Weird cool SCIENCE! Stuff : The Return

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Mendalla

Happy headbanging ape!!
Pronouns
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Lots of science going on in the world and not just people studying or creating vaccines for our favorite virus.

So, it's time to start celebrating science again, and looking at how it unveils all the wonders, beauty, and weirdness of the world.

Tonight, from PBS Eons, a terrific Youtube show about prehistory and the evolution of life, we learn that walruses have not always had tusks. In fact, that tusks aren't even essential to defining what is a walrus (there's other internal structures that are more important). And that the familiar arctic beasts we know today are the last remnant of a very diverse family of creatures dating back several million years. Making it all the more important that we make an effort to keep them around. While us humans are not to blame for the loss of the other genera of their family (which became extinct well before we became an issue), we are certainly not making it easy for this last one.

 
Keep a look out for Comet NEOWISE!


I saw a couple good pictures of it today on Twitter. I remember spending a memorable bus ride from Hamilton to London gazing out the windows at Comet Hale-Bopp (I think that was the one, wiki says it was 1997 which is about right). Lovely sight.
 
This looks like too much fun


Also, our cousins are pretty smart.


Plus there is an actual physical image that will screw up your vision just by looking at it for a certain period of time that can last for up to a few months!!! That makes me wonder what other things in reality might be like that? Any aural or other sensorial things? Spiritual?


#MutualAid
#BeNotAfraid
#SystemicWhimsey
#JoyPride
 
I saw a couple good pictures of it today on Twitter. I remember spending a memorable bus ride from Hamilton to London gazing out the windows at Comet Hale-Bopp (I think that was the one, wiki says it was 1997 which is about right). Lovely sight.
My understanding is that it won't be as bright as Hale-Bopp but I'm going to make the effort to check it out from a country view.
 
One of the coolest things about the history of life on Earth is how certain features recur in various species that are not directly related to each other. The first example Hank Green gives in the video below is wings, which have appeared many times, in birds, bats, insects, pterosaurs, and so on. This is known as convergent evolution. Here, Hank gives five examples. In a couple cases, we have an extinct creature that is a dead ringer for an existing one, but is actually only distantly related and certainly not in the modern creature's direct lineage.

 
Congratulations to the United Arab Emirates for sending their 1st Ambassador to the Martian Embassy

She is called Hope



Beat me to it. Very aggressive move by UAE, going from basically no space program to a Mars mission in one leap. Japan launched it for them but they did the rest of the work themselves as far as I know. And I love that name (it's "Amal" in Arabic by the way).
 
Beat me to it. Very aggressive move by UAE, going from basically no space program to a Mars mission in one leap. Japan launched it for them but they did the rest of the work themselves as far as I know. And I love that name (it's "Amal" in Arabic by the way).

My Arabic is a little rusty :(

#MutualAid
#BeNotAfraid
#SystemicWhimsey
#JoyPrivilege
 
Scott Manley has a good piece on Hope along with some discussion of why we are currently in a launch window for Mars missions and 2 more missions planning to launch in this window. After this summer, the next Mars window isn't until 2022.

 
Scott Manley has a good piece on Hope along with some discussion of why we are currently in a launch window for Mars missions and 2 more missions planning to launch in this window. After this summer, the next Mars window isn't until 2022.


And the last of the three Mars missions scheduled to launch in this window has departed. Perseverance, NASA's latest Mars probe, launched just before 8 this morning (I watched the launch). In between Hope and Perseverance was Tianwen-1 from China on July 23, an ambitious craft that combines an orbiter, lander, and rover, similar to their moon missions.
 
And the last of the three Mars missions scheduled to launch in this window has departed. Perseverance, NASA's latest Mars probe, launched just before 8 this morning (I watched the launch). In between Hope and Perseverance was Tianwen-1 from China on July 23, an ambitious craft that combines an orbiter, lander, and rover, similar to their moon missions.
Fascinating stuff.....I was reading that Mars is the only other planet besides earth, in our system that is "occupied"......but it's with robots.
 
Fascinating stuff.....I was reading that Mars is the only other planet besides earth, in our system that is "occupied"......but it's with robots.

Well, if there's more than just our 'bots, Perseverance might find out. That's one of the things it is looking for. I'm hoping for Marvin the Martian myself, though he'll be getting a bit pissed with all the hardware arriving more or less at once. :LOL:
 
At first when I heard about all the Mars missions I thought it was because they knew something that we didnt....eg a comet on collision course with earth....then Neowise showed up. Is the pandemic a diversion? Hmmm must write that story....anyway if anyone hasnt seen Neowise yet, its still not too late .
 
At first when I heard about all the Mars missions I thought it was because they knew something that we didnt....eg a comet on collision course with earth....then Neowise showed up. Is the pandemic a diversion? Hmmm must write that story....anyway if anyone hasnt seen Neowise yet, its still not too late .

Nope. Nothing so dramatic. Just the right launch window. It will happen again in two years when the next Mars launch window opens. ESA already has a launch planned for that one (a probe that wasn't ready in time for this one).
 
Nope. Nothing so dramatic. Just the right launch window. It will happen again in two years when the next Mars launch window opens. ESA already has a launch planned for that one (a probe that wasn't ready in time for this one).
Yes the Russians have to wait now.
 
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