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It's not easy to say that any particular space or astronomy development was the most important in a given year. But if we had to choose some highlights, we'd opt for these unforgettable events and findings.
- [...]We saw the unseeable
- [...]Landing on the moon is difficult
- [...]Women need more than an all-female spacewalk
- [...]A year in orbit changes a person
- [...]The first allegation of a space crime was made
- [...]Space will become a battlefield
- [...]An asteroid was bombed; another shot back
- [...]Gassy mysteries were detected on Mars
- [...]The business of space is messy
- [...]Our first close-ups from beyond Pluto
- [...]Get ready for visitors from beyond our solar system
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Space and Astronomy in 2019: Unforgettable Findings and Events in Space Exploration, the Universe
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ANN JILLIAN'S HAIR makes LONI ANDERSON'S HAIR look like RICARDO
MONTALBAN'S HAIR!
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @03:05AM (8 children)
We truly have made some great achievements in astronomy and spaceflight during this past year. These achievements wouldn't be possible without the sacrifices the brave men and women of the United States armed forces make every day to protect our freedom, so we're free to study astronomy and send astronauts and equipment into space.
Our space program would never have existed had the American military not brought the V-2 program to the free world so that we could develop the rockets needed for spaceflight. Now our American troops are fighting the war on terror to keep us safe here at home so we can continue to study the cosmos and reach farther into space. I have no doubt that we'll put a man on Mars by 2030, just like we put men on the moon in 1969 after President Kennedy set his ambitious goal. None of this happens without American troops defending our freedom abroad so we're free to make inventions and carry out scientific research here at home.
Let us all be thankful for the sacrifices the brave men and women of the military are making, especially during the Christmas season. Without them, none of the achievements in this story would be possible.
Thank you to all of our soldiers! God bless America!
(Score: 4, Informative) by barbara hudson on Monday December 30 2019, @03:45AM
Eisenhower was right.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 30 2019, @03:53AM (4 children)
How the hell were you able to spew all of that with like 100,000 soldiers' jockstraps crammed in your mouth?
...oh, right, you're talking out your ass. Last war we had any business being in was World War II, and guess what? Now the fucking Nazis are *here* and taking over.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 30 2019, @12:25PM (3 children)
"Last war we had any business being in was World War II"
And was the war that started the technology to allow space exploration. And don't worry, the Nazi will be voted out in 2020 unless someone as bad as Hillary gets nominated (like one of the two idiot billionaires).
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 30 2019, @11:20PM (2 children)
Biden is going to get the nomination. I've been saying for a long time now that the Democrats have been split down the middle since Clinton's second term; the corporate half, the half with the power and money and the DNC, is basically Reagan Republicans, and they are in control. They're going to nominate crazy, creepy, gropey ol' Uncle Joe, and I may very well just write in Cthulhu on the ballot because, damn it all, we're already destined to perish in madness and terror.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31 2019, @12:19AM (1 child)
Trump hasn't caused us to perish, won't cause us to perish, and neither will Rapey Uncle Joe. Step back from the ledge and enjoy the champagne.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 01 2020, @03:40PM
Who is "us?"
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @04:00AM
Be strong or be a slave. Your choice. Thanks for the people of strength and wisdom whom have guided our nation to peace. They keep the fight on the Aggressors soil; as it should be.
(Score: 2) by corey on Monday December 30 2019, @09:00PM
RealDonaldTrump, is that you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @07:07AM (1 child)
The article claims to show the most high-resolution photo of Ultima Thule. I don't believe that's accurate, although it's hard to know because published photos are composites.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 30 2019, @07:23AM
I don't think the images will get much better than what's available in the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. The high priority data [wikipedia.org] was sent earlier since the full transfer will take 20 months.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 30 2019, @07:17AM (4 children)
Stuff like the black hole image underscores the need for more incredibly dense data storage. 1,000x or 1,000,000x density (with decreases in cost per *byte) would be appreciated by astronomers, as long as it has good I/O (no DNA storage).
Terabytes to petabytes of storage/memory for home users would allow information about the entire galaxy to be stored and simulated.
Ideally, we will see universal memory for normal use and crystal/glass/holographic storage for archival use.
The only thing that matters is landing hundreds of Starships on the Moon. Maybe it will kick up a cloud of killer dust.
They don't need anything. Women will be the priority candidates for interplanetary missions since they consume less calories.
It's hype until a hot war starts on the ground. "Cyberwar" is more trouble since nothing being done is construed as an act of war, more like espionage.
Keep the enthusiasm low. NASA will have to spam rovers or human missions to get unambiguous confirmation. If life is internal to Mars, maybe life will be confirmed within Enceladus or Europa first.
$35,000/day is what NASA wants to charge for a tourist to hang around and hopefully not bug the astronauts. The actual flight to ISS will cost $20 million or more. That could come way down with Starship. But sharing one with 20-100 other passengers doesn't make much sense because the station is smaller than Starship. ISS needs to be upgraded (instead of deorbited) or other space stations need to be built. Inflatable modules will help make roomier stations.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday December 30 2019, @12:30PM (1 child)
I backed up a little under a terabyte from one network drive to another over WiFi a couple of weeks ago. It took over a week. Start talking about petabytes and gigabit fiber will be slow. I was wondering myself how they move, store, and back up all the data from CERN.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday December 30 2019, @05:01PM
The black hole image used a sneakernet process to move all the data around.
There are various advancements that can increase speeds by orders of magnitude.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/legacy-fiber-optic-cables-speed-data-rates [ieee.org]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/08/03/225233 [soylentnews.org]
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/04/23/0736207 [soylentnews.org]
I didn't mention it because storage is more important. If you can't store all the data in the first place, you can't use it to do computational astronomy or handle trillions of exoplanets or whatever.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @06:48PM (1 child)
Women are substantially more vulnerable than men to radiation and have much greater issues with hygiene and hormones which can pose more difficult problems than the added mass for a few more calories. Due to political correctness, our astronauts will continue to look like somebody was filling out a checklist, because they are. If you simply selected the most maximally qualified and maximally appropriate candidates you'd have a pretty good chance of picking 'x' people that all look pretty similar to one another, and that'd obviously be [insert various ists].
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 30 2019, @10:50PM
Any sources on those? Particularly about the radiation since the risks seem to be very overblown (oh no, +3% chance of developing cancer!).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday December 30 2019, @12:48PM (3 children)
No doubt visitors from beyond refers to Oumuamua, but we still have lots of fun wildly speculating about intelligent aliens.
Much of the popular speculations are patently ridiculous fever dreams of fear. Any space-faring aliens who know or could know about our existence must surely be far beyond us in technology, intelligence, and philosophy. Why should such beings, if they exist, care to conquer the Earth and manage, enslave, eat, or otherwise liquidate us all, as they surely could, and with about as much effort as swatting a paralyzed fly? If we are anything at all to them, possibly we're a reality show, a bunch of savages struggling to better ourselves, while still doing crazy stupid stuff.
Who knows but that aliens may have been watching Earth for millions of years. It's been over half a billion years that telltale oxygen levels have given Earthly life away. They may have made recordings of dinosaur predation from Jurassic times. Over such an incredibly long time, they might have even stepped in on a very few occasions to give Earthly life a positive nudge. It's not like even the most intelligent animals of such times would have the slightest clue about interstellar aliens, so they could do just about anything they wanted without leaving a trace. Clearly, for eons, Earthly life has been utterly at their mercy, and remains so today.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday December 30 2019, @11:22PM (2 children)
The surest sign that there is intelligent life out there is that none of it has ever contacted us. This place is the galactic cross between a war zone and a Superfund site. I seriously wonder sometimes if, when they do make contact, it will be to grant us a mercy kill.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @11:57PM (1 child)
You speak for yourself, not humanity, Amoeba Kabuki.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 31 2019, @12:14AM
O! Thy wicked, cunning wit hath wounded me to the core! Behold, I perish, impaled on the incomparably sharp blade of the keenest rapier of all, that of the intellect!
...no, not really. Fuck off, clownshoe.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1) by MyOpinion on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:10PM (1 child)
(at no particular order)
- PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION of the oceans curving: they should drop 8 inches for every mile squared, but all water at that scale is always level. Indeed, the very word 'aqua' means 'level' and is the very basis for establishing the level in all construction and engineering work
- PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION of the accelerating, spinning "Earth ball": no human sense and no accelerometer ever has registered the tiniest such motion. In fact, every human experiences the Earth as a level, motionless plane, and any and all engineering, military, construction or logistics sector assumes a flat, motionless plane. No such thing as the air being left behind, the Earth rotating under aircraft, rain falling sideways and other absurdities
- PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATION of gas pressure or even a gas pressure gradient without the necessary antecedant of a container, or in simpler terms a demonstration of gas being held against empty space without expanding into it. "Space", as portrayed in movies and some websites is a second law of thermodynamics violation: does not exist, because it cannot exist
Astronomy is not a science: it cannot progress beyond the first step of the scientific method, as nobody can vary and manipulate the variables involved. Pointing at the sky and declaring, concocting stories, "consensus" and authority are not science: science is strictly the process of establishing cause and effect relationships in natural phenomena
Truth is like a Lion: you need not defend it; let it loose, and it defends itself. https://discord.gg/3FScNwc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:38PM
The only thing you should look forward to is your own brutal murder.