Lauge - Ephemeral Flower (Cloud Garden Mix) [SpaceAmbient]

A Cosmic Legacy: From Earth to the Stars (Extended Video)

"Our beautiful mother world ached for a reprieve from the injustices of many, courtesy of cultures and governance systems, that forgot how to love, how to be kind, how to include others, and how to think beyond the scope of greed and power, but within the visions of shared joy and well-being."

“For far too long people have lived for merely one shared goal, due to the daunting nature that life seems to bring. That goal may be a noble one, but it comes short of progression in and of itself and does not recognize the complexity of life and all of its nuances.

“This goal is survival through natural evolution. To merely survive, no matter the means, as noble as it may seem at first, will actually lead to the end of life and the end of humanity, whether through natural events or mankind’s apparent affinity toward death.

“It’s as if far too many people worship the almighty ‘mixed result’ rather than raise the quality of and joy in life through logic, study, innovation, and common sense, by enjoying what it can bring to the table, which will ultimately result in desired results.

“Finding cures for disease, both physiological and neurological, and possessing the ingenuity to innovate technologies as well as a pathway for humanity to quicken their pace for developing them will lead to preserving our Earth, our solar system, perhaps our Universe, and with it, each individual and humanity itself, as we travel to and push the limits of the Universe and its sustainability, trusting ourselves as we do so.”

Enjoy this First-Year-Anniversary compilation of all of my works in one title: A Cosmic Legacy: From Earth to the Stars

This title includes the entire Pathway to the Stars series: Part 1, Vesha Celeste Part 2, Eliza Williams Part 3, James Cooper Part 4, Universal Party Part 5, Amber Blythe Part 6, Erin Carter Part 7, Span of Influence Part 8, Dreamy & Deep Part 9-Allure & Spacecraft Part 10-Sky Taylor Part 11-A New Day Part 12-Alpha Andromedae

Eliza Williams and a host of friendly heroes tackle some of the most significant dilemmas of the day to bring humanity out and into the stars bearing a legacy we would be proud to share with other civilizations--a legacy of kindness, of mind-to-mind communication, of love, and of healing instead of harming. If we are to overcome the great expansion and the death of all life, we must overcome the smaller challenges to progress and focus on even greater ones. Working with her team diligently, Eliza will speed the pace of society in her world with the belief that beauty and untold potential are within every being. If we find ways to bring that out in ourselves and others, a future where we can breed longevity, a collective and high quality of life, augment the clarity of our minds, and innovate to span the Cosmos may be in our grasp.

Together with the organization Eliza Williams founded, called Pathway, she and her growing team will take us on a fantastical and Utopian journey to get us out and into the farthest reaches of space. There are dilemmas such as the physiological effects of space on each of us, as well as the need for longevity and a desire to still be able to visit loved ones following long journeys. Eliza and her team develop capabilities, so we can overcome the challenges ahead and are determined to stabilize a rocky economy, wipe away suffering, violence, disease, cartels, terrorism, and trafficking in persons. They work together to tame seismic activity, weather, and fires. She and her friends tackle ways to prevent extinction and provide solutions to quality of life concerns. They even consider the longevity of our Sun and our Earth's capacity to preserve life. Eliza tackles each of these issues to get us out, and into the stars, so we can begin our biggest quest--to help our Universe breathe ever so lightly.

No matter the challenge, there will always be greater pursuits! The saga will continue...

"A Cosmic Legacy" is a science fiction & fantasy novel, with a Space Opera flair to it. It is designed to edify, educate, and entertain young adults and scholars alike. Some of the specific topics covered include physiology, neurology, physics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, astronomy, politics, philosophy, and ethics. Preservation of the life-giving and sustaining capacities of our Earth and creation of environments conducive to life throughout the Solar System once thought to be impossible are primary goals. The ideas of kindness, with innovation rooted in well-being, longevity, where cellular health expresses youth and rejuvenation, optimizing the body to be able to live comfortably in austere space environments without adverse effects, and mind-to-mind communication bearing with it a legacy we'd be proud to share with distant civilizations with mutual goals of preserving our Universe can bring a beautiful future for all living beings.

Hardcover (Regular price $45) LCCN: 2019911854 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-2-4 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1733313125

Paperback (Regular price $35) LCCN: 2019909638 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-1-7 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1733313117

eBook (Regular price $10) LCCN: 2019909630 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-0-0 | ASIN: B07V4W3MW9 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07V4W3MW9

#scifi #fantasy #spaceopera #newideology #wellbeing #longevity #neuroscience #neurotech #physiology #biology #biotech #physics #theoreticalphysics #nanotech #CRISPR #stemcellresearch #innovation #positivity #clarityofmind #author #matthewjopdyke #books #novels #ebooks #space #stars #astronomy #stem #science #ethicalrolemodels #universalethics

A new Chandra image shows the location of several elements produced by the explosion of a massive star.

Cassiopeia A is a well-known supernova remnant located about 11,000 light years from Earth.

Supernova remnants and the elements they produce are very hot — millions of degrees — and glow strongly in X-ray light.

Chandra’s sharp X-ray vision allows scientists to determine both the amount and location of these crucial elements objects like Cas A produce.

Where do most of the elements essential for life on Earth come from? The answer: inside the furnaces of stars and the explosions that mark the end of some stars’ lives.Astronomers have long studied exploded stars and their remains — known as “supernova remnants” — to better understand exactly how stars produce and then disseminate many of the elements observed on Earth, and in the cosmos at large.Due to its unique evolutionary status, Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is one of the most intensely studied of these supernova remnants. A new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). Each of these elements produces X-rays within narrow energy ranges, allowing maps of their location to be created. The blast wave from the explosion is seen as the blue outer ring.

X-ray telescopes such as Chandra are important to study supernova remnants and the elements they produce because these events generate extremely high temperatures — millions of degrees — even thousands of years after the explosion. This means that many supernova remnants, including Cas A, glow most strongly at X-ray wavelengths that are undetectable with other types of telescopes.Chandra’s sharp X-ray vision allows astronomers to gather detailed information about the elements that objects like Cas A produce. For example, they are not only able to identify many of the elements that are present, but how much of each are being expelled into interstellar space.

Much more reading/info/video:  http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2017/casa_life/

Earth’s Ocean and Beyond

Image Credit: NOAA

Earth’s ocean has been the backdrop for ancient epics, tales of fictional fish and numerous scientific discoveries. It was, and will always be, a significant piece of the Earth’s story. Most of the ocean is unexplored– about 95% of this underwater realm is unseen by human eyes (NOAA). There is only one global Ocean. In fact, the ocean represents over 70% of the Earth’s surface and contains 96.5% of the Earth’s water.

We and the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research work together alongside organizations like the Schmidt Ocean Institute and Ocean Exploration Trust to better understand our oceans and its processes. While space may be the final frontier, understanding our own planet helps scientists as they explore space and study how our universe came to be.

On #WorldOceansDay let’s explore how Earth’s ocean informs our research throughout the solar system.

Earth and Exoplanets

“In interpreting what we see elsewhere in the solar system and universe, we always compare with phenomena that we already know of on Earth…We work from the familiar toward the unknown.” - Norman Kuring, NASA Goddard

We know of only one living planet: our own. As we move to the next stage in the search for alien life, the effort will require the expertise of scientists of all disciplines. However, the knowledge and tools NASA has developed to study life on Earth will also be one of the greatest assets to the quest.

The photo above shows what Earth would look like at a resolution of 3 pixels, the same that exoplanet-discovering missions would see. What should we look for, in the search of other planets like our own? What are the unmistakable signs of life, even if it comes in a form we don’t fully understand? Liquid water; every cell we know of – even bacteria around deep-sea vents that exist without sunlight – requires water.

Phytoplankton (Algae) Bloom vs. Atmosphere of Jupiter

Jupiter’s storms are mesmerizing in their beauty, captured in many gorgeous photos throughout the decades from missions like Voyager 1 and Juno. The ethereal swirls of Jupiter are the result of fluids in motion on a rotating body, which might come as a surprise, since its atmosphere is made of gas!

The eddies in Jupiter’s clouds appear very similar to those found in Earth’s ocean, like in the phytoplankton (or algae) bloom in the Baltic Sea, pictured above. The bloom was swept up in a vortex, just a part of how the ocean moves heat, carbon, and nutrients around the planet. Blooms like this, however, are not all beauty - they create “dead zones” in the areas where they grow, blooming and decaying at such a high rate that they consume all the oxygen in the water around them.

Arctic Sea Ice and Europa Ice Crust

While the Arctic (North Pole) and the Antarctic (South Pole) are “polar opposites,” there is one huge difference between the North and South Poles– land mass. The Arctic is ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is land surrounded by ocean. The North Pole  is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice.

By studying this sea ice, scientists can research its impact on Earth system and even formation processes on other bodies like Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter. For example, it is possible that the reddish surface features on Europa’s ice may have communicated with a global subsurface ocean layer during or after their formation. 

Aquanauts and Astronauts

As new missions are being developed, scientists are using Earth as a testbed. Just as prototypes for our Mars rovers made their trial runs on Earth’s deserts, researchers are testing both hypotheses and technology on our oceans and extreme environments.

NEEMO, our Extreme Environment Mission Operations project, is an analog mission that sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in Aquarius, the world’s only undersea research station located off the Florida Keys, 62 feet (19 meters) below the surface. Much like space, the undersea world is a hostile, alien place for humans to live. NEEMO crew members, known as aquanauts, experience some of the same challenges there that they would on a distant asteroid, planet or moon.

Deep-sea Robotic Exploration and Space Robotic Exploration

Video credit: Deep Sea Robotics/Schmidt Ocean Institute and Mars Curiosity rover/NASA

From mapping the seafloor through bathymetry to collecting samples on the surface of Mars, researchers are utilizing new technologies more than ever to explore. Satellite and robotic technology allow us to explore where humans may not be able to– yet. They teach us valuable lessons about the extreme and changing environments, science, as well as provide a platform to test new technologies.

Jezero Crater and Dvina River Delta, Arkhangelsk, Russia/Mars Delta

River deltas, the point where a river meets the ocean, are sites of rich sediment and incredible biodiversity. The nutrients that rivers carry to the coastlines make a fertile place for fish and shellfish to lay their eggs.

The Jezero crater on Mars (pictured in false-color on the right) has been selected as the Mars2020 landing site, and has a structure that looks much like a river delta here on Earth! Pictures from our Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show eroded ancient deposits of transported sediment long since hardened into interweaving, curved ridges of layered rock. This is one of many hints that Mars was once covered in an ancient ocean that had more water than the Arctic Ocean. Studying these deltas on Earth helps us spot them on other planets, and learning about the ocean that was once on Mars informs how our own formed.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Author – Matthew J. Opdyke Matthew J Opdyke is a published Science Fiction Author with a passion to take his audience on journey's into the cosmos and to inspire his audience to look at the world with a new vision of futurism and enhancing a state of mind toward progression.

New Podcast: Starts With A Bang #35 - Do We Live In A Multiverse

There’s been a lot of speculative ideas put forth about the Multiverse, and I dare say that a great many of them are nothing more than wishful thinking. But that doesn’t mean the Multiverse itself is ill-motivated at all. Rather, if you take two of our best theories that have been well-confirmed in a wide variety of different ways, you’re going to find that you arrive at a bizarre but unavoidable picture: one of an inflating spacetime, eternal to the future, where regions that look like our Universe, complete with a hot Big Bang, are spawned continuously.

The evidence might not be there, observably, to confirm or deny the existence of a Multiverse. But as a theoretical consequence, it certainly has a motivation that’s far stronger than practically anyone realizes. Here’s the cosmic story.

Space Is Full Of Planets, And Most Of Them Don’t Even Have Stars

“When we look at our Universe, where our own galaxy contains some 400 billion stars and there are some two trillion galaxies in the Universe, the realization that there are around ten planets for every star is mind-boggling. But if we look outside of solar systems, there are between 100 and 100,000 planets wandering through space for every single star that we can see. While a small percentage of them were ejected from solar systems of their own, the overwhelming majority have never known the warmth of a star at all. Many are gas giants, but still more are likely to be rocky and icy, with many of them containing all the ingredients needed for life. Perhaps, someday, they’ll get their chance. Until then, they’ll continue to travel, throughout the galaxy and throughout the Universe, vastly outnumbering the dizzying array of lights illuminating the cosmos.”

According to the International Astronomical Union, planets need to have enough mass to pull themselves into hydrostatic equilibrium, they need to orbit a star and not any other object, and they need to clear their orbits in a certain amount of cosmic time. But what do you call an object that would have been a planet, if only it were in orbit around a star, but instead wanders through the heavens alone, unbound to any larger masses? These rogue planets are surprisingly ubiquitous in our galaxy and beyond, and we expect that they’ll far outnumber not only the stars, but even the planets that are found orbiting stars. Where do these rogue worlds come from? A percentage of them are orphans, having been ejected from the solar system that they formed in, but the overwhelming majority ought to have never been part of a star system at all.

Come learn how even though space is full of planets, many containing the ingredients for life, most of them don’t even have stars to orbit to give them a chance.

Black-Hole Powered Jets Forge Fuel for Star Formation

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a surprising connection between a supermassive black hole and the galaxy where it resides. 

Powerful radio jets from the black hole – which normally suppress star formation – are stimulating the production of cold gas in the galaxy’s extended halo of hot gas. This newly identified supply of cold, dense gas could eventually fuel future star birth as well as feed the black hole itself.

The researchers used ALMA to study a galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Cluster, an uncommonly crowded collection of galaxies about 5.7 billion light-years from Earth.

The central galaxy in this cluster harbors a supermassive black hole that is in the process of devouring star-forming gas, which fuels a pair of powerful jets that erupt from the black hole in opposite directions into intergalactic space. Astronomers refer to this type of black-hole powered system as an active galactic nucleus (AGN).

Read more ~ AlmaObservatory.org

Video: Video explaining the complex relationship between a supermassive black hole and its host galaxy.     Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); Animations: NASA/GSFC/CI Lab, ESO; Science Images: NASA/ESA Hubble; Chandra X-Ray Observatory/NASA/MIT, M. McDonald; Music, Comfortable Mystery 4 - Film Noire by Kevin MacLeod

Images: Left: Composite image showing how powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster inflated huge “bubbles” in the hot, ionized gas surrounding the galaxy (the cavities inside the blue region imaged by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory). Hugging the outside of these bubbles, ALMA discovered an unexpected trove of cold gas, the fuel for star formation (red). The background image is from the Hubble Space Telescope.     Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) H.Russell, et al.; NASA/ESA Hubble; NASA/CXC/MIT/M.McDonald et al.; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Right: ALMA image of cold molecular gas at the heart of the Phoenix Cluster. The filaments extending from the center hug enormous radio bubbles created by jets from a supermassive black hole. This discovery sheds light on the complex relationship between a supermassive black hole and its host galaxy.     Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), H. Russell et al.; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF) Bottom: Artist impression of galaxy at the center of the Phoenix Cluster. Powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy are creating giant radio bubbles (blue) in the ionized gas surrounding the galaxy. ALMA has detected cold molecular gas (red) hugging the outside of the bubbles. This material could eventually fall into the galaxy where it could fuel future star birth and feed the supermassive black hole.     Credit: B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Video for my newly released book, Pathway to the Stars: Part 7, Span of Influence. As always, it was fun putting it together. (Please help to get the word out! Thank you!) <3  "To be worthy to journey the stars, conditions must be such that if a group of explorers were to return home many millennia later, humanity will not have faded away into nothing. Instead, they will have preserved the homeworld and home solar system, and even improved upon the beauty, the abundance, and the ability of longevity of life in every way that is positive and possible." 

Eliza Williams works with her team in the Pathway organization to increase her span of influence throughout the world. Journey with Vesha Celeste as she continues her adventures with Yesha Alevtina in the Virtual Universe, understanding more fully how Eliza's team has become the enigmatic propagator of the future. With tech cities spanning the Solar System yet hidden from those who have not been read-in, humanity will be breath taken to behold them. Eliza takes on some of the biggest titans of every industry and teaches them what she believes will fuel the future -- kindness, shared-well-being, compassion, and consent, or what she coins as Universal Ethics!

Span of Influence, ISBN: 9781951321055, LCCN: 2019918436

eBook:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081XHLJ36

Paperback:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1951321073

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7iXnRYAiVvc?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&amp;wmode=opaque

Promo video put together by my wonderful spouse. Thank you, Kimmy! Join our cast of heroes as they prepare civilization to go Further than Before! #FurtherthanBefore #PathwaytotheStars #ScifiFantasy #neuroscience #physics #physiology #biotech #longevity #CRISPR #politicalscifi #strongfemalelead #strongfemalerolemodel #strongmalerolemodel #spaceopera 

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