Making Multimedia Content Accessible To All

We do NOT want to trade our civil liberties for ANY amount of freedom. Death + freedom > slavery + safety. This is not complicated.

by commentator on ArsTechnica post   

Privacy matters, pass it on

https://www.flickr.com/photos/krillion/16433017276/

Our Galaxy is Caught Up in a Giant Cosmic Cobweb! 🕸️

If we could zoom waaaay out, we would see that galaxies and galaxy clusters make up large, fuzzy threads, like the strands of a giant cobweb. But we'll work our way out to that. First let's start at home and look at our planet's different cosmic communities.

Our home star system

Earth is one of eight planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — that orbit the Sun. But our solar system is more than just planets; it also has a lot of smaller objects.

An asteroid belt circles the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Beyond Neptune is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects called the Kuiper Belt. This is where dwarf planets like Pluto and Makemake are found and is likely the source of short-period comets (like Haley’s comet), which orbit the Sun in less than 200 years.

Scientists think that even farther out lies the Oort Cloud, also a likely source of comets. This most distant region of our solar system is a giant spherical shell storing additional icy space debris the size of mountains, or larger! The outer edge of the Oort Cloud extends to about 1.5 light-years from the Sun — that’s the distance light travels in a year and a half (over 9 trillion miles).

Sometimes asteroids or comets get ejected from these regions and end up sharing an orbit with planets like Jupiter or even crossing Earth’s orbit. There are even interstellar objects that have entered the inner solar system from even farther than the Oort Cloud, perhaps coming all the way from another star!

Our home galaxy

Let's zoom out to look at the whole Milky Way galaxy, which contains more than 100 billion stars. Many are found in the galaxy’s disk — the pancake-shaped part of a spiral galaxy where the spiral arms lie. The brightest and most massive stars are found in the spiral arms, close to their birth places. Dimmer, less massive stars can be found sprinkled throughout the disk. Also found throughout the spiral arms are dense clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. The Sun lies in a small spiral arm called the Orion Spur.

The Milky Way’s disk is embedded in a spherical “halo” about 120,000 light-years across. The halo is dotted with globular clusters of old stars and filled with dark matter. Dark matter doesn’t emit enough light for us to directly detect it, but we know it’s there because without its mass our galaxy doesn’t have enough gravity to hold together!

Our galaxy also has several orbiting companion galaxies ranging from about 25,000 to 1.4 million light-years away. The best known of these are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are visible to the unaided eye from Earth’s Southern Hemisphere.

Our galactic neighborhood

The Milky Way and Andromeda, our nearest neighboring spiral galaxy, are just two members of a small group of galaxies called the Local Group. They and the other members of the group, 50 to 80 smaller galaxies, spread across about 10 million light-years.

The Local Group lies at the outskirts of an even larger structure. It is just one of at least 100 groups and clusters of galaxies that make up the Virgo Supercluster. This cluster of clusters spans about 110 million light-years!

Galaxies aren’t the only thing found in a galaxy cluster, though. We also find hot gas, as shown above in the bright X-ray light (in pink) that surrounds the galaxies (in optical light) of cluster Abell 1413, which is a picturesque member of a different supercluster. Plus, there is dark matter throughout the cluster that is only detectable through its gravitational interactions with other objects.

The Cosmic Web

The Virgo Supercluster is just one of many, many other groups of galaxies. But the universe’s structure is more than just galaxies, clusters, and the stuff contained within them.

For more than two decades, astronomers have been mapping out the locations of galaxies, revealing a filamentary, web-like structure. This large-scale backbone of the cosmos consists of dark matter laced with gas. Galaxies and clusters form along this structure, and there are large voids in between.

The scientific visualizations of this “cosmic web” look a little like a spider web, but that would be one colossal spider! <shudder>

And there you have the different communities that define Earth’s place in the universe. Our tiny planet is a small speck on a crumb of that giant cosmic web!

Want to learn even more about the structures in the universe? Check out our Cosmic Distance Scale!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space.

STEM the Divide!

Thanks to Trump, Scientists Are Planning to Run for Office

Op-Ed:  Why We Need Scientists to Run for Public Office Now

314 Action Issues, Want to Run? 314 Blog... Take Action!

Statement: Fordham Against Torture Weighs in on Revocation of Bill Cosby’s Honorary Degree

To the Fordham Community

From: Fordham Faculty and Fordham Against Torture

President McShane and the board of Trustees have acted responsibly and conscientiously in deciding to rescind the honorary degree awarded to Bill Cosby, in the light of what we now know. The members of Fordham Faculty against Torture understand the difficulty involved in publicly acknowledging and moving to correct a mistake, for the sake of the victims and to preserve the good name of the university. The moral logic applied to the personal crimes of one man, though, applies equally well to a situation of profound international political significance. We must ask, therefore, how Fordham can be so attentive to the actions of Bill Cosby while ignoring the actions and words of John Brennan, especially in the light of what we now know of his support for torture in the aftermath of the Senate Report on Torture.

It is also dismaying to us that the Cosby decision, though certainly appropriate, appears to have been made behind closed doors and entirely without consulting the Fordham community in any way, just as was the decision to grant the degree in the first place. In contrast, the petition to revoke John Brennan’s honorary degree emerged from the Fordham community itself, was vigorously debated by proponents and opponents alike, and had the support of more than 700 faculty, students, staff, and alumni, only to be rejected on the flimsiest grounds. If the decision to revoke the Cosby degree can be said to represent the university, how much more compelling is the strong evidence of community support in the matter of John Brennan?

At this point in time, we want to thank all those hundreds of people who signed the petition, and all those students and faculty who gave passion, time, and energy to move the university to a morally responsible position. We are sorry that this passion and commitment could not convince the Board of Trustees and the President to act. At the same time, we are determined to continue to fight for human rights and justice, and to guarantee that the labors of so many will result in a permanent resource for the Fordham community.

Sincerely,

Orlando Rodriguez Jeanne Flavin Jeannine Hill Fletcher Glenn Hendler Brad Hinze James Kim David Myers Louie Dean Valencia

For more, see the recent article in The Fordham Ram

Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Arthur C. Clarke

Fermi

I’ve been meaning to post these links together for a while now, fascinating stuff!  

Where are all the aliens via Quartz

Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” II: Questioning the Hart-Tipler Conjecture via Universe Today (Paul Patton)

Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” I: A Lunchtime Conversation- Enrico Fermi and Extraterrestrial Intelligence via Universe Today (Paul Patton)

11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox via io9 (George Dvorsky) The 7 Least Plausible Solutions To The Fermi Paradox via io9 (George Dvorsky)

This Animated Explanation Of The Fermi Paradox Is Fantastic via io9 (George Dvorsky)

Where Are All The Aliens? This Short Video Offers Some Solutions via io9 (George Dvorsky) this is part two to the previous link

Side note...  George’s posts on io9 are awesome, if you like science, I definitely recommend you check them out!

update: The Surprisingly Obvious Way We Could Hunt for Alien Life

another update:

The Fermi Paradox

Prosecutor as bully

Here is where we need a better sense of justice, and shame. For the outrageousness in this story is not just Aaron. It is also the absurdity of the prosecutor’s behavior. From the beginning, the government worked as hard as it could to characterize what Aaron did in the most extreme and absurd way. The “property” Aaron had “stolen,” we were told, was worth “millions of dollars” — with the hint, and then the suggestion, that his aim must have been to profit from his crime. But anyone who says that there is money to be made in a stash ofACADEMIC ARTICLES is either an idiot or a liar. It was clear what this was not, yet our government continued to push as if it had caught the 9/11 terrorists red-handed.

Digital Citizenship

I’m working on organizing faculty/students/staff who would be interested in promoting awareness of Digital Citizenship elements.  

I’ve created a wiki to organize resources and information about events.

I want to create a calendar where each month starting in September on of the 9 elements is highlighted.  I thought it would be a good idea to see what kind of days/events are already “celebrated” and then match them up.  For example, since National Cyber Security month already exists in October  I would make October the month of “Digital Citizenship:  Security” awareness.  

The only problem is trying to find days/months that match up with all of them.  It’s not quite working out!  I found this great calendar with a listing of many, MANY events which I thought would solve my problem.  When sorted, it seems to have made the problem worse.  I’m worried that I’ve missed some.  It’s also difficult choosing which topics would be best for which month since there are multiple days/weeks/months that would match.

Help!  If you know of specific months/days that correspond to the 9 elements of Digital Citizenship, please share!

This is what I have so far.  I’ve enabled commenting (shortcut key is Ctrl-Alt-M)

Highlighted Topics/Events are choices that I feel are a good fit.

Any help would be much appreciated!  I will be updated the wiki with the plans for events and resources, stay tuned!

update...  aliens... maybe

The Case of the So-Called Alien Megastructure Just Got Weirder

lol...  we shall see....  

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