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amorfati601070

JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »

amorfati601070 wrote: »

JustReadTheInstructions wrote: »

amorfati601070 wrote: »

Freaking out over the Fermi paradox again

Why does it freak you out?

You have to think of the implications of it. One, we are the only intelligent beings in the universe which is such a lonely thought.

The other is that it works as sort of evidence that we are actually living in some sort of simulation and nothing is actually real. When you compile this with the free will vs hard determinism debate it becomes even more of mindfck

You could also argue the length of time humanity has and will exist on Earth is such a small blip in time to the length of time the universe has and will exist so others of the same or higher intelligent existing at the exact same blip of time could be unlikely.

As far as free will, wouldn't realizing there is no free will be...freeing? Nothing you do truly matters so do what makes you happy?

Yeah that sounds like Absurdism, enter Camus. There horrible truth is that pretty much all our moral foundations are forged in the pretext that we do have free will. The illusion must be sustained. It’s utterly terrifying when you think about it.

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Formation of the Southern Crab Nebula



In celebration of the 29th anniversary of the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astronomers captured an image of the tentacled Southern Crab Nebula.

The nebula, officially known as Hen 2-104, is located several thousand light-years from Earth in the southern hemisphere constellation of Centaurus. It appears to have two nested hourglass-shaped structures that were sculpted by a whirling pair of stars in a binary system. The duo consists of an aging red giant star and a burned-out star, a white dwarf. The red giant is shedding its outer layers. Some of this ejected material is attracted by the gravity of the companion white dwarf.

The result is that both stars are embedded in a flat disk of gas stretching between them. This belt of material constricts the outflow of gas so that it only speeds away above and below the disk. The result is an hourglass-shaped nebula.

This artist's impression of the formation of Southern Crab nebula illustrates its hourglass-shared structure, that has been created by the interaction between a pair of stars at its center: a red giant and a white dwarf. The red giant is shedding its outer layers in the last phase of its life before it too lives out its final years as a white dwarf.

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The Shape of the Southern Crab



The symmetric, multi-legged appearance of the Southern Crab Nebula is certainly distinctive. About 7,000 light-years distant toward the southern sky constellation Centaurus, its glowing nested hourglass shapes are produced by the remarkable symbiotic binary star system at its center.

The nebula's dramatic stellar duo consists of a hot white dwarf star and cool, pulsating red giant star shedding outer layers that fall onto the smaller, much hotter companion. Embedded in a disk of material, outbursts from the white dwarf cause an outflow of gas driven away both above and below the disk resulting in the bipolar hourglass shapes. The bright central shape is about half a light-year across.

This new Hubble Space Telescope image celebrates the 29th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990 on board the Space Shuttle Discovery.

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Pan-STARRS Across the Lagoon



Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, the bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant. But it still makes for a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius, toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dominated by the telltale red emission of ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with stripped electrons, this stunning view of the Lagoon is over 100 light-years across.

At its center, the bright, compact, hourglass shape is gas ionized and sculpted by energetic radiation and extreme stellar winds from a massive young star. In fact, the many bright stars of open cluster NGC 6530 drift within the nebula, just formed in the Lagoon several million years ago. Broadband image data from Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) was combined with narrowband data from amateur telescopes to create this wide and deep portrait of the Lagoon Nebula.

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Rocket Launch: April 30, 2019, 4:22 AM ET | SpaceX Falcon 9 CRS-17



MISSION

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Cargo Dragon spacecraft to deliver the next shipment of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station. This is the 17th SpaceX mission under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract.

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NASA’S HUBBLE CONFIRMS UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING FASTER THAN EXPECTED: DATA IS ‘NOW IMPOSSIBLE TO DISMISS AS A FLUKE’
https://www.newsweek.com/hubble-confirms-universe-expanding-faster-expected-1405785

Astronomers use three basic steps to calculate how fast the universe expands over time.



A ground-based telescope’s view of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The universe is expanding faster than expected, scientists have claimed after reviewing new measurements from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

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LIGO Detects Gravitational Waves From Another Neutron Star Merger

For just the second time, physicists working on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have caught the gravitational waves of two neutron stars colliding to form a black hole.


An artist’s illustration of two colliding neutron stars.

“I would assume that every observatory in the world is observing this now,” says astronomer Josh Simon of the Carnegie Observatories. “These two candidates (they’ve) found are relatively close to the equator, so they can be seen from both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.”

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/04/25/breaking-ligo-detects-another-neutron-star-merger/#.XMJAd5NKhTY

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Southern Cross to Eta Carinae



Tracking along the southern Milky Way this beautiful celestial mosaic was recorded under dark Brazilian skies. Spanning some 20 degrees it actually starts with the dark expanse of the Coalsack nebula at the lower left, tucked under an arm of the Southern Cross. That compact constellation is topped by bright yellowish Gamma Crucis, a cool giant star a mere 88 light-years distant.

A line from Gamma Crucis through the blue star at the bottom of the cross, Alpha Crucis, points toward the South Celestial Pole. Follow the Milky Way to the right and your gaze will sweep across IC 2948, popularly known as the Running Chicken nebula, before it reaches Eta Carinae and the Carina Nebula near the right edge of the frame. About 200 light-years across, the Carina Nebula is a star forming region much larger than the more northerly stellar nursery the Orion Nebula.

The Carina Nebula lies around 7,500 light-years from Earth along the plane of the Milky Way.

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Hubble Snaps a Crowded Cluster



This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs.

Messier 75 lies in our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), around 67,000 light-years away from Earth. The majority of the cluster’s stars, about 400,000 in total, are found in its core; it is one of the most densely populated clusters ever found, with a phenomenal luminosity of some 180,000 times that of the Sun. No wonder it photographs so well!

Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain, Messier 75 was also observed by Charles Messier and added to his catalog later that year. This image of Messier 75 was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.

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Opportunity's Final Traverse Map



This final traverse map for NASA's Opportunity rover shows where the rover was located within Perseverance Valley on June 10, 2018, the last date it made contact with its engineering team.

Visible in this map is a yellow traverse route beginning at Opportunity's landing site, Eagle Crater, and ranging 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers) to its final resting spot on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover was descending down into the crater in Perseverance Valley when the dust storm ended its mission.

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Meteor Misses Galaxy



The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor. For another, the galaxy is much farther away -- in this instance 3 million light years as opposed to only about 0.0003 light seconds.

Even so, the meteor's path took it angularly below the galaxy. Also the wind high in Earth's atmosphere blew the meteor's glowing evaporative molecule train away from the galaxy, in angular projection. Still, the astrophotographer was quite lucky to capture both a meteor and a galaxy in a single exposure -- which was subsequently added to two other images of M33 to bring up the spiral galaxy's colors.

At the end, the meteor was gone in a second, but the galaxy will last billions of years.

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The Cat's Eye Nebula in Optical and X-ray



To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions.

The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across.

Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution ... in about 5 billion years.

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An electrical fault aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has forced NASA to delay SpaceX’s CRS-17 Cargo Dragon launch from May 1st to May 3rd, giving the station’s crew more time to fix the issues at hand.

MAY 3RD, 3:11:00AM (UTC) (May 2nd 11:11 PM EST)

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NGC 6188 and NGC 6164



Fantastic shapes lurk in clouds of glowing hydrogen gas in NGC 6188. The emission nebula is found near the edge of a large molecular cloud, unseen at visible wavelengths, in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away. Massive, young stars of the embedded Ara OB1 association were formed in that region only a few million years ago, sculpting the dark shapes and powering the nebular glow with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation.

The recent star formation itself was likely triggered by winds and supernova explosions, from previous generations of massive stars, that swept up and compressed the molecular gas. Joining NGC 6188 on this cosmic canvas is rare emission nebula NGC 6164, also created by one of the region's massive O-type stars. Similar in appearance to many planetary nebulae, NGC 6164's striking, symmetric gaseous shroud and faint halo surround its bright central star at the upper right.

The field of view spans about two full Moons, corresponding to 70 light years at the estimated distance of NGC 6188.

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Clouds of the Large Magellanic Cloud



The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is an alluring sight in southern skies. But this deep and detailed telescopic view, over 10 months in the making, goes beyond what is visible to most circumnavigators of planet Earth. Spanning over 5 degrees or 10 full moons, the 4x4 panel mosaic was constructed from 3900 frames with a total of 1,060 hours of exposure time in both broadband and narrowband filters.

The narrowband filters are designed to transmit only light emitted by sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, the atoms emit their characteristic light as electrons are recaptured and the atoms transition to a lower energy state. As a result, in this image the LMC seems covered with its own clouds of ionized gas surrounding its massive, young stars.

Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing clouds, dominated by emission from hydrogen, are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Itself composed of many overlapping H II regions, the Tarantula Nebula is the large star forming region at the left.

The largest satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC is about 15,000 light-years across and lies a mere 160,000 light-years away toward the constellation Dorado.

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Hubble Spots Stunning Spiral Galaxy



Few of the universe’s residents are as iconic as the spiral galaxy. These limelight-hogging celestial objects combine whirling, pinwheeling arms with scatterings of sparkling stars, glowing bursts of gas, and dark, weaving lanes of cosmic dust, creating truly awesome scenes — especially when viewed through a telescope such as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, this image from Hubble frames a perfect spiral specimen: the stunning NGC 2903.

NGC 2903 is located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (the Lion), and was studied as part of a Hubble survey of the central regions of roughly 145 nearby disk galaxies. This study aimed to help astronomers better understand the relationship between the black holes that lurk at the cores of galaxies like these, and the rugby-ball-shaped bulge of stars, gas and dust at the galaxy’s center — such as that seen in this image.