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Posted

Now I know why Skynet wants to take over the world.

Great. We're already being dicks to our robots and we haven't even taught them how to kill us yet. That's going to help the relationship....
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Posted

I wonder it they are taking preorders for replacement bodies. My back has been acting up for a couple years and I aint getting any younger. I'd also be up for a lab grown replacement body, but robotics seems to have the lead.

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Posted (edited)

video linky removed :p

Interesting.

Is it just me, or is the announcer on that video pronouncing the name of the planet wrong? (turning a short vowel (the eh in heh) into a long vowel (the ee in heel).

Edited by sketchley
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Posted (edited)

To me it should sound like the way you had it. I'm guessing it depends where in Polynesia you're from?

Edited by wmkjr
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Posted (edited)

Juno is entering Jupiter orbit in 16 hours, ridiculous giant solar cells and all. And if all goes well, we will spend the next two years seeing what lies beneath Jupiter's ugly brown cloudtops.Maybe we'll finally learn why the great red spot is red.

Edited by JB0
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Posted

Holy wow. Proxima Centauri(the red dwarf orbiting the better-known Alpha Centauri binary) has a planet.

But not just any planet, no. The Centauri system doesn't do things by half measures. This planet's at the right distance that it is possible to have liquid water. If it has water, it can have life.

So to summarize The nearest known exoplanet is also the nearest POSSIBLE exoplanet, since it is orbiting the nearest star, and it is in the friggin' habitable zone!

Not that four light-years is exactly a sunday drive. But it is so tantalizingly close...

Posted

The problem I see with a planet orbiting within the habitable zone of a red dwarf star is that said zone is so close to the primary that the planet will have an extremely short orbital period and is likely to be tidally locked (one side always faces the star so that it broils while the opposite hemisphere freezes in perpetual darkness, with massive global winds caused by the extreme temperature differential as the cold air from the dark side rushes to fill the low pressure of the rising hot air on the sun-lit side); so, even if Proxima's planet is the right distance, the composition, has the right atmospheric density, an adequate magnetic field, etc. for the presence of liquid water and a proper water cycle, it may not be a very pleasant or even hospitable place for life.

Posted (edited)

The orbital period is REALLY short. Just a hair over eleven terran days.

And tidal-locking IS a possibility, but the terminator could still be a nice place to live, depending(on if there's air and water there in the first place).

There's also a possibility that it locks to a resonance other than 1:1, in which case it would still have day/night cycles. In fact, our own Mercury is in such resonance, giving it one Mecurian day every two Mecurian years... which probably makes things worse instead of better. Slow enough for the vicious day/night extremes to set in, fast enough that the terminator isn't a stable safe space.

On the upside, if there's no atmosphere, by the time we can go there we will PROBABLY have figured out how to tow a few million tons of comets from the oort cloud with us. Terraforming au natural.

Edited by JB0
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  • Shawn unpinned this topic
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Posted

So this is cool...

http://home.cern/about/updates/2016/12/alpha-observes-light-spectrum-antimatter-first-time

 

Scientists at CERN have managed to trap antihydrogen in quantities sufficient to do spectral emission testing on it. Testing indicates it has identical spectral emissions to regular hydrogen.

Obviously, we have long EXPECTED antimatter to behave identically to regular matter(aside from the "blows up whenever it touches the normal kind" thing), but it is always good to get some confirmation.

  • 5 months later...
Posted

Erm... those writers on Anime News Network have to get out more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballute . The ballute concept has apparently been around since 1958.

However, the idea of using it for aerobraking appeared in the 1984 movie "2010".  It's highly likely that the producers of 1985's Zeta Gundam got the idea for it from that movie (though Nasa did use it on the Gemini space capsule, so "2010" itself isn't exactly the progenitor of the idea per se - maybe just the idea of putting it in front of the thing being slowed instead of behind...).

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Posted
1 hour ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Odd random question, but do scientists have any idea what Halley's comet orbits around to send it back towards the sun every 75-80 years? Exactly how fast and far out into the solar system does it go? 

Hailey's comet orbits the sun. It is just a highly eccentric orbit.

At the farthest, it is 35 AU out.  Which means it gets a little farther out than Neptune, but not as far as Pluto.

Due to the eccentricity of the orbit, velocity changes a good deal, from around 1 km/s at aphelion to over 100 km/s when it is closest to the Sun.

 

Posted
On ‎4‎/‎26‎/‎2018 at 9:36 AM, wmkjr said:

We are getting closer. lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD9YhS7QlwM


 

 

It's still a far cry from the animated versions, but it's the first real transforming car I've seen that actually has separate legs and can walk. Def a step in the right direction.  Note that this real transforming car has more in common with the 80's toys than with the Bayformer designs. Just sayin'. :p

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