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If was actually good at mathematics, I think I would have been an Astrophysicist. They have such amazing questions to work on.
Early primate hunters nearly initiated their own extinction by using the advanced technology of the time to stress their environment and hunt at unsustainable levels. At one time, our future rested on less than 20,000 individuals world wide. Luckily we did not die off completely and came to flourish and expand across the globe.
Despite the lessons of the past we continue to prioritize short term thinking over long term planning. Time after time our populations smash up against the carrying capacities of the environment. The wreckage of past societies lay quietly in the shallows of time as grim reminders of the poor choices societies have made and sadly, continue to make.
Our short shortsightedness continues to threaten our hopes for the future, as we clog the space around the earth with debris from our space programs.
Enhanced image of the "junk" that is orbiting the Earth
“There are 22,000 objects in orbit that are big enough for officials on the ground to track and countless more smaller ones that could do damage to human-carrying spaceships and valuable satellites. The International Space Station has to move out of the way of debris from time to time.”
Watching the space shuttle or the International space station glide through space looks serene. A gossamer constellation hung in space. Yet in reality the ISS is travelling at roughly 27724 km per hour around the globe. Imagine the impact and damage when something strikes the station going over 20,000 km/h. Yet, we are putting more garbage into orbit through our actions.
“We’ve lost control of the environment,” said retired NASA senior scientist Donald Kessler, who headed the National Academy of Sciences report.
Since the space age began 54 years ago, civilization has littered the area just above Earth’s atmosphere with leftover boosters and other parts that come off during launches, as well as old satellites. When scientists noticed that this could be a problem, they came up with agreements to limit new space junk and those plans had been working.”
The warnings have already been issued. As usual, we are not listening.
Those agreements are intended to make sure what is sent into orbit eventually falls back to Earth and burns up.
“But two events in the past four years — a 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test and a 2009 crash-in-orbit of two satellites — put so much new junk in space that everything changed, the report said. The widely criticized Chinese test used a missile to smash an aging weather satellite into 150,000 pieces of debris larger than one-centimetre and 3,118 pieces can be tracked by radar on the ground, the report said.
“Those two single events doubled the amount of fragments in Earth orbit and completely wiped out what we had done in the last 25 years,” Kessler said.
All that junk that means something has to be done, “which means you have to look at cleaning space,” said Kessler.”
Yes, so rather than attempting to minimize the hazards of space travel we are upping the ante with more projectiles circling the earth waiting to shred whatever happens to be in their path. Of course we look to technology to save us once again –
“The study only briefly mentions the cleanup possibility, raising technical, legal and diplomatic hurdles. But it refers to a report earlier this year by a Defence Department science think-tank that outlines all sorts of unusual techniques. The report by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency is called “Catcher’s Mitt” and it mentions harpoons, nets, tethers, magnets and even a giant dish or umbrella-shaped device that would sweep up tiny pieces of debris.
While the new report does not recommend using the technology, Kessler said it is needed. He likes one company’s idea of a satellite that is armed with nets that could be sprung on wayward junk. Attached to the net is an electromagnetic tether that could either pull the junk down to a point where it would burn up harmlessly or boost it to safer orbit.”
If that doesn’t work, we may deny ourselves the possibility of ever leaving our planet. Of course, that is just pessimistic long term thinking…
The LHC is beginning to collect evidence for the elusive Higgs Boson.
“Scientists are hoping that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will finally nail Higgs boson — the “God particle” which theoretically endowed every other particle with mass, but has proved elusive to date. The discovery of Higgs boson is one of the chief goals of the LHC, the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth and perhaps the most complex scientific endeavour ever attempted.
At a meeting of the European Physical Society in Grenoble, France, physicists – including some from Caltech – announced that the latest data from the LHC might hint at the existence of the elusive particle.
But the data are not yet statistically significant enough to be called a definite signal, let alone a discovery of the Higgs particle, says Harvey Newman, professor of physics.”
Damn this is an exciting time to be alive. This discovery would be bigger than the Beatles and jebus.
“One could speculate that it’s an unusual statistical fluctuation,” he says. “But I don’t think so.” Physicists will continue to ramp up the LHC, boosting it to higher energies and increasing the number of collisions to improve the chances of producing Higgs bosons.
With several times more particle interactions, the physicists are continuing to close in on the Higgs, as well as other new particles and interactions. There’s a chance that by the end of next year, they may determine, once and for all, whether the Higgs exists.”
Pushing the limits of our knowledge is what science is all about. Consider what NASA is learning about thunderstorms and their possible role in creating anti-matter. Fascinating stuff!
No surprises here, just a nice video of the birth and eventual death of our star.
It is nice knowing that you are fairly right about something. Evolution happens to be one of those topics in that category. The funny/sad part is running across people who still “don’t get it” and either are deluded or have let their misplaced skepticism get the better of them. I try unsuccessfully to hide my incredulity when people put their ignorance on display, it probably gets me in trouble as I have had these “you’re really saying that moments” with people who are in positions of authority and they are friends/respected peers.
Too bad, so sad; I’m getting way too old to varnish the truth for those who want to clutch the wizened pearls of their shoddy religions and spout nonsense.
Watch the intensely stupid anti-vax loonery in full bloom as they make the case for exposing your newborns to disease, because if their bodies “don’t want it” they simply won’t get sick.
Their next show is on how Big Science has fooled us into believing that the earth is round…
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
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