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  • 2 weeks later...

7 Earth Sized Planets Identified Orbiting a Dwarf Star

 

 

Not just one, but seven Earth-size planets that could potentially harbor life have been identified orbiting a tiny star not too far away, offering the first realistic opportunity to search for biological signs of alien life outside of the solar system.

 

The planets orbit a dwarf star named Trappist-1, about 40 light years, or about 235 trillion miles, from Earth. That is quite close, and by happy accident, the orientation of the orbits of the seven planets allows them to be studied in great detail.

 

The Trappist-1 planets make the search for life in the galaxy imminent,” said Sara Seager, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not a member of the research team. “For the first time ever, we don’t have to speculate. We just have to wait and then make very careful observations and see what is in the atmospheres of the Trappist planets.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/science/trappist-1-exoplanets-nasa.html

 

3500.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&f

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^Saw this on lunch break, lot to unpack here:
1. That's a lot of future surveying work, to say the least.
2. I can't help but wonder if one of them is Poochie the dog's home planet.
3. Three of these are in the right area for water on the surface and one is only 13% larger than earth.
4. An abbey brewery needs to capitalize on their names and do a TRAPPIST-1 craft beer line.

 

decent discussion on reddit about this

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This struck me with the last SpaceX launch and land. All the prior landings have been on the barge out at sea, but this one was on land. I know that they've made land-based landings in the past but this is the first with a re-entry from a deployment so essentially that was the first time in history that the cape has been used for a pure round-trip, making the cape our first true space-port.

 

Might be putting more into that than I should...

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  • 4 weeks later...
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the latest juno perijove yielded more nutty stuff

 

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=9586&t=1495461558

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=9367&t=1495461558

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=9395&t=1495461558

 

 

this is the page to go to for juno images. set the filter to one of the later mission phases and hit apply. https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing

Edited by very honest
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  • 3 weeks later...

voyager 1 is now 138AU from planet earth

 

supposedly it's really cool that far out in space.

 

interstellar_2.gif

 

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.html

 

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/spacecraftlife.html

So we should prepar for it to come back and annihilate us

 

24989A23-470A-457A-923E-304786303DE0_zps

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RTGs are interesting tech - very simple and inefficient, but I wonder how more efficient they might have become, or more widely applied in civilian roles, if it wasn't for the fact that someone could just pinch one and turn it into a dirty bomb in their shed on their lunch hour with time to spare

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  • 3 weeks later...

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