27. Astrophysicist, writer, artist. Michigan. Business inquiries: kaijunobiz@gmail.com
It has been over 50 years since we left Earth. We are now almost 14 trillion miles away from home. Out here, where the stars are distant, and faint, is a place no one has ever seen before. The Alpha Centauri system, with its seven planets, the farthest worlds to ever be explored by humankind.
Half a century ago, we left our home in search of another. We had left our planet in waste and ruin. A dark chapter in human history, where we threw away our home. Our only home. We poisoned ourselves, and we drove ourselves to the brink of extinction, over money and resources and power. While some accepted the fate of the human race, a bright young generation of scientists, with the stars in their eyes and the universe in their hearts, led us down the only path we have left. To leave our home. To fight for our right to exist.
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
From an unpublished story of mine by the same name. The basic concept was the story of a generation of kids born on a starship, they never saw Earth, and they won’t live long enough to see their destination. It’s the story of them struggling to find meaning and a purpose. Listen here.
Earth is not the only planet in our solar system with auroras. As the solar wind—a stream of rarefied plasma from our sun—blows through the solar system, it interacts with the magnetic fields of other planets as well as our own. Saturn’s magnetic field second only to Jupiter’s in strength. This strong magnetosphere deflects many of the solar wind’s energetic particles, but, as on Earth, some of the particles get drawn in along Saturn’s magnetic field lines. These lines converge at the poles, where the high-energy particles interact with the gases in the upper reaches of Saturn’s atmosphere. As a result, Saturn, like Earth, has impressive and colorful light displays around its poles. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser & L. Calçada, source video; via spaceplasma)
Here’s the orbital period of our solar system’s 8 major planets (how long it takes each to travel around the sun). Their size is to scale and their speed is accurate relative to Earth’s. The repetition of each GIF is proportional to their orbital period. Mercury takes less than 3 months to zoom around Sol, Neptune takes nearly 165 years.
fuck this gifset do you know how long i sat here waiting for fucking neptune to drag its lazy ass into the frame
dirtbagdefender asked:
Hnaounqihvguqvhqn
Anonymous asked:
Just look at maps of other planets that don’t have any space in them? Or maybe read texts that don’t have many pictures? Gosh I don’t really know, I don’t know a lot about kenophobia or what all would trigger it
Planet 55 Cancri e is basically a giant diamond. like the planet is a diamond. and it would be worth $26.9 nonillion
Planet Gliese 436 b is an ice planet that is constantly on fire do to its close proximity to its parent star. the ice doesn’t melt bc the planet’s gravity is so strong it physically prevents the ice from melting
Planet HD 189733b rains sideways glass…. constantly
Planet J1407-B has planetary rings that are 200x the size of saturn. if saturn’s ring were as big as J1407-B’s we’d be able to see them with our naked eye from earth AND they would dominate our sky and look larger than a full moon
Planet Wasp-12b rotates so close to its parent star that its slowly being consumed by the it
Planet Gliese 581c is one of the candidates for a planet that can support life however it orbits a tiny dwarf star and is tidally locked so one side is constantly subject to immense sunlight while the other is constantly in darkness. there’s a small area of the planet however, that is just the right temp to support life. u just can’t step out of said area. the skies are red and the plants would have be a black color instead of a green bc they would use infrared light for photosynthesis. (a message was actually sent to the planet in 2008 in hopes that there’s life on the planet but the message wont reach the planet until 2029).
Planet GJ 1214b is a water planet nicknamed “water world” is has no land at all and the water is so deep it goes down miles all the way to the planet’s core.
Planet Wasp-17b is the largest planet discovered thus far. its so large its existence contradicts our understanding of how planets are formed. and it has a retrograde orbit, so it orbits in the opposite direction of its parent star.
Planet HD 188753 has 3 suns you should have triple shadows and there would be almost daily eclipses. and no matter which direction u face on the planet u would always see a sunset
Planet HD106906b is the loneliest planet discovered thus far. its known as “super jupiter” bc its 11x bigger than jupiter. it orbits its parent star at a distance of 60 billion miles (which is v strange) hence why its the loneliest planet.
Planet Tres 2b is the darkest planet known. it reflects less than 1% of light (it reflects less light than coal and black acrylic paint). the tiny part of the planet that does reflect light is red making the planet glow a dim red.
This is SO cool
OH MY GOD
So I needed audio files of the 8 planets and Pluto for science reasons. Most of the planets emit flat, base-y, earth tone type sounds. Some have clicking sounds, but not out of the ordinary. Then… Then I get to the Saturn file. The noise Saturn makes can best be described as the distant screams of souls burning in hell. I’m serious. I’ve concluded that somewhere in the gaseous fogs of saturn is where Hell resides.
Exoplanets, all that we have verified. And if you don’t feel like clicking on the link and viewing the mouse-over text, a little extrapolation says that just the likely planets in our one galaxy would require a chart three to four orders of magnitude larger. So yeah, there’s a lot of planets out there.
Let’s ensure we have the best tools to study them, shall we?
(via xkcd)
ok but have you ever thought about how cool space dragons would be????
Dragons with wings made of starlight
Dragons nesting in nebulae
Dragons that claim entire planets as part of their hoards
Dragons that breathe stars/plasma
Dragons so big that they distort the very fabric of space and time
SPACE DRAGONS
