we are explorers we should explore

fuckyeahdarkextropian:

Wanderers is a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.

Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea with the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds – and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there.

If you liked Interstellar, you’ll LOVE this.

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)
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fuckyeahdarkextropian:

highlights from Report From Iron Mountain: on the possibility and desirability of peace

When you put it this way Star Trek is damn right utopic.

Our continuing mission… to distract the human race from its innate desire for self-destruction. And with some luck, grow up in the process.

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Researchers at Caltech and several other institutions have used a new technique to analyze the gaseous atmospheres of such extrasolar planets and have made the first detection of water in the atmosphere of the Jupiter-mass planet orbiting the nearby star Tau Booetis.

With further development and more sensitive instruments, this technique could help researchers learn about how many planets with water — like Earth — exist within our galaxy.

…

Although the technique promises to augment how planetary scientists analyze the properties of extrasolar planets, it has limitations, the researchers say.

For example, the technique is presently limited to so-called “hot Jupiter” gas giant planets like Tau Booetis b — those that are large and orbit very close to their host star.

“The technique is limited by the light-collecting power and wavelength range of the telescope, and even with the incredible collecting area of the Keck mirror on the high, dry summit of Mauna Kea we can basically only analyze hot planets that are orbiting bright stars, but that could be expanded in the future as telescopes and infrared spectrographs improve,” Lockwood says.

In the future, in addition to analyzing cooler planets and dimmer stars, the researchers plan to continue looking for and analyzing the abundance of other molecules that might be present in the atmosphere of Tau Booetis b.

“While the current state of the technique cannot detect Earth-like planets around stars like the Sun, with Keck it should soon be possible to study the atmospheres of the so-called ‘super-Earth’ planets being discovered around nearby low-mass stars, many of which do not transit,” Blake says.

“Future telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will enable us to examine much cooler planets that are more distant from their host stars and where liquid water is more likely to exist.”

The findings appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in a paper titled “Near-IR Direct Detection of Water Vapor in Tau Booetis b.”

http://astrobiology.com/2014/02/water-vapor-detected-in-the-atmosphere-of-a-hot-jupiter.html
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Finding a comet: the backstory | Rocket Science

“
The comet was actually discovered by my computer here under my desk!

Our human-volunteer TOTAS clickers review all the ‘movers’ found by the software and either confirm or reject them. That task can’t be done by software – but the software can combine the single detections and extract the moving objects.
”

Just one of the ways we’re forming a team with machines and exploring the cosmos.

Finding a comet: the backstory | Rocket Science

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Study: seemingly cool planets could be warm enough to host life underground (Wired UK)

To calculate habitable zones across the galaxy we take into account a host star’s luminosity, along with the planet’s distance from it and that planet’s size relative to the star.

The well-established Goldilocks theory, however, fails to take life beneath the surface into account, where temperatures dramatically change.

“As you get deeper below a planet’s surface, the temperature increases, and once you get down to a temperature where liquid water can exist – life can exist there too,” PhD student at the University of Aberdeen Sean McMahon said. “The deepest known life on Earth is 5.3km below the surface, but there may well be life even 10km deep in places on Earth that haven’t yet been drilled.”

The computer model was used to estimate what the temperature beneath the surface would be of any given planet it had the necessary parameters for. It found that the habitable zone would be around three times bigger than previously thought if it included the first 5km beneath an Earth-like planet’s surface. When depths of up to 10km below the Earth’s surface were included, the model found the habitable zone was 14 times wider. Applied to our own Solar System, it means the habitable zone extends beyond Saturn.

“The results suggest life may occur much more commonly deep within planets and moons than on their surfaces.”

“Rocky planets a few times larger than the Earth could support liquid water at about 5km below the surface even in interstellar space (i.e. very far away from a star), even if they have no atmosphere because the larger the planet, the more heat they generate internally.”

Study: seemingly cool planets could be warm enough to host life underground (Wired UK)

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