The slice of 'Verse belonging to a certain Connor from Long Island. He's a SUNY Geneseo student, a writer, and a fan of: every geeky pursuit under the sun, beautiful works, science, politics, and other assorted oddities. Please enjoy this space where ideas and dreams converge. Welcome to the Fuckin' Multiverse. timelines are active.
blua:
What the city is missing: Thierry Cohen photographs cityscapes and then photographs deserts at night, combing the two to show us what our cities would look like with the lights off. The stars are not enhanced, they are actual photos from relative latitudes that would expose the same starry sky view if it weren’t for light pollution. Click on each photo to see which city it is.
Light pollution and pollution in general
The combination of Titan’s low gravity and thick atmosphere would allow a human to fly by strapping “fake wings” to their arms.
The second-largest moon in the solar system, Saturn’s Titan is the only moon with a substantial atmosphere, which is much deeper than Earth’s. It’s so thick and the gravity so weak, in fact, that you could strap wings on your arms and flap them like a bird to fly. The air is mostly nitrogen, but the rest is mostly hydrocarbons, giving Titan’s atmosphere a thick orange smoggy haze that is opaque to visible light. Cassini studies Titan in infrared light (which can penetrate the haze) and with radar — and in 2004, via the Huygens Probe, an atmosphere probe became the first spacecraft to transmit from the surface of a moon other than our own. Titan is remarkably earthlike, apart from being so cold that water is as hard as rock; in addition to the atmosphere, it is the only place other than Earth known to have bodies of liquid on the surface — lakes as large as the Great Lakes, except that it’s not water: it’s probably methane or ethane. The climate is probably similar to some of our deserts, with gigantic monsoons perhaps once a decade or more, and long droughts between. NASA scientists are working on a mission called Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) specifically to study the lakes of Titan.
Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/ It’s Raining on Titan! Illustration Credit & Copyright: David A. Hardy (AstroArt)
(Source: i-dig-rock-n-roll-music)
Sam Cook - “God in Code”
“In this country, the poet Christ is primarily worshiped by those who wish him white… who call his murder a miracle and then oppress in his name.”
A first reading from the Saint Paul Soap Boxing Grand Slam.
Google and NASA Launch Quantum Computing AI Lab
Quantum computing took a giant leap forward on the world stage today as NASA and Google, in partnership with a consortium of universities, launched an initiative to investigate how the technology might lead to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
The new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab will employ what may be the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave Two, which a recent study confirmed was much faster than conventional machines at defeating specific problems. The machine will be installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and is expected to be available for government, industrial, and university research later this year.
Google believes quantum computing might help it improve its web search and speech recognition technology. University researchers might use it to devise better models of disease and climate, among many other possibilities. As for NASA, “computers play a much bigger role within NASA missions than most people realize,” says quantum computing expert Colin Williams, director of business development and strategic partnerships at D-Wave.
So the last episode of Doctor Who pretty much broke me.
*puts on helmet* No Homestuck, No Who, No GoT…. this is gonna be a long summer.
