The Second Week Of Lucky Martian Month Is Here!

Planet Earth, April 16, 1972, as seen from the Apollo 16 spacecraft as it journeyed toward the Moon. (NASA)

the astronomy students

drawing your own star charts

staying up late to watch a meteor shower

constellations painted on your ceiling

tracking the planets, noting their paths in a pocket-sized journal

an old wool scarf wrapped around your neck to keep out the cold

marveling over photographs of distant galaxies

retelling the stories of Orion and Cassiopeia

the glittering expanse of a cloudless night sky

moonlight shining through gauzy curtains

driving somewhere remote to see the milky way, far from the light pollution of the city

looking for your place in the cosmos

finding comfort in the vastness of the universe, in your own comparative insignificance

a model of the solar system resting on your desk

old sci-fi novels with battered covers

studying the contributions of Copernicus and Al-Battani and Kepler

watching the moon wax and wane

your favorite blanket wrapped around your shoulders

maps of the constellations, illustrated with figures from the associated myths

wondering about life on other worlds

memorizing the constellations, noting how their positions move as the seasons change

a thermos of hot tea

stargazing with friends, gazing up and watching for shooting stars

learning the physics of stars and planets

a fascination with the unknown

Caldwell 86 by NASA Hubble

COMPARISON PHOTOS: hubble vs james webb

SMACS 0723

southern ring nebula

carina nebula (NGC 3324)

stephan's quintet

TRAPPIST - 1 by Guillem H. Pongiluppi

Constellations.

Your fave is problematic: Aliens

first off: I just chose this title so you would read this post… what I really mean is all extraterrestrial life, microscopically small, big, existing and non-existing.

Are we alone?

Right now it is assumed that most stars in our galaxy have at least 1-2 planets. This would mean that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy. With an estimated 100-400 billion stars, you do the math…

Data from the Kepler Space telescope reported in 2013 that there may be about 40 billion planets in their stars’ habitable zone in our galaxy. we also found evidence that there were already first traces of life on Earth shortly after it began cooling. this suggests that it is very easy to start life (as we know it) on a planet, even if it leaves no traces.

So, if life is that easy to create, why don’t we see aliens?

the conditions to create life might be common to exist, but for them to last long enough to create intelligent life… 

the field of exoplanets is very young. we have just recently discovered how to properly measure that they exist, and where.

image if you have a street light shining outside and there’s a single mosquito flying around it… kinda hard to spot even if you look closely.

Ok, so other planets are hard to see. But why don’t we hear from aliens through radio waves?

this question is often asked and has several assumptions:

aliens are exactly like us, and have the same senses and shape and form

aliens are currently as evolved as we are and have developed the same technologies

aliens are trying to contact other worlds

these assumptions already give you the answer: the odds are just like, really fucking small. alien life might be entirely, incomprehensibly different. they might have sent signals 40 000 years ago when we were still gathering berries. they might send signals in 400 years when we have nuked each other to death. they might be communicating entirely different. humanity is just really not that advanced and we haven’t been around for very long. especially, we haven’t been listening for very long.

space is VAST. for another civilization to find our radio waves, they could only be 100 light years away and would have to point directly at us. like… imagine.

why haven’t we be visited by aliens?

s.a.: space is VAST. imagine how far a single light year is. visualize. a light year is the distance light travels in a year. light speed is 300,000 kilometers per ONE second. that means that in a year, light travels about 9 trillion kilometres. 

my point is that it is impossible to travel at light speed and incomprehensibly difficult to even reach a couple of percent of light speed.

the closest “habitable planet” (tbh, that means shit. a habitable planet might still be a roaring fireball where it rains acid, we don’t fuckin know) is 14 light years away.

the chances of a civilization to find us, want to visit us, have a space ship that supports their form of life for decades, maybe centuries or millennia, they don’t kill each other in that time frame… y’all.

summary: intelligent life and simple life might exist but also might not exist. they might care about us or they might not. they might be so advanced that they are watching us sending rockets to each other countries and bombing each other and were like NOPE. they might be so different from us that we can’t “hear” each other. also watch this video. 

overall the situation is fucked or they’re assholes and are like “fuck you”