I know I'm not the only one who likes to read about new planet discoveries and other Space intrigue.  We have a new candidate for life-supporting planets, and like all the others, it's the "best one yet."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exoplanet-alien-life-search-for-found-habitable-zone-new-earth-20-signs-cetus-sea-monster-a7691576.html

Pretty exciting, really.

3 hours ago, blue_gold_84 said:

NASA's Voyager 2 is now the second human-made object to travel away from the sun into the space between the stars.

Voyager 2 last month exited "this bubble that the sun creates around itself," longtime NASA mission scientist Ed Stone said Monday. The spacecraft is now beyond the outer boundary of the heliosphere, some 18 billion kilometres (11 billion miles) from Earth.

 So strange that it's out there so far.

 

15 hours ago, Mark F said:

 So strange that it's out there so far.

 

Dont forget Voyager VI is eventually discovered by a machine race and sent back to earth.  Along the way it assimilates everything it can until becoming sentient and demanding to speak to its creator and inadvertently threatening the world.  It is only satisfied when a selfless astronaut gives his life to merge with the machine.  This hero is listed as missing in action but time would reveal the awful truth - that this merging of man and machine would create a new race of evil single-minded beings known only as The Borg.

Edited December 11, 20187 yr by The Unknown Poster

2 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Dont forget Voyager VI is eventually discovered by a machine race and sent back to earth.  Along the way it assimilates everything it can until becoming sentient and demanding to speak to its creator and inadvertently threatening the world.  It is only satisfied when a selfless astronaut gives his life to merge with the machine.  This hero is listed as missing in action but time would reveal the awful truth - that this merging of man and machine would create a new race of evil single-minded beings known only as The Borg.

If only for that one episode of Enterprise...

7 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Dont forget Voyager VI is eventually discovered by a machine race and sent back to earth.  Along the way it assimilates everything it can until becoming sentient and demanding to speak to its creator and inadvertently threatening the world.  It is only satisfied when a selfless astronaut gives his life to merge with the machine.  This hero is listed as missing in action but time would reveal the awful truth - that this merging of man and machine would create a new race of evil single-minded beings known only as The Borg.

There was an episode of original star trek on tv, the same plot.

The crew of the USS Enterprise deals with a life-destroying space probe originally launched from Earth. The plot contains similarities to the later 1979 Star Trekfilm.^[1]"The Changeling" is the third episode of the second season of the American science fiction television series Star Trek.  

Edited December 11, 20187 yr by Mark F

This is an outstanding series of lectures on astrophysics. There's one by Frank Drake, Drake equation guy.

The lecture titled "dawn of creation the first two billion years, is one of the best, also, "finding the next earth".

https://www.youtube.com/user/SVAstronomyLectures

Edited December 12, 20187 yr by Mark F

 

amazing. 

 

Edited December 12, 20187 yr by Mark F

https://www.ksl.com/article/46447172/heres-how-to-see-the-brightest-comet-of-the-year

 

Casting a $20 Million Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope

 

Edited December 20, 20187 yr by JCon

1 hour ago, JCon said:

Casting a $20 Million Mirror for the World’s Largest Telescope

 

 

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-voyager-2-probe-enters-interstellar-space

https://gizmodo.com/days-before-ultima-thule-flyby-new-horizons-has-detect-1831255434

Update on New Horizons: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/new-horizons-ultima-thule-1.4949381

Quote

New Horizons, the spacecraft that provided the first glimpse of distant Pluto, is about to shed light on another world, a small icy body 6.5 billion kilometres from Earth.

On New Year's day at 12:33 a.m. ET, the spacecraft will fly by 2014 MU69, given the informal name Ultima Thule, a 30-kilometre-wide object that is part of the Kuiper Belt. The region is a disk of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. 

It will be one of the most distant regions ever visited by a spacecraft.

"We're on Ultima's doorstep," said Alan Stern, New Horizons' principle investigator from Southwest Research Institute, a Texas-based non-profit organization. "We've never seen any Kuiper Belt object up close. We don't have any idea of what their geology is like, how evolved they are, how they were constructed, even what they're made of."

 

edit

 

 

Edited January 1, 20197 yr by wanna-b-fanboy

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/01/world/new-horizons-ultima-thule-flyby-success/index.html

Edited January 1, 20197 yr by FrostyWinnipeg

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/01/chinas-change-4-spacecraft-will-land-on-dark-side-of-the-moon-in-the-next-60-hours.html

On ‎2018‎-‎12‎-‎10 at 4:35 PM, Mark F said:

 So strange that it's out there so far.

 

Launched in 1977 when I was 22. Doesn't seem strange to me. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-03/new-horizons-picture-ultima-thule-looks-like-snowman-nasa-says/10680874

Edited January 3, 20197 yr by FrostyWinnipeg

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/chinese-spacecraft-makes-1st-landing-on-moon-s-far-side-1.4964279

Quote

A Chinese spacecraft on Thursday made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon in the latest achievement for the country's growing space program.

The relatively unexplored far side of the moon faces away from Earth and is also known as the dark side.

The landing highlights China's growing ambitions as a space power. In 2013, Chang'e 3, the predecessor craft to the current mission, made the first moon landing since the then-Soviet Union's Luna 24 in 1976. The United States is the only other country that has carried out moon landings.

 

42 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/chinese-spacecraft-makes-1st-landing-on-moon-s-far-side-1.4964279

 

The Chinese will have the whole dark side of the moon developed and industrialized before we know it.

NOVA on PBS tonight here had a New Horizons show.

Repeated at 2AM Winnipeg time up there.

Edited January 4, 20197 yr by FrostyWinnipeg

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fast-radio-bursts-1.4969863

Quote

Out in the depths of space, there are radio signals that astronomers don't understand. Now a Canadian research team has found a repeating signal, only the second of its kind to be discovered.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are cosmic radio bursts that last only milliseconds. The source is from something with an extremely powerful magnetic field that produces a signal along the radio frequency band.

In a new paper published Wednesday in Nature, researchers reveal that a recently unveiled radio telescope in British Columbia — the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) — captured 13 more FRBs, but more importantly, it caught a second repeating FRB.

The first FRB, designated FRB 121102, was discovered in 2007 using telescope data from 2001. Since then, 36 have been found — 19 last year alone by researchers using an Australian radio telescope.

But exactly what is causing these powerful radio signals that are travelling from distant galaxies isn't known. Many theories abound — even ones involving aliens — but some of the leading theories involve an object that is highly magnetized such as a star called a magnetar.

Very, very fascinating.

26 minutes ago, blue_gold_84 said:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/fast-radio-bursts-1.4969863

Very, very fascinating.

Sounds like a new variety of pulsar.

Mars One is dead

The Mars colony startup was declared bankrupt by a Swiss court.

 

Gone but not forgotten...

NASA sets likely funeral for silent Mars Opportunity rover

The solar-powered rover hasn't called home since being swamped by a massive dust storm months ago.