starry-shores

Latest Posts by starry-shores

It makes me sad how no one ever seems to mention how wild the crocodilian-line archosaurs were. Dinosaurs get all the attention when there was equally crazy shit happening on the other branch of the archosaur tree.

There was a whole linage of bipedal crocodylomorphs during the Triassic that were basically identical to theropod dinosaurs, so much so that a lot of them were initially classified as dinosaurs!

Just fucking look at them!

And these weren’t just little lizard guys, there were some big lads running around.

Not to mention the long-legged ones that galloped around on all fours like some kind of terrifying reptilian dogs.

These crazy crocodiles aren’t just from the Triassic, either; there was a galloping, hoofed crocodilian that lived during the Eocene and likely hunted horses. (They were smaller and not quite as fast as modern horses, but still)

But don’t worry, they weren’t all meat-eaters! There were vegetarian and omnivore crocodylomorphs too! Just look at this guy!

He was an ankylosaur before ankylosaurs were cool (or even existed).

I found a really cool Youtube channel called History of the Earth that covers topics in the incredibly distant past. I'm talking billions of years ago. And learning how the Earth itself formed and where water came from and about the very first single-celled organisms is just like... woah. WOAH.

It's wild that billions of years ago there were just some bacteria hanging out in the ocean and now we have all this. It's really humbling and puts into perspective how precious our planet is. How precious life is.

from Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’

Here’s a great explanation of language usage in sci-fi literature for all those who cannot keep their nit-picking to themselves:

Kalgash is an alien world and it is not our intention to have you think that it is identical to Earth, even though we depict its people as speaking a language that you can understand, and using terms that are familiar to you. Those words should be understood as mere equivalents of alien terms-that is, a conventional set of equivalents of the same sort that a writer of novels uses when he has foreign characters speaking with each other in their own language but nevertheless transcribes their words in the language of the reader. So when the people of Kalgash speak of “miles,” or “hands,” or “cars,” or “computers,” they mean their own units of distance, their own grasping-organs, their own ground-transportation devices, their own information-processing machines, etc. The computers used on Kalgash are not necessarily compatible with the ones used in New York or London or Stockholm, and the “mile” that we use in this book is not necessarily the American unit of 5,280 feet. But it seemed simpler and more desirable to use these familiar terms in describing events on this wholly alien world than it would have been to invent a long series of wholly Kalgashian terms.

In other words, we could have told you that one of our characters paused to strap on his quonglishes before setting out on a walk of seven vorks along the main gleebish of his native znoob, and everything might have seemed ever so much more thoroughly alien. But it would also have been ever so much more difficult to make sense out of what we were saying, and that did not seem useful. The essence of this story doesn’t lie in the quantity of bizarre terms we might have invented; it lies, rather, in the reaction of a group of people somewhat like ourselves, living on a world that is somewhat like ours in all but one highly significant detail, as they react to a challenging situation that is completely different from anything the people of Earth have ever had to deal with. Under the circumstances, it seemed to us better to tell you that someone put on his hiking boots before setting out on a seven-mile walk than to clutter the book with quonglishes, vorks, and gleebishes.

If you prefer, you can imagine that the text reads “vorks” wherever it says “miles,” “gliizbiiz” wherever it says “hours,” and “sleshtraps” where it says “eyes.” Or you can make up your own terms. Vorks or miles, it will make no difference when the Stars come out.

-I.A.

-R.S.

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night comes out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836) | I. Isaac Asimov, in Nightfall, had a very different take.

My God, it’s full of stars

- Dave Bowman, 2001 a Space Odyssey

When you look up from a dark site on a clear moonless night, the sky appears full of stars, almost too many to count.

It turns out that, with the naked eye, one can see anywhere between 5000 to 10000 stars, depending on whom you ask and how they estimate this number and just half of that on a given night because the Earth gets in your way. Still a lot but really nothing when you consider there are billions - maybe hundreds of billions of stars in our Galaxy and trillions of galaxies in the Universe.

It’s a completely different matter when you use optical aid. A pair of 50 mm binoculars can pull in some hundreds of thousands of stars; a small - say 80 mm telescope - like mine-can “ see” millions.

And here is an example. This is the much loved deep southern object known familiarly as 47 Tucanae- Tuc 47 to friends- and it is what is known as a globular cluster.

It contains over a million stars - I am unable to determine what the latest estimate is- a couple of decades ago we used to say it contained half a million stars but that estimate has since been upped.

It’s the second largest of this type of cluster- there are around 150 of these distributed in a halo around our galaxy that we know of.

And quite spectacular in a telescope of any size. It cannot but bring to mind Dave Bowman’s famous exclamation in “2001 a Space Odyssey “

Imaged from my backyard last weekend; an image salvaged despite the usual trials and tribulations that beset the amateur astrophotographer including tangled cables and the camera slamming into the tripod leg and so on and so forth.

Given the long weather forecast it’s going to be slim pickings this summer so you take what you get

What would it be like to live on a planet within a globular cluster? In 1941 Issac Asimov wrote a great short story “ Nightfall “ imagining just that. Highly recommended if you have forgotten it

Sadly the Hubble Space Telescope looked for planets in Tuc 47… and found none. So we have no evidence that planets form within these globular clusters- thus far

https://flic.kr/p/2mGS9cC

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen. (x)

“Nightfall”, by Asimov and Silverberg

I haven’t picked a book apart in a while, so have some mildly-disjointed thoughts on Asimov & Silverberg’s 1989 novel, mostly focused on the somewhat-ropey astronomy, but looking at a few other things as well…

Keep reading

The night palatte 

Ctenophore

Ctenophora, Comb Jellies

Look at the bottom gif! The long tentacles are pushed out and parallel to each other while the jelly is motionless. This behavior is predatory, which means that the Marianas Trench Jelly is set in attack mode! 

Read more about the 2016 discovery of the Marianas Trench Jelly

So I just discovered that the famous depth chart of Lake Baikal, you know, this one

Is

Uh

Not the whole picture

So this is going to haunt me forever

Important science info guys.

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen. (x)

Nightfall

I feel my favorite Sci-Fi story of all times must be Isaac Asimov's 'Nightfall' (SPOILERS ahead btw) (the title in my language is even better, "And Darkness Shall Come").

To quickly summarize from memory, the story is set on a planet where people live in constant daylight because their homeworld is illuminated by one of six suns at all times. By the time of the narrative, they have reached an industrialized, roughly early 20th-century style civilization.

A prophecy speaks of a cycle where the planet will fall into complete darkness, and now scientists have discovered that it is not just a fairy tale - apparently, one day soon another planet is gonna block out all the suns for a period of about 12 hours.

Disturbingly, another part of the prophecy is confirmed as well - archaeologists discover that the planet's cities have been burned to the ground every time the darkness came, resetting civilization, and only returning to the old level of development after thousands of years.

The prophecy says that people will go mad in the darkness, when they look up to the sky and the stars appear.

Now, scientists and governments are alarmed, but not panicked. They look at their technolgical progress and understanding of the universe, and they are confident their civilization will not fall like the others. They know their people are literate, the current level of knowledge about the cosmos is widespread - including the theory that there might even be more than one solar system.

Electrical lights exist, but on this planet they only have niche applications in things like mining operations and bunker construction. Outfitting entire cities with them is not feasible on short notice, and also considered a waste of resources - 12 hours without sunlight should be perfectly survivable for an advanced and enlightened people.

There are experiments to simulate the effects of the darkness on the psyche. One scientists sits in a dark room with a few dozen holes in the ceiling, to simulate these fabled "stars", and declares it's manageable.

Then the big day arrives - or rather, ends.

The suns disappear, and darkness falls across the land.

And people look up, and they see this

And their civilization ends within 12 hours.

⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ  ⦕⁅⁅⁅ɔ

you have encountered a group of trilobites! reblog to help them on their journey

Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages

Dr. Carl Sagan chaired the committee that organized and produced the Voyager Space Probe’s golden record. Among the contents were Sounds of Earth, a selection of sound bytes including nature, civilization, and humanity, and Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages.

Every person who recorded for this project was given almost total freedom on what to say. They were explained the purpose of the project and asked to keep it brief. These are the genuine responses of each person sending a message to extraterrestrial life somewhere in the stars.

oh my god. apparently during the making of the Voyager golden record they had to fly the recorder by commercial airlines to add some material onto the record last minute and they booked a seat for it under the name of Mr. Equipment

on stories, leaving a mark, and wanting to be remembered

1. Jack Rackham in Black Sails s04e10 2. John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. 3. Carl Sagan on Voyager’s Golden Record 4. Ada Limón, During the Impossible Age of Everyone. 5. Paleolithic handprints in Cueva de las Manos, Argentina 6. Sappho, If Not, Winter (translated by Anne Carson)

Voyager: The Golden Record

It’s the 1970s, and we’re about to send two spacecraft (Voyager 1 & 2) into space. These two spacecraft will eventually leave our solar system and become the most distant man-made objects…ever. How can we leave our mark on them in the case that other spacefarers find them in the distant future?

The Golden Record.

We placed an ambitious message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.

The Golden Record Cover

The outward facing cover of the golden record carries instructions in case it is ever found. Detailing to its discoverers how to decipher its meaning.

In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. The stylus is in the correct position to play the record from the beginning. Written around it in binary arithmetic is the correct time of one rotation of the record. The drawing indicates that the record should be played from the outside in.

The information in the upper right-hand portion of the cover is designed to show how the pictures contained on the record are to be constructed from the recorded signals. The top drawing shows the typical signal that occurs at the start of the picture. The picture is made from this signal, which traces the picture as a series of vertical lines, similar to ordinary television. Immediately below shows how these lines are to be drawn vertically, with staggered “interlace” to give the correct picture rendition. Below that is a drawing of an entire picture raster, showing that there are 52 vertical lines in a complete picture.

Immediately below this is a replica of the first picture on the record to permit the recipients to verify that they are decoding the signals correctly. A circle was used in this picture to ensure that the recipients use the correct ratio of horizontal to vertical height in picture reconstruction.

The drawing in the lower left-hand corner of the cover is the pulsar map previously sent as part of the plaques on Pioneers 10 and 11. It shows the location of the solar system with respect to 14 pulsars, whose precise periods are given.

The drawing containing two circles in the lower right-hand corner is a drawing of the hydrogen atom in its two lowest states, with a connecting line and digit 1 to indicate that the time interval associated with the transition from one state to the other is to be used as the fundamental time scale, both for the time given on the cover and in the decoded pictures.

The Contents

The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University and his associates. 

They assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales and other animals. To this, they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim.

Listen to some of the sounds of the Golden Record on our Soundcloud page:

Golden Record: Greetings to the Universe

Golden Record: Sounds of Earth

Songs from Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony are included on the golden record. For a complete list of songs, visit: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/

The 115 images included on the record, encoded in analog form, range from mathematical definitions to humans from around the globe. See the images here: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/images/

Making the Golden Record

Many people were instrumental in the design, development and manufacturing of the golden record. 

Blank records were provided by the Pyral S.A. of Creteil, France. CBS Records contracted the JVC Cutting Center in Boulder, CO to cut the lacquer masters which were then sent to the James G. Lee Record Processing center in Gardena, CA to cut and gold plate eight Voyager records.

The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record’s cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

Learn more about the golden record HERE.

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

Storyville - The Farthest: Voyager’s Interstellar Journey

Launched 16 days apart in 1977, the twin Voyager space probes have defied all the odds, survived countless near misses and over 40 years later continue to beam revolutionary information across unimaginable distances. With less computing power than a modern hearing aid, they have unlocked the stunning secrets of our solar system.

The golden record contains greetings in 55 languages, animal sounds and 27 musical clips from around the world, among them Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode.

It’s amazing that billions of years from now [after humans are long gone] Voyager will still be chugging along.

sometimes i think about the golden record and i want to cry

How long do you think it will be before crows discover agriculture?  Surely they have the capacity to learn that seeds dropped in the dirt sometimes make more seeds.  They’re just a hop, skip, and a jump away from civilization, all things considered.

After about a decade of slowly making friends with all the local crows in our neighborhood by feeding them peanuts when we go out walking, and putting peanuts out on our porch when they’re watching us, about three years back a pair of crows started bringing their fledgling by our porch to get peanuts. He was nervous at first but they showed him that it was safe and led him through the steps of cautiously getting nuts. Like one of his parents (we’re using male pronouns out of laziness, we can’t actually tell the gender of any of the crows), he has a funny habit of ruffling up his feathers into a big puff-ball, something we’ve really only seen this one and his parent do. We called his parent Fluffy because of this habit, so the fledgling was dubbed Fluffy Junior, often called just Junior.

Junior grew up coming by our porch for peanut treats, and following Jack and me when we go out walking. He’s easy to pick out because he’s far less skittish around us than any of the other crows who come to us for treats, and because he’s continued to do the fluff-ball thing. At first he came along with his parents, and then eventually just him, and then last winter he started bringing another crow along with him who was a lot more nervous around us than Junior or his parents had ever been.

Then for awhile this spring, we were only seeing Junior or his very skittish mate, never both of them together, and about two weeks back we finally found out why – Junior has a fledgling! They brought the baby over to the rooftop that’s across from our porch and fed him there, within easy access of the porch treats. The crow we’ve known since he was a baby now has a baby of his very own, and is carrying on the tradition of introducing the baby to us young.

So today we could hear Junior and his mate feeding the baby across the way – and if you’ve never heard crow fledglings being fed, it’s a very distinctive noise that sounds like a crow is being loudly strangled, and if you see it in process, you’ll notice that one crow has a much smaller beak that opens much wider and is bright red on the inside. When you know what to listen and look for, you can pretty easily spot fledglings being fed this time of the year, and often hear it from as much as a block away.

We want to encourage Junior to keep bringing his mate and their baby over to our place (and hopefully outlast the work-from-home era of our hateful neighbor who comes outside and claps at the birds when they make too much noise), so we put out some peanuts and a little bit of cheese for them, which is their absolute all time favorite treat. 

We figured Junior or his mate would get the food and continue to feed their baby on the roof like they’ve done frequently since the beginning of the month, but instead the entire family of three flew over and landed on our porch, and fed the baby right there, about four feet from our door, while Jack and I hid behind the curtains to get a look without spooking them. 

That’s a show of trust that not even Junior’s parents attempted, and it’s so exciting to think that this third generation of this little family will grow up that comfortable with being so close to us. They’re still rightfully skittish about being watched too closely, and we would never try to approach them or touch them, but it is lovely to get to see them behaving so calmly from such a close distance.

Gosh I love my crows.

Chatty frends!!!!!!

The Secret Life of Crows

Crow, landing by me like one of those kinetic bombardment tungsten rods: I am ancient. I am all-seeing. I sat on the shoulders of gods, made friends with the wolf and picked clean the eyes of your brothers. I am the ever-shifting trickster and the croak at the back of Death's throat. I am darkness a-wing and night in the day.

Me: Baby! Your lunch is there, go mad.

Crow: ...

Me: ...

Crow: Ooh, raisins!

a friendly crow passing the ball in Japan :7

youtube/Gon Gon

Thick-billed ravens (Corvus crassirostris) have no right to look as much like dinosaurs as they do