A podcast project to fill the space in my heart and my time that used to be filled with academic research. In 2018, that space gets filled with... MORE SPACE! Cheerfully researched, painstakingly edited, informal as hell, definitely worth everyone's time.
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Latest Posts by fillthevoid-with-space - Page 8
Sharpest View of the Andromeda Galaxy, Ever.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest and biggest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — a whopping 69,536 x 22,230 pixels. The enormous image is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the galaxy’s pancake-shaped disc stretching across over 40,000 light-years.
Use the ZOOM TOOL to view in full detail.
(WARNING: May cause existential crisis)
Planets i learned about via youtube while procrastinating my english essay
Planet 55 Cancri e is basically a giant diamond. like the planet is a diamond. and it would be worth $26.9 nonillion
Planet Gliese 436 b is an ice planet that is constantly on fire do to its close proximity to its parent star. the ice doesn’t melt bc the planet’s gravity is so strong it physically prevents the ice from melting
Planet HD 189733b rains sideways glass…. constantly
Planet J1407-B has planetary rings that are 200x the size of saturn. if saturn’s ring were as big as J1407-B’s we’d be able to see them with our naked eye from earth AND they would dominate our sky and look larger than a full moon
Planet Wasp-12b rotates so close to its parent star that its slowly being consumed by the it
Planet Gliese 581c is one of the candidates for a planet that can support life however it orbits a tiny dwarf star and is tidally locked so one side is constantly subject to immense sunlight while the other is constantly in darkness. there’s a small area of the planet however, that is just the right temp to support life. u just can’t step out of said area. the skies are red and the plants would have be a black color instead of a green bc they would use infrared light for photosynthesis. (a message was actually sent to the planet in 2008 in hopes that there’s life on the planet but the message wont reach the planet until 2029).
Planet GJ 1214b is a water planet nicknamed “water world” is has no land at all and the water is so deep it goes down miles all the way to the planet’s core.
Planet Wasp-17b is the largest planet discovered thus far. its so large its existence contradicts our understanding of how planets are formed. and it has a retrograde orbit, so it orbits in the opposite direction of its parent star.
Planet HD 188753 has 3 suns you should have triple shadows and there would be almost daily eclipses. and no matter which direction u face on the planet u would always see a sunset
Planet HD106906b is the loneliest planet discovered thus far. its known as “super jupiter” bc its 11x bigger than jupiter. it orbits its parent star at a distance of 60 billion miles (which is v strange) hence why its the loneliest planet.
Planet Tres 2b is the darkest planet known. it reflects less than 1% of light (it reflects less light than coal and black acrylic paint). the tiny part of the planet that does reflect light is red making the planet glow a dim red.
NASA has emailed a wrench to astronauts in space
Responding to International Space Station (ISS) astronauts’ need for a wrench, NASA solved the problem by emailing a digital file to the ISS. The astronauts then 3D-printed the tool.
In a post on Backchannel, Mike Chen, founder of Made In Space, explained how the process worked.Made in Space is a Silicon Valley startup that built the 3D printer that was shipped to the ISS in September. In November, the first-ever 3D-printed part was, yes, made in space.
“My colleagues and I just 3D-printed a ratcheting socket wrench on the International Space Station by typing some commands on our computer in California,” Chen wrote in his post. “We had overheard ISS Commander Barry Wilmore … mention over the radio that he needed one, so we designed one in CAD and sent it up to him faster than a rocket ever could have. This is the first time we’ve ever ‘emailed’ hardware to space.”
Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence–In Space
Scientists have found the biggest and oldest reservoir of water ever–so large and so old, it’s almost impossible to describe.
The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as desolate and desert dry, but it’s turning out to be pretty lush.
Researchers found a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water–20,000 times over. Yes, so much water out there in space that it could supply each one of us all the water on Earth–Niagara Falls, the Pacific Ocean, the polar ice caps, the puddle in the bottom of the canoe you forgot to flip over–20,000 times over.
The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.
The official NASA news release describes the amount of water as “140 trillion times all the water in the world’s oceans,“ which isn’t particularly helpful, except if you think about it like this.
That one cloud of newly discovered space water vapor could supply 140 trillion planets that are just as wet as Earth is.
Mind you, our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has about 400 billion stars, so if every one of those stars has 10 planets, each as wet as Earth, that’s only 4 trillion planets worth of water.
The new cloud of water is enough to supply 28 galaxies with water.
Truly, that is one swampy patch of intergalactic space.
Equally stunning is the age of the water factory. The two teams of astrophysicists that found the quasar were looking out in space a distance of 12 billion light years. That means they were also looking back in time 12 billion years, to when the universe itself was just 1.6 billion years old. They were watching water being formed at the very start of the known universe, which is to say, water was one of the first substances formed, created in galactic volumes from the earliest time. Given water’s creative power to shape geology, climate and biology, that’s dramatic.
“It’s another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times,” says Matt Bradford, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of one of the teams that made the discovery. (The journal article reporting the discovery is titled, without drama, “The Water Vapor Spectrum of APM 08279+5255: X-Ray Heating and Infrared Pumping over Hundreds of Parsecs.”)
It is not as if you’d have to wear foul-weather gear if you could visit this place in space, however. The distances are as mind-bogglingly large as the amount of water being created, so the water vapor is the finest mist–300 trillion times less dense than the air in a typical room.
And it’s not as if this intergalactic water can be of any use to us here on Earth, of course, at least not in the immediate sense. Indeed, the discovery comes as a devastating drought across eastern Africa is endangering the lives of 10 million people in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia. NASA’s water discovery should be a reminder that if we have the sophistication to discover galaxies full of water 12 billion light years away, we should be able to save people just an ocean away from drought-induced starvation.
The NASA announcement is also a reminder how quickly our understanding of the universe is evolving and how much capacity for surprise nature still has for us. There’s water on Mars, there’s water jetting hundreds of miles into space from Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, there are icebergs of water hidden in the polar craters of our own Moon. And now it turns out that a single quasar has the ability to manufacture galaxies full of water.
But it was only 40 years ago, in 1969, that scientists first confirmed that water existed anywhere besides Earth.
pretty space words
aphelion - the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is farthest from the Sun. astral - relating to or resembling the stars. caldera - a large volcanic crater, especially one formed by a major eruption leading to the collapse of the mouth of the volcano. celestial - positioned in or relating to the sky, or outer space as observed in astronomy. constellation - a group of stars forming a recognizable pattern. cosmos - the universe seen as a well-ordered whole. equinox - the time or date at which the sun crosses the celestial equator, when day and night are of equal length. faculae - bright patches that are visible on the Sun’s surface. lunation - the interval of a complete lunar cycle, between one new Moon and the next. interstellar - occurring or situated between stars. nebula - a cloud of gas and dust in outer space, visible in the night sky either as an indistinct bright patch or as a dark silhouette against other luminous matter. perihelion - the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the Sun. synodic - relating to or involving the conjunction of stars, planets, or other celestial objects.
Its pretty incredible how accurate the science of astrophysics has gotten. New Horizons actually arrived 72 seconds early after travelling for almost 10 years straight to its destination.
Does space have a standard time or do you rely on the time zones on Earth while you are in space?
Great question. Really it is up to the particular space agency/mission which time zone they use. For example, since the International Space Station is a collaboration between NASA, the Russian Space Agency, the European Space Agency, the Japanese Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, we came up with the compromise of operating on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). So, Space Station time is the same as London time! The International Space Station orbits our planet every 90 minutes, so of course we’re transiting across multiple time zones constantly.
Mission Specialist Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space, during mission STS-47 .
via reddit
Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (via wordsnquotes)
Why Star Trek matters.
If Earth had Saturn’s Rings
From an excellent post by Jason Davis
From Washington, D.C., the rings would only fill a portion of the sky, but appear striking nonetheless. Here, we see them at sunrise.
From Guatemala, only 14 degrees above the equator, the rings would begin to stretch across the horizon. Their reflected light would make the moon much brighter.
From Earth’s equator, Saturn’s rings would be viewed edge-on, appearing as a thin, bright line bisecting the sky.
At the March and September equinoxes, the Sun would be positioned directly over the rings, casting a dramatic shadow at the equator.
At midnight at the Tropic of Capricorn, which sits at 23 degrees south latitude, the Earth casts a shadow over the middle of the rings, while the outer portions remain lit.
via x
Just a reminder that the first NASA astronauts were supposed to be women because generally they are smaller, lighter (less weight in the cockpit means less fuel required) and eat less than men and so would be easier to accommodate in space.
The Moon of Lakes and Rivers - Saturn’s moon Titan
Saturn’s moon Titan is the only world - other than earth - that we know has liquid’s pooled on its surface. Unlike Earth, Titan has lakes of liquid methane - you wouldn’t want to swim in these lakes.
Titan’s “methane cycle” is analogy to Earth’s water cycle. In the 3rd and 4th images above we can see clouds of methane in Titan’s atmosphere. Ever since NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft, we have known that the gases that make up Titan’s brown colored haze were hydrocarbons. The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen; minor components lead to the formation of methane–ethane clouds and nitrogen-rich organic smog.
It is thanks to the Cassini spacecraft that we now understand more about the climate of Titan - though we still understand very little!
The Cassini Space craft has mapped most of the Northern polar region of Titan, this is the region that contains almost all of Titan’s lakes. Cassini is systematically sweeping across Titan and mapping the surface of this strange alien world. The image below is an example of Cassini’s mapping process:
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cassini
Talking to a real cosmonaut
I met cosmonaut Sergei Volkov the other day as well as astronaut Andreas Mogensen (yeah I was geeking out hard) and I asked Sergei, after a total of 1½ year in space, what came as the biggest surprise and I expected this grand answer..
but he was like “in space, your t-shirt is floating too. It’s not hanging on you. It’s a weird sensation. There’s not really anything in space that stresses your body which is why we exercise.. like Andreas said, first time in space, you forget that you can just leave your fork floating while you’re opening your food. you try and put it down on a surface or hold everything in your hand like you’re afraid to drop it. And the fact that you can work 10 hours and concentrate really hard and not be sore in your neck.. Because there’s no gravity pulling at you. Dreams change as well after a while. I would dream about doing stuff on the space station but in my dreams there was gravity. It’s such a basic human thing, gravity.”
on the subject of returning back to earth: “Once you get back to earth, the first few days are tough. I took a shower instead of a bath, and it felt like the water was crushing me, I had to step out of the shower, it was just too overwhelming. Holding up your cell phone to your ear, It’s like holding a brick.”
why is there star
gas cloud get squished (gravitational collapse) then sometimes smaller elements can squish together to make bigger elements (nuclear fusion) and this continues as long as the smolest elements (hydrogen and helium) are in the core
Gretchen: On the International Space Station, you have astronauts from the US and from other English speaking countries and you have cosmonauts from Russia. And obviously it’s very important to get your communication right if you’re on a tiny metal box circling the Earth or going somewhere. You don’t want to have a miscommunication there because you could end up floating in space in the wrong way. And so one of the things that they do on the ISS – so first of all every astronaut and cosmonaut needs to be bilingual in English and Russian because those are the languages of space. Lauren: Yep. Wait, the language of space are English and Russian? I’m sorry, I just said ‘yep’ and I didn’t really think about it, so that’s a fact is it? Gretchen: I mean, pretty much, yeah, if you go on astronaut training recruitment forums, which I have gone on to research this episode… Lauren: You’re got to have a backup job, Gretchen. Gretchen: I don’t think I’m going to become an astronaut, but I would like to do astronaut linguistics. And one of the things these forums say, is, you need to know stuff about math and engineering and, like, how to fly planes and so on. But they also say, you either have to arrive knowing English and Russian or they put you through an intensive language training course. But then when they’re up in space, one of the things that they do is have the English native speakers speak Russian and the Russian speakers speak English. Because the idea is, if you speak your native language, maybe you’re speaking too fast or maybe you’re not sure if the other person’s really understanding you. Whereas if you both speak the language you’re not as fluent in, then you arrive at a level where where people can be sure that the other person’s understanding. And by now, there’s kind of this hybrid English-Russian language that’s developed. Not a full-fledged language but kind of a- Lauren: Space Creole! Gretchen: Yeah, a Space Pidgin that the astronauts use to speak with each other! I don’t know if anyone’s written a grammar of it, but I really want to see a grammar of Space Pidgin.
Excerpt from Episode 1 of Lingthusiasm: Speaking a single language won’t bring about world peace. Listen to the full episode, read the transcript, or check out the show notes. (via lingthusiasm)
Equal opportunity benefits can be far-reaching
https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/818682610712866817
First Female U.S. Astronaut, Sally Ride, Comes Out In Obituary | BuzzFeed
“I hope it makes it easier for kids growing up gay that they know that another one of their heroes was like them,” Sally Ride’s sister, Bear Ride, said.
One-year countdown to solar eclipse, August 21, 2017: path of totality overlaid on U.S. population density and interstate map.
Until I get this show rolling, I’m going to be posting some of the things I’ve collected over the years that might make for interesting things to do podcasts about down the line!
