DIY Organization Autonomous Space Agency Network Just Sent A Trump Protest 90,000 Feet In The Air. And

Saturn aurora, taken by Nasa Hubble.

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Artists impression of ‘Hot Jupiter’ exoplanets.

Credit: NASA, ESA, D Sing

Giant squids might be even bigger than we realized

According to research from Charles Paxton, fisheries ecologist and statistician at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews, published in the Journal of Zoology this month, the giant squid could grow to reach as much as 65 feet. But even that is a “conservative analysis,” as size could protect against their #1 predator.

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The Shepard-Risset Glissando

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower. It has been described as a “sonic barber’s pole”. 

Jean-Claude Risset subsequently created a version of the scale where the tones glide continuously, and it is appropriately called the continuous Risset scale or Shepard–Risset glissando. When done correctly, the tone appears to rise (or descend) continuously in pitch, yet return to its starting note. Basically, it’s a continuously descending tone that never gets any lower. It’s the acoustical version of M.C. Escher’s Penrose Stairs optical illusion. Source.

Doesn’t it sound a little bit creepy?

Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing women’s achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.

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http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150712

Today is a remarkably profound day in American history, and an even more profound day for humankind.

After years of delays for perfection, SpaceX has successfully launched its FALCON HEAVY rocket, defying the force of gravity, and make its way onto an elliptical heliocentric orbit near Mars. The payload - Elon Musk’s personal midnight cherry red Tesla Roaster, with a dummy named Starman wearing a SpaceX space suit in the driver seat, playing David Bowie’s Space Oddity on repeat, with “Don’t Panic” (Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy reference) on the screen. This car is set to orbit for the next billion years, or upon destruction. This car has potential to outlive the Earth.

Now, this launch is utterly profound for too many reasons to list (although I’ll try). First and foremost, this finally begin the tangible reality of the ultimate goal of SpaceX - to make humans an interplanetary species. This rocket has the capability to take humans, to and from Mars. And although this will not be the rocket that does it, it has shown it is possible. Today marked the first move for humans going to Mars from a paper idea, to a pragmatic reality.

Furthermore, SpaceX, as a private company has entirely reconfigured space travel by its stupid-simple innovations. To simply, basically, space travel is expensive. Really expensive. Part of this reason was because the first stage and second stage (the most expensive parts of the rocket) would crash down into the ocean after use, rendering it useless. Essentially, this is like getting a new McLaren F1, to drive from NY to Boston, just to throw it away once finished. Obviously, this is extremely economicaly inefficient. However, no agency has actively sought to fix this problem because it was viewed as incorrectable, and because space travel has been dominanted by government agencies.. and as we know, government agencies spend frivolously and often don’t care about price.

What SpaceX has done to correct this giant problem was devise away to have the first stage booster descend back to Earth, and slowly and surely drop on a pad either on land or on a tracked floating device in the ocean (to understand how preposterous this is, try to imagine a 25 story building, falling from space, landing on a autonomous pad in the ocean that’s the size of a football field). This was LONG declared as impossible by numerous scientists and physicists, but despite the odds, a private company has not only managed to do this, but do successfully over 15 straight times. This was viewed IMPOSSIBLE in early 2016. Today, we viewed two boosters simultaneously land with the Falcon Heavy launch - AND these two boosters that were used today were previously recovered ones from past Falcon 9 missions. For record of how much cheaper this has made space travel:

Nasa Space Shuttle Launch - cost around 500 million

SpaceX Falcon 9 launch - cost around 50 million

The other reason why SpaceX has managed to make space travel 450 MILLION dollars cheaper is because of how it make its products. EVERYTHING IN SPACEX (and Tesla, btw) IS MADE IN HOUSE. Everything. Everything made on American soil, by American workers, IN FUCKING HOUSE. It is of course immensely difficult to build a fucking rocket from scratch, but SpaceX has perfected it. Instead of buying a computer from this company (who has to mark up to get a profit) who gets their mother board from this company (who has to mark up to get a profit) who gets their chips from this company (who has to mark up to get a profit) - everything is made IN house. As a quick example on how expensive mark up prices become after running through a few companies - A mass amount RADIOS for Tesla through a company would normally cost around 100,000 dollars, but when Musk’s team learned how to perfect it for cheaper, they brought thay price way down to 5, 000 dollars. This in house economic principle has made space travel FAR more plausible for the public then we ever could have imagined. And as SpaceX gets better, prices will continue to plummet.

After many stagnant years, there has been little to any innovation in the improvment of space travel. Since 1969 and the Apollo mission to the moon, there has been little for the public to cheer on, with regards to NASA and American space travel. However, SpaceX has given our generation a voice. It has given our generation a profound meaning. Many of us will witness the day when humans set foot on Mars, and many will witness the moment when humans first begin to colonize the red planet. Our generation has something unbelievable to stand behind - not only as a very proud nation, but as a world united. Curiosity and knowledge connects people all over the world, and traveling the cosmos and becoming an interplanetary species will have a uniting effect far greater than any of us can imagine. We are living in a very special time. Days like today will always be remember in American history, demonstrating the amazing capability of determined humans, when curiosity strikes. Lastly, it is also a reminder that many creations today were once rendered as impossible - having a Tesla flying throughout the solar system launched by the most powerful rocket currently in the world is a giant middle finger for all the thousands who have sworn that both Tesla and SpaceX would never ever be able to make it. Both began as startups with a small team of determined workers, both became near bankrupt in 2009, and today, we witness a cherry red Tesla heading into space playing David Bowie to visit the red planet. If that’s not motivating, I don’t know what is.

Stepping on Lava

GIF made by Sixpenceee. Original video via YouTube.

Andromeda Galaxy from Earth:

Newest LIGO Signal Raises A Huge Question: Do Merging Black Holes Emit Light?

“The second merger held no such hints of electromagnetic signals, but that was less surprising: the black holes were of significantly lower mass, so any signal arising from them would be expected to be correspondingly lower in magnitude. But the third merger was large in mass again, more comparable to the first than the second. While Fermi has made no announcement, and Integral again reports a non-detection, there are two pieces of evidence that suggest there may have been an electromagnetic counterpart after all. The AGILE satellite from the Italian Space Agency detected a weak, short-lived event that occurred just half a second before the LIGO merger, while X-ray, radio and optical observations combined to identify a strange afterglow less than 24 hours after the merger.”

Whenever there’s a catastrophic, cataclysmic event in space, there’s almost always a tremendous release of energy that accompanies it. A supernova emits light; a neutron star merger emits gamma rays; a quasar emits radio waves; merging black holes emit gravitational waves. But if there’s any sort of matter present outside the event horizons of these black holes, they have the potential to emit electromagnetic radiation, or light signals, too. Our best models and simulations don’t predict much, but sometimes the Universe surprises us! With the third LIGO merger, there were two independent teams that claimed an electromagnetic counterpart within 24 hours of the gravitational wave signal. One was an afterglow in gamma rays and the optical, occurring about 19 hours after-the-fact, while the other was an X-ray burst occurring just half a second before the merger.

Could either of these be connected to these merging black holes? Or are we just grasping at straws here? We need more, better data to know for sure, but here’s what we’ve got so far!

First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber

To scientists' delight, the incredible appendage from 99 million years ago is covered in feathers.

The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

A micro-CT scan of the delicate feathers that cover the dinosaur tail. Image: Lida Xing. 

While individual dinosaur-era feathers have been found in amber, and evidence for feathered dinosaurs is captured in fossil impressions, this is the first time that scientists are able to clearly associate well-preserved feathers with a dinosaur, and in turn gain a better understanding of the evolution and structure of dinosaur feathers.

We clearly need a new Jurassic Park movie featuring cute feathery dinosaurs.

A reconstruction of a small coelurosaur Credit: Chung-tat Cheung