we sent them out there to d i e
Okay, I mean, on the one hand yes.
But on the other hand, like.
Do you ever sit back on your hands and look up at the stars and think about how we put little pieces of ourselves in space rovers and sent them up there to explore.
About how humanity could have named them anything and we called them Curiosity and Voyager and searching-words and traveling-things.
About how we crave exploration and learning and newness so much that we taught them to do the same, to seek knowledge and answers all their lives–because that’s all we do, you know, we have our little batteries going boom in our chests and we learn and grow and travel as much as we can before our batteries run down.
About how we put a Golden Record of information from Earth in a ship and sent it out, just on the random off chance that someone would find it, and people added greetings and kind words and “please come find us, because we’re alone in this endless black and you might be alone too and maybe we can be not-alone with each other,” and then we entrusted it to one of these things that we had made.
About how space rovers are each a message in a bottle, the best and most curious part of humanity, the part of ourselves that we hope is at our core, the part of ourselves that we believe is the most worthy.
About how we filled them up with our souls.
Because sometimes I think about that, and then I really cry.
Gretchen: On the International Space Station, you have astronauts from the US and from other English speaking countries and you have cosmonauts from Russia. And obviously it’s very important to get your communication right if you’re on a tiny metal box circling the Earth or going somewhere. You don’t want to have a miscommunication there because you could end up floating in space in the wrong way. And so one of the things that they do on the ISS – so first of all every astronaut and cosmonaut needs to be bilingual in English and Russian because those are the languages of space.
Lauren: Yep. Wait, the language of space are English and Russian? I’m sorry, I just said ‘yep’ and I didn’t really think about it, so that’s a fact is it?
Gretchen: I mean, pretty much, yeah, if you go on astronaut training recruitment forums, which I have gone on to research this episode…
Lauren: You’re got to have a backup job, Gretchen.
Gretchen: I don’t think I’m going to become an astronaut, but I would like to do astronaut linguistics. And one of the things these forums say, is, you need to know stuff about math and engineering and, like, how to fly planes and so on. But they also say, you either have to arrive knowing English and Russian or they put you through an intensive language training course.
But then when they’re up in space, one of the things that they do is have the English native speakers speak Russian and the Russian speakers speak English. Because the idea is, if you speak your native language, maybe you’re speaking too fast or maybe you’re not sure if the other person’s really understanding you. Whereas if you both speak the language you’re not as fluent in, then you arrive at a level where where people can be sure that the other person’s understanding. And by now, there’s kind of this hybrid English-Russian language that’s developed. Not a full-fledged language but kind of a-
Lauren: Space Creole!
Gretchen: Yeah, a Space Pidgin that the astronauts use to speak with each other! I don’t know if anyone’s written a grammar of it, but I really want to see a grammar of Space Pidgin.
Our Spitzer Space
Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets
around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area
called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a
rocky planet.
Assisted
by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of
these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of
known planets in the system to seven.
This is
the FIRST time three terrestrial
planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure
both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.
All of
these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under
the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in
the habitable zone.
At about
40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is
relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located
outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as
exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are
planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.
In this
animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area
representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the
star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant
liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of
the star.
Using
Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and
developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh
and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.
For
comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would
be the size of a golf ball.
Based on
their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further
observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but
also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.
The sun at
the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool
that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer
than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1
planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.
The
planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was
standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see
geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes
appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The
planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of
the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual
day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those
on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and
extreme temperature changes.
Because most
TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one
another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto,
Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also
tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than
Jupiter, yet much warmer.
How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?
Spitzer,
an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited
for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light,
whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely
positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the
planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the
system.
Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some
light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can
determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long
it takes for the planet to orbit the star.
The
TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to
study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will
help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space
Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be
able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and
other components of a planet’s atmosphere.
At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like:
I was just watching star trek the motion picture for the first time ever (I liked it! it was slow but interesting! totally saw the ~~twist~~ coming from lightyears away but that was alright!), and you know how there’s this scene where they have the different enterprise evolutions drawings in the background:
And I noticed this one in particular:
This is the USS-Enterprise XCV-330, for those of you interested.
So I thought “huh, that looks familiar, actually”. And it is, because quite recently NASA unveiled concept art for their first ever warp-capable ship (once they figure out how to do warp safely), and it looks like this:
