Starship Asterisk*

Ann - I assume you are running Windows 10? I would echo Chris' recommendation of not using 3rd party AV software. Unless you have it pared down (adding exclusions, etc.) it will be more intrusive than helpful. The modern version of Windows Defender is actually pretty solid. That said, you might try ...

Titan! Imagine sailing the hydrocarbon lakes. Or better yet, human-powered flight. The density of the atmosphere - 1.5 ATMs - and the low gravity would allow you, with flippers and maybe some kind of wing suit, to just fly around (XKCD talks about it here ). If you can avoid freezing to death, of co...

Great shots, Fred. I have often wondered about the aggressiveness of humming birds. We have a large Crocosmia in the backyard that attracts a lot of humming birds. If a second bird shows up while the first is feeding, a fight invariably ensues. There are plenty of flowers to go around if they'd just...

I was hoping we'd catch some Perseids tonight or tomorrow night but the sky went from clear to obscured within hours; the smoke really rolled in fast.

Tardigrades. Water bears or moss piglets? That is the question! Their survival trick is to become emaciated and inanimate while conditions are intolerable, then come back to normal when those conditions improve. I would imagine any moss piggies that inadvertently hitch a ride to Mars or Titan will r...

Chris, I agree – I don’t think it is very effective to bombard folks with facts, or to contradict them directly. Scare tactics don’t generally work either. For example, 'scare ‘em straight' campaigns against drugs and alcohol use are not particularly effective from a public health perspective, espec...

“You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.” – Jonathan Swift (maybe, there are a lot of variations on this quote). Do you think this sentiment is true? Are people who take irrational positions impossible to reach? How often do you spend effort to change someone’s mi...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-wave-dome-2021-seattle-portland-weather/ I don't normally complain about the heat, but we are experiencing very hot weather right now. Ridiculously hot you might even say. I think I just saw two people walking down the street wearing stillsuits. <<"The Day the...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-wave- ... d-weather/

I don't normally complain about the heat, but we are experiencing very hot weather right now. Ridiculously hot you might even say. I think I just saw two people walking down the street wearing stillsuits.

Aside from looking deeper into space, what new revelations should we expect to see with the James Webb? Will the Webb take us further toward the big bang and fine-tuning of the age of the Universe? If so, how far into the beginning of spacetime? What will the various filtering show us? Will we be a...

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 2:04 pm I sometimes wonder if any or how much of that mountain blew off into space!??

Orin, I'd bet that a far larger portion ended up in small glass jars, tucked away and forgotten in attics, than the few particles that might have left the planet!

We took a trip up to Mount St. Helens this weekend. I have visited the mountain a few times over the years. I was too young to remember the eruption, but I do have memories of the mountain from my childhood, visiting 10ish years afterward. It seemed so 'otherworldly,' still covered in ash. Then to s...

For a proof-of-concept mission, I'd say Ingenuity has been a resounding success! https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56912808 The microphone on Perseverance was able to record the sound of the helicopter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5niGi4k9vQ I can imagine a future mission with multip...

Anyone else having a hard time letting down your guard? I have been fully vaccinated for a while now, but I can't see myself going to a grocery store without a mask anytime soon. Or eating at a restaurant. We have started to visit family but only outdoors and mostly with masks on, unless we're well ...

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:17 pm

Orca wrote: ↑Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:16 pm Pi Day 2021.jpg

How meta.

There’s nothing quite like celebrating Pi Day with π/8 on a plate next to an oblate spheroid of ice cream.

Two nights ago. Coming down off a hard hike up and back from a 12,500 foot pass... That is a remarkably causal reference to a very big mountain! The highest point in OR is Mt Hood which is 11,250 feet - and that is a peak , not a pass. Out of curiosity I compared the Cascades to the Rockies for hig...

Successful landing ! I am glad that the landing occurred during the day - a large swath of school kids got to follow along as it happened. My daughter was pretty excited about it. Though she was disappointing when she found out that the retrieval missions for the soil collector wouldn't be likely to...

We ended up with a winter storm as well; lots of ice/freezing rain and a bit of snow over the course of a few days. A fair number of folks in some areas ended up without power and/or internet connectivity. I was fortunate and only noted a flicker here and there. We did get some sledding in - the sno...

From my personal perspective, I was fascinated by robotic missions when I was a kid and remain so to this day. But I don’t believe my enthusiasm for space exploration is common. Almost anyone can marvel at a post-processed image taken by Hubble; far fewer have continuously followed the real science ...

When I see the title of this thread I imagine a conversation about operating systems...

I tend to agree with Chris. In terms of exploration and data collection we can do a lot with robotic missions - far more efficiently than human exploration. Literally every aspect of any mission in space is made more expensive and complex by the need to keep the "human cargo" alive and saf...

Perseverance will land on Mars February 18 - just a few weeks out! The new rover will have a lot of interesting experiments and have capabilities, some beyond those of earlier missions (Oxygen production, microphones, more cameras, storage canisters for future Earth-retrieval). However, I have parti...

We don't typically get very much snow in my area. Has to be the just the right conditions - a big cold front from the Northeast has to come down and crash into our typical warm, rainy clouds that continuously flow from the Pacific. We did get a dusting yesterday afternoon. Not much, but enough to ma...

I ran across a good article with updates on the status of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). I remember reading about this project with excitement some 20 years ago. It’s an ambitious project even for today let alone when it was first seriously considered in the late ‘90s. Its primary mirror is ...