What Are These “shower Thoughts” Everybody’s Talking About, I Dont Think About Anything In The

them: what languages do you know?

me: visual basic, python and a bit of java

them:

me:

them:

me: ...oh you meant like speaking?

Why Bennu? 10 Reasons

After traveling for two years and billions of kilometers from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx probe is only a few months away from its destination: the intriguing asteroid Bennu. When it arrives in December, OSIRIS-REx will embark on a nearly two-year investigation of this clump of rock, mapping its terrain and finding a safe and fruitful site from which to collect a sample.

The spacecraft will briefly touch Bennu’s surface around July 2020 to collect at least 60 grams (equal to about 30 sugar packets) of dirt and rocks. It might collect as much as 2,000 grams, which would be the largest sample by far gathered from a space object since the Apollo Moon landings. The spacecraft will then pack the sample into a capsule and travel back to Earth, dropping the capsule into Utah’s west desert in 2023, where scientists will be waiting to collect it.

This years-long quest for knowledge thrusts Bennu into the center of one of the most ambitious space missions ever attempted. But the humble rock is but one of about 780,000 known asteroids in our solar system. So why did scientists pick Bennu for this momentous investigation? Here are 10 reasons:

1. It’s close to Earth

Unlike most other asteroids that circle the Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Bennu’s orbit is close in proximity to Earth’s, even crossing it. The asteroid makes its closest approach to Earth every 6 years. It also circles the Sun nearly in the same plane as Earth, which made it somewhat easier to achieve the high-energy task of launching the spacecraft out of Earth’s plane and into Bennu’s. Still, the launch required considerable power, so OSIRIS-REx used Earth’s gravity to boost itself into Bennu’s orbital plane when it passed our planet in September 2017.

2. It’s the right size

Asteroids spin on their axes just like Earth does. Small ones, with diameters of 200 meters or less, often spin very fast, up to a few revolutions per minute. This rapid spinning makes it difficult for a spacecraft to match an asteroid’s velocity in order to touch down and collect samples. Even worse, the quick spinning has flung loose rocks and soil, material known as “regolith” — the stuff OSIRIS-REx is looking to collect — off the surfaces of small asteroids. Bennu’s size, in contrast, makes it approachable and rich in regolith. It has a diameter of 492 meters, which is a bit larger than the height of the Empire State Building in New York City, and rotating once every 4.3 hours.

3. It’s really old

Bennu is a leftover fragment from the tumultuous formation of the solar system. Some of the mineral fragments inside Bennu could be older than the solar system. These microscopic grains of dust could be the same ones that spewed from dying stars and eventually coalesced to make the Sun and its planets nearly 4.6 billion years ago. But pieces of asteroids, called meteorites, have been falling to Earth’s surface since the planet formed. So why don’t scientists just study those old space rocks? Because astronomers can’t tell (with very few exceptions) what kind of objects these meteorites came from, which is important context. Furthermore, these stones, that survive the violent, fiery decent to our planet’s surface, get contaminated when they land in the dirt, sand, or snow. Some even get hammered by the elements, like rain and snow, for hundreds or thousands of years. Such events change the chemistry of meteorites, obscuring their ancient records.

4. It’s well preserved

Bennu, on the other hand, is a time capsule from the early solar system, having been preserved in the vacuum of space. Although scientists think it broke off a larger asteroid in the asteroid belt in a catastrophic collision between about 1 and 2 billion years ago, and hurtled through space until it got locked into an orbit near Earth’s, they don’t expect that these events significantly altered it.

5. It might contain clues to the origin of life

Analyzing a sample from Bennu will help planetary scientists better understand the role asteroids may have played in delivering life-forming compounds to Earth. We know from having studied Bennu through Earth- and space-based telescopes that it is a carbonaceous, or carbon-rich, asteroid. Carbon is the hinge upon which organic molecules hang. Bennu is likely rich in organic molecules, which are made of chains of carbon bonded with atoms of oxygen, hydrogen, and other elements in a chemical recipe that makes all known living things. Besides carbon, Bennu also might have another component important to life: water, which is trapped in the minerals that make up the asteroid.

6. It contains valuable materials

Besides teaching us about our cosmic past, exploring Bennu close-up will help humans plan for the future. Asteroids are rich in natural resources, such as iron and aluminum, and precious metals, such as platinum. For this reason, some companies, and even countries, are building technologies that will one day allow us to extract those materials. More importantly, asteroids like Bennu are key to future, deep-space travel. If humans can learn how to extract the abundant hydrogen and oxygen from the water locked up in an asteroid’s minerals, they could make rocket fuel. Thus, asteroids could one day serve as fuel stations for robotic or human missions to Mars and beyond. Learning how to maneuver around an object like Bennu, and about its chemical and physical properties, will help future prospectors.

7. It will help us better understand other asteroids

Astronomers have studied Bennu from Earth since it was discovered in 1999. As a result, they think they know a lot about the asteroid’s physical and chemical properties. Their knowledge is based not only on looking at the asteroid, but also studying meteorites found on Earth, and filling in gaps in observable knowledge with predictions derived from theoretical models. Thanks to the detailed information that will be gleaned from OSIRIS-REx, scientists now will be able to check whether their predictions about Bennu are correct. This work will help verify or refine telescopic observations and models that attempt to reveal the nature of other asteroids in our solar system.

8. It will help us better understand a quirky solar force …

Astronomers have calculated that Bennu’s orbit has drifted about 280 meters (0.18 miles) per year toward the Sun since it was discovered. This could be because of a phenomenon called the Yarkovsky effect, a process whereby sunlight warms one side of a small, dark asteroid and then radiates as heat off the asteroid as it rotates. The heat energy thrusts an asteroid either away from the Sun, if it has a prograde spin like Earth, which means it spins in the same direction as its orbit, or toward the Sun in the case of Bennu, which spins in the opposite direction of its orbit. OSIRIS-REx will measure the Yarkovsky effect from close-up to help scientists predict the movement of Bennu and other asteroids. Already, measurements of how this force impacted Bennu over time have revealed that it likely pushed it to our corner of the solar system from the asteroid belt.

9. … and to keep asteroids at bay

One reason scientists are eager to predict the directions asteroids are drifting is to know when they’re coming too-close-for-comfort to Earth. By taking the Yarkovsky effect into account, they’ve estimated that Bennu could pass closer to Earth than the Moon is in 2135, and possibly even closer between 2175 and 2195. Although Bennu is unlikely to hit Earth at that time, our descendants can use the data from OSIRIS-REx to determine how best to deflect any threatening asteroids that are found, perhaps even by using the Yarkovsky effect to their advantage.

10. It’s a gift that will keep on giving

Samples of Bennu will return to Earth on September 24, 2023. OSIRIS-REx scientists will study a quarter of the regolith. The rest will be made available to scientists around the globe, and also saved for those not yet born, using techniques not yet invented, to answer questions not yet asked.

Read the web version of this week’s “Solar System: 10 Things to Know” article HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Hi, do you know any resources to start learning coding, preferably for free? Ty!!

Hiya!  ✨ Yeah, I’ll see what I can find! However! Online courses often have a build in a code editor. Don’t. Honestly, do not. Get a full software and install it, don’t be restricted to just an online code editor, even on a basic level. First of all decide what language you want to start learning. For complete beginners, I’d recommend Python or C. 

💡  codeacademy (this I’ve tried myself and yep, it’s really well written and good for beginners; it doesn’t have many courses tho) 💡 programmr.com 💡 codeavengers💡 code.org💡 Bucky’s wonderful tutorials (these are amazing! I’ve only done the c++ ones, but they were really well explained and included stuff like installing a software as well!)

And now here are some “tools” to use while programming: 

🔌 stackoverflow - biggest platform there is; you can ask them anything, but it’s probably been asked before so try looking on it at first🔌 cppreference.com - has all the information about c++ built in libraries, functions, variables and anything you’ll possibly need 🔌 python visualizer - helps you visualize code if you don’t have a compiler on your laptop - they also have other languages🔌 learnpython 🔌 python tutorial🔌 game development with pygame - do something FUN! It’s not that hard, just try it That’s about it! Hope this helps! x 

Too beautiful not to reblog

Study Aesthetic || Ravenclaw x SLYTHERIN VERSION x

Edwin Jarvis: Peggy no!

Peggy: Peggy yes!

Almost every guy ever: PEGGY NO

Peggy: Screw you! PeGGY YES!!

Steve Rogers: Peggy Yes!!!!!

Peggy: PEG-

Peggy: oh.

Peggy: Ooh I like him

When (Neutron) Stars Collide : This illustration shows the hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from neutron stars just before they collided. (via NASA)

*curtsies* So, I really, REALLY don't want to offend anyone, Duke, but a question has been bothering me for a really long time and I was afraid to ask it because I didn't want to piss off anyone and since you're really eloquent and knowledgeable, I thought I'd ask you. So here it goes: you always say that arts and sciences are equally important, but how can analysing Chaucer or ecopoetics or anything similar compare to biomedicine or engineering in improving human lives? I'm genuinely curious!

*Curtsies* All right. Let me tell you a story: 

When I lived in London, I shared a flat with a guy who was 26 years old, getting his PhD in theoretical physics. Let’s call him Ron. Ron could not for the life of him figure out why I was wasting my time with an MA in Shakespeare studies or why my chosen method of providing for myself was writing fiction. Furthermore, it was utterly beyond him why I should take offense to someone whose field literally has the word “theoretical” in the title ridiculing the practical inefficacy of art. My pointing out that he spent his free time listening to music, watching television, and sketching famous sculptures in his notebook somehow didn’t convince him that art is a necessary part of a healthy human existence. 

Three other things that happened with Ron: 

I came home late one night and he asked where I’d been. When I told him I’d been at a friend’s flat for a Hanukkah celebration, he said, “What’s Hanukkah?” I thought he was joking. He was not.

A few weeks later, I came downstairs holding a book. He asked what I was reading and when I said, “John Keats,” he (and the three other science grad students in the room) did not know who that was. This would be like me not knowing who Thomas Edison is.

One night we got into an argument about the issue of gay marriage, and at one point he actually said, “It doesn’t affect me so I don’t see why I should care about it.”

Now: If Ron had ever read Number the Stars, or heard Ode to a Nightingale, or been to a performance of The Laramie Project, do you think he ever would have asked any of these questions? 

Obviously this is an extreme example. This guy was amazingly ignorant, but he was also the walking embodiment of the questions you’re asking. What does art matter compared with something like science, that saves people’s lives? Here’s the thing: There’s a flaw in the question, because art saves lives, too. Maybe not in the same “Eureka, we’ve cured cancer!” kind of way, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Sometimes the impact of art is relatively small, even invisible to the naked eye. For example: as a young teenager I was (no exaggeration) suicidally unhappy. Learning to write is what kept me (literally and figuratively) off the ledge. But I was one nameless teenager; in the greater scheme of things, who cares? Fair enough. Let’s talk big picture. Let’s talk about George Orwell. George Orwell wrote books, the two most famous of which are Animal Farm and 1984. You probably read at least one of those in high school. Why do these books matter? Because they’re cautionary tales about limiting the power of oppressive governments, and their influence is so pervasive that the term “Big Brother,” which refers to the omniscient government agency which watches its citizens’ every move in 1984, has become common parlance to refer to any abuse of power and invasion of privacy by a governmental body. Another interesting fact, and the reason I chose this example: sales of 1984 fucking skyrocketed in 2017, Donald Trump’s first year in office. Why? Well, people are terrified. People are re-reading that cautionary tale, looking for the warning signs. 

Art, as Shakespeare taught us, “holds a mirror up to nature.” Art is a form of self-examination. Art forces us to confront our own mortality. (Consider Hamlet. Consider Dylan Thomas.) Art forces us to confront inequality. (Consider Oliver Twist. Consider Audre Lorde. Consider A Raisin in the Sun. Consider Greta Gerwig getting snubbed at the Golden Globes.) Art forces us to confront our own power structures. (Consider Fahrenheit 451. Consider “We Shall Overcome.” Consider All the President’s Men. Consider “Cat Person.”) Art reminds us of our own history, and keeps us from repeating the same tragic mistakes. (Consider The Things They Carried. Consider Schindler’s List. Consider Hamilton.) Art forces us to make sense of ourselves. (Consider Fun House. Consider Growing Up Absurd.) Art forces us to stop and ask not just whether we can do something but whether we should. (Consider Brave New World. Consider Cat’s Cradle.) You’re curious about ecopoetics? The whole point is to call attention to human impact on the environment. Some of our scientific advances are poisoning our planet, and the ecopoetics of people like the Beats and the popular musicians of the 20th century led to greater environmental awareness and the first Earth Day in 1970 . Art inspires change–political, social, environmental, you name it. Moreover, art encourages empathy. Without books and movies and music, we would all be stumbling around like Ron, completely ignorant of every other culture, every social, political, or historical experience except our own. Since we have such faith in science: science has proved that art makes us better people. Science has proved that people who read fiction not only improve their own mental health but become proportionally more empathetic. (Really. I wrote an article about this when I was working for a health and wellness magazine in 2012.) If you want a more specific example: science has proved that kids who read Harry Potter growing up are less bigoted. (Here’s an article from Scientific American, so you don’t have to take my word for it.) That is a big fucking deal. Increased empathy can make a life-or-death difference for marginalized people.

But the Defense of Arts and Humanities is about more than empirical data, precisely because you can’t quantify it, unlike a scientific experiment. Art is–in my opinion–literally what makes life worth living. What the fuck is the point of being healthier and living longer and doing all those wonderful things science enables us to do if we don’t have Michelangelo’s David or Rimbaud’s poetry or the Taj Mahal or Cirque de Soleil or fucking Jimi Hendrix playing “All Along the Watchtower” to remind us how fucking amazing it is to be alive and to be human despite all the terrible shit in this world? Art doesn’t just “improve human lives.” Art makes human life bearable.

I hope this answers your question. 

To it I would like to add: Please remember that just because you don’t see the value in something doesn’t mean it is not valuable. Please remember that the importance of science does not negate or diminish the importance of the arts, despite what every Republican politician would like you to believe. And above all, please remember that artists are every bit as serious about what they do as astronomers and mathematicians and doctors, and what they do is every bit as vital to humanity, if in a different way. Belittling their work by questioning its importance, or relegating it to a category of lesser endeavors because it isn’t going to cure a disease, or even just making jokes about how poor they’re going to be when they graduate is insensitive, ignorant, humiliating, and, yes,  offensive. And believe me: they’ve heard it before. They don’t need to hear it again. We know exactly how frivolous and childish and idealistic and unimportant everyone thinks we are. Working in the arts is a constant battle against the prevailing idea that what you do is useless. But it’s bad enough that the government is doing its best to sacrifice all arts and humanities on the altar of STEM–we don’t need to be reminded on a regular basis that ordinary people think our work is a waste of time and money, too. 

Artists are exhausted. They’re sick and tired of being made to justify their work and prove the validity of what they do. Nobody else in the world is made to do that the way artists are. That’s why these questions upset them. That’s why it exasperates me. I have to answer some version of this question every goddamn day, and I am so, so tired. But I’ve taken the effort to answer it here, again, in the hopes that maybe a couple fewer people will ask it in the future. But even if you’re not convinced by everything I’ve just said, please try to find some of that empathy, and just keep it to yourself. 

The MBTI types in the Morning

INFJ: Woke up first and is sitting on the couch, sipping coffee/tea

ENFJ: Is making pancakes for everyone 

INFP: *has been awake since 6 am* la la la, oh good morning Songbird *the singing begins*

ENFP: Just kind of *flops* out of bed

ISFJ: Has 47 alarms set just in case, but they always wake up to the first

ESFJ: Sends “good morning” texts to all their friends

ISFP:  *suddenly jerks awake* I SMELL PANCAKES

ESFP: Chucks alarm clock out the window as soon as it goes off

INTJ: *hears INFP and their bird chorus* WhAtEVER is MaKINg ThOse awFUL NOISES will DIE

ENTJ: Has already started their morning “get ready” routine

ISTP: Is running late and rushed out the door with messy hair and something caffeinated in hand

ESTP: Decides to wake everyone else up with an air horn

ISTJ:  Got up at 5am to do that one important thing they had to do

ESTJ: Already has their day, and everyone else’s day planned 

INTP: Is 500% dead inside

ENTP: *hasn’t slept yet* What do you mean its morning already?!?