Life Imitates Art

Last year astronomers at NASA announced they had discovered a sextuple star system, i.e. six stars that perform an intricate dance around a common center of gravity.

I find this fascinating because this is exactly the type of system described in Isaac Asimov's classic work, Nightfall.

In 1941, Astounding Science Fiction magazine published a short story by a little-known writer named Isaac Asimov. The story was called Nightfall, and many years later it has long been recognized as a classic; its author a legend. The Gran Master of Science Fiction eventually teamed with Robert Silverberg, one of the field's top award-winning authors, to explore and expand an apocalyptic tale that is more spellbinding today than ever before—Nightfall: The Novel.

Imagine living on a planet with six suns that never experiences darkness. Imagine never having seen the stars. Then, one by one the suns start to set, gradually leading into darkness for the first time ever. Kalgash is a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the unyielding rationalism of scientists. Lurking beneath it all is a collective, instinctual fear of the darkness. For Kalgash knows only the perpetual light of day; to its inhabitants, a gathering twilight portends unspeakable horror. And only a handful of people on the planet are prepared to face the truth, their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in over two thousand years, signaling the end of civilization as it explodes in the awesome splendor of Nightfall.

Encompassing the psychology of disaster, the tenacity of the human spirit, and, ultimately, the regenerative power of hope, Nightfall is a tale rich in character and suspense that only the unique collaboration of Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg could create.

More than one attempt has been made to bring this story to the screen, each time resulting in utter failure. My take on the most recent one is here.

Andromeda Moves In




Not that humanity will even be around to witness this, but these images show what things may look like as the inevitable collision and merger of the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies takes place.

The last two images are a bit optimistic because the Earth will have long since been consumed by the sun as it enters its red giant phase in around 5 billion years.

In Case You've Ever Wondered…

…how the plane of our solar system is oriented to the plane of the Milky Way.

Because I have.

But then, I'm an astronomy geek. Have been since I was a wee young thing. But I'd always wondered how the solar system was oriented in regard to the galaxy itself, since it seemed improbable that everything was oriented in the same direction.

The Latest from James Webb

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's mid-infrared view of the Pillars of Creation strikes a chilling tone. Thousands of stars that exist in this region seem to disappear, since stars typically do not emit much mid-infrared light, and seemingly endless layers of gas and dust become the centerpiece. The detection of dust by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is extremely important – dust is a major ingredient for star formation.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Putting Things Into Perspective

The outline of the continental United States superimposed over the great hexagon at Saturn's North Pole:

If you're not humbled by that, here's the entire North American continent next to Jupiter's Great Red Spot:

But Christians, please…tell me again how your god is so obsessed with where I put my penis. I'll wait.

Science!

Take a good look: this is the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

In the inset image, gas in the glowing orange ring surrounds the black hole's event horizon, a boundary from which nothing can escape. The ring is created by light bending in the intense gravity around Sagittarius A*, which has a mass some four million times greater than our Sun. This groundbreaking image of Sagittarius A* was taken by the Event Horizon Telescope team with data from telescopes around the world. After the EHT's iconic image of M87*, released in 2019, this is only the second time a supermassive black hole has been directly observed with its shadow.

The wider look at the space around Sagittarius A* includes data contributed by several NASA missions. The orange specks and purple tendrils were captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope, and the blue clouds represent data from our orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Fall in to the whole story: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/images/sagittarius-a-nasa-telescopes-support-event-horizon-telescope-in-studying-milky-ways.html

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I Had This…

…or some variation thereof, on my bedroom wall all through grade school. I took to drawing my own version of the planets—no doubt as fanciful as these representations, never dreaming that during the course of my life we'd actually see each one up close via robotic probes!

Shadows at the Moon's South Pole

This is a multi-temporal illumination map made of the moon's South Pole with a wide-angle camera. To create it, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft collected 1,700 images over a period of 6 lunar days (6 Earth months), repeatedly covering an area centered on the Moon's south pole from different angles. The resulting images were stacked to produce the featured map—representing the percentage of time each spot on the surface was illuminated by the Sun. Remaining convincingly in shadow, the floor of the 19-kilometer diameter Shackleton crater is seen near the map's center. The lunar south pole itself is at about 9 o'clock on the crater's rim. Crater floors near the lunar south and north poles can remain in permanent shadow, while mountain tops can remain in nearly continuous sunlight. Useful for future outposts, the shadowed craterfloors could offer reservoirs of water-ice, while the sunlit mountain tops offer good locations to collect solar power.

Why Are Giraffes So Violent?

Most big herbivores are, frankly. If you have a pretty steady supply of food and don't have to worry about missing a hunt and starving to death, you can afford to throw your weight around more and generally be more aggressive!

That's why the most dangerous big animals in the world are almost all herbivores.

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This is also why walking right up to these things in Jurassic Park would have been a fantastically bad idea

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Sauropods would be fucking terrifying and it annoys the hell out of me that media constantly portrays them as passive and harmless. That Indominus Rex from Jurassic World would have been slaughtered against an Apatosaurus—let alone a whole herd of them.

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Ok but, bringing it back to sauropods, people dont really understand just HOW terrifying they were

First, size. And yeah most people understand that sauropods were bit, but it really needs to be reinforced just how big they were.

This is Camarasaurus lentus, around 15 ish meters and over 16 tons, for reference sake, the largest african elephant bull EVER recorded was 11 tons.
pretty decent difference right?

Well, except one thing.

This is a small sauropod.

Want to see a large one?

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Yeah, you're reading that right, 53 tons. Almost five times heavier than the largest recorded african elephant ever.

And they get even larger.

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This bastard was last estimated at 73 tons, the largest animal ever to walk the earth.

And they didn't just get big, they got long, too

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That right there, is BYU 9024, it (among with a few undescribed remains) shows an animal in the size range of 130+ feet (40+ meters), this one here clocks in at around 130, and the funny thing is? this is the conservative estimate, larger specimens are not unreasonable in the slightest. It's not quite as heavy as the big south american bastard above it, but at 67 tons, its close.

Secondly, speed.

We've all seen it, lumbering behemoths that were dumb as rocks and probably about as fast, with a tailwind, going downhill.

Well…. Not really, the latest studies done as of Asier larramedi's sauropod facts and figures book gives some… Horrifying estimates.

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I'll spare you the complete explanations, there will be a paper out soon that goes into greater depth, but I'd like to draw your attention to the speeds, specifically fo the animal called Giraffatitan.

Most people are familiar with it in some way, shape or form, but to clear up what exactly Giraffatitan is.

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They're not the small ones in the foreground, they're the big ones in the back. 33 tons of pure muscle, moving at 16 mph (25 kp/h). Again, to provide further reference.

This is how fast that is. It's a house running at you, forget a hippo charging you, this would be a tidal wave of flesh and hatred bearing down on you.

And finally, weapons.

Like it was earlier pointed out,  Apatosaurus should have absolutely trounced the Indominus, because quite frankly at such a size anything you do will hurt. Kicks with the front or hind limbs will be utterly devastating to anything except another of their kind, but Apatosaurus had another thing going in its favor.

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One thicc-ass neck. Pictured here with speculative keratin spikes on the bottom, whilst the spikes are speculation, the neck itself would have essentially functioned like a fleshy battering ram, capable of pulping ribcages and smashing anything that could have "preyed" upon them.

But that's not even the most terrifying thing, though this is not specific to Apatosaurus itself, but to all diplodocoids (Apatosaurus, Barosaurus, Diplodocus, etc.)

Specifically, the tail.

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This is Diplodocus, as you can see, this animal is half tail, as you might also be able to see, the latter half of that tail tapers down to what can, in all essence be described as—a whip.

A serrated whip, powered by some of the largest muscles in the largest animals that would have walked on earth.

But it gets even more horrifying.

You see, there have been studies that have come to a conclusion, and though there are those that have doubted them, that the tips of these tails, could have—and would have—broken the sound barrier. Yup, you heard that right, and as soon as that fact begins to seep in, you'll realize the horrifying implications.

A diplodocoid whipping its tail, would blow out the eardrums of any animal close by and unfortunate enough to draw its ire, the sauropod itself would possibly not come out unscathed, but when you can literally give a would-be predator internal hemmorages by, what to them would be essentially like snapping a finger, the benefits begin to outweigh the risks involved.

And that's not even mentioning what would happen if it hit anything, an impact at such velocity, with such mass driving it would be—quite frankly— devastating beyond words.

Flesh wouldn't just tear, it wouldn't just break skin or bones, flesh would melt, bones would shatter, if not simply cease to be. And this is on a sufficiently sized animal such as Allosaurus or Torvosaurus.

On a human? They would be ripped in half.

So yeah, Sauropods get shafted in popular media to an extent that isn't even possible, if you think hippo's are scary, imagine something fourty times its size, faster than you, and able to kill you without even touching you.

Sauropods are kaiju, plain and simple.

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The babies were really cute though. This is Andrew, and he's a baby—the size of a horse.

If you want to know just how tiny they began, this is probably a good reference.

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Yeah, the largest animals ever to walk the earth started out life at about the size of a dachshund. Eat your greens everyone.

[Source (edited for spelling, grammar, and content0}

Not For Everyone

I know this is easily one of the most arcane, niche memes I've posted and it won't be for everyone, but if you get it you literally have a special place in my heart.