As we celebrate the Earth completing another lap around the Sun, let’s take a moment to imagine what life would be like in a world without years – a world that somehow ceased to orbit its star. Admittedly, it’s a strange question, but its’s one that I’ve been obsessively wondering about lately. Not because it’s of any particular relevance, but simply because it’s amusing (at least to me) and fun to think about.
What would happen to us if a giant space finger were to gently stop the Earth in its orbit?
Here, try it out for yourself. Press ‘start’ in the simulation below (created by Michael Dubson and the folks at Phet Interactive Simulations / University of Colorado). You should see a planet orbiting the Sun.
Now press ‘reset’, and drag the circle with the letter ‘v’ to shrink the planet’s speed . Then press ‘start’ again. What happens? (While you’re playing with this, you might enjoy trying out some of the different scenarios in the drop-down menus, and watching the gravitational ballet that ensues.)
If you slowed down the planet enough, you should see it crash into the Sun.
To see why, let’s first remember why things stay in orbit. Every child looking at the sky has at some point wondered, “why doesn’t the moon fall down?” The answer is beautifully simple, yet it took a mind as brilliant as Isaac Newton’s to work it out. (Perhaps a sign of genius is coming up with simple answers to children’s questions.)
Newtons’ response to the child’s question would have been – the moon does fall. It’s constantly falling. Being in orbit is a state of always falling, and always missing what you’re falling towards. In The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams describes the secret to flight. “The knack”, he writes, “lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss”. As it turns out, this is also a great description of what it means to orbit something.
Here’s how Newton explained it. Imagine a cannonball is fired from a height. If you fire the cannonball with more speed, it’ll travel further before it hits the ground. The faster the cannonball, the further it travels.
But wait – the Earth is round. That means that if you shoot the cannonball with enough speed, then by the time it would have hit the ground, it’s travelled far enough that the ground has curved away beneath it. So the cannonball continues to fall towards the ground, and the ground continues to curve away from it. It’s now in a state of perpetual free fall – the cannonball is in orbit!
(Newton’s idea is masterfully explained in this wonderful Radiolab segment.)
So the only thing that makes an orbit different from plain-old falling is having enough speed to miss the thing you’re falling towards. Think dropping a cannonball with zero speed versus shooting it into orbit. And for the same reason, if the Earth were robbed of all of its orbital speed, it would fall straight into the Sun. It would no longer have the speed it needs to miss the Sun.
How long would this ‘Earthfall’ take? Continue reading What Would Happen if the Earth Stopped In Its Orbit?


Σεμινάρια στην ESA (European Space Agency)
ESA is organising its 9th Summer Teacher Workshop from 10 to 13 July 2018, as well as its 4th Autumn Teacher Workshop from 4 to 7 October 2018. Both workshops will take place in the Netherlands and are dedicated to European primary and secondary school teachers.
The deadline to apply for both workshops is Wednesday 21 March 09:00 CET.
Inspired by real and actual ESA space missions and programmes, participants will be given stimulating talks and training on how to include space in their lessons to make science and technology exciting for their students. Organised around three main space themes, Space Exploration, Earth Observation and Technology, the workshop, identical in both editions, will provide teachers with a unique professional development opportunity, and, through training sessions, will demonstrate how space can be used to teach Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curricular subjects in school.
The workshops will feature keynote lectures from top-level space experts and visits to the ESTEC facilities. During the hands-on sessions, participants will explore and discuss classroom experiments and demonstrations.
This is a unique opportunity for teachers to network with education peers and space experts from across Europe.
Who can apply?
Please note that priority will be given to teachers who have not participated in previous teacher workshops given by ESA.
How and when to apply
Teachers wishing to participate in one of the workshops should complete the application form. Teachers are selected based on the information provided. It is mandatory to complete all the fields on the online form.
The deadline for receipt of applications for both workshops is 21 March 2018, 09:00 CET. Successful applicants will be informed before 30 March 2018.
Both workshops will take place in Leiden, the Netherlands, close to ESA’s ESTEC establishment.
The summer workshop will begin on Tuesday 10 July at 09:00 CEST and will conclude on Friday 13 July at 16:30 CEST. A part of the programme will be dedicated to visiting ESTEC as well as the Space Expo museum.
The autumn edition will begin on Thursday 4 October at 9:00 CEST and will end on Sunday 7 October at 16:30 CEST. On the last day, workshop participants will visit ESTEC and take part in the ESTEC Open Day.
Attendance to the entire workshop is mandatory.


Keon L. Gibson, a senior in the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, visited Wyoming for the solar eclipse that occurred in August. He measured specific emission wavelengths of the sun’s corona and used computer-controlled telescopes to study how Earth is being impacted by hazardous space weather.
Gibson, whose research was funded by the National Science Foundation, is part of the Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science (SOARS) program. As well, he’s being mentored by science researchers from the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) of NCAR/UCAR in Boulder, Colorado. He received writing assistance from Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).


Quick Book Review: “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” by Avi Loeb
In the fall of 2017, an object was discovered zipping through our solar system at an unusual speed. It was studied extensively, but no one could figure out exactly what it was. One thing was for certain, however: the object came from outside our solar system. Named “Oumuamua”, (a Hawaiian word for “a messenger from afar arriving first”), this was the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system. It stuck around for 11 days, allowing scientists to gather as much data on it as they could. The author discusses the data is minute detail, making a very compelling case that the object could very likely be a piece of advanced alien technology. The science presented is pretty heavy, but it’s explained clearly, similar to the way Stephen Hawking does in his books, i.e. you understand what’s being said while you’re reading it, but you’d have a tough time repeating it back if you had to. It’s fascinating stuff. Unfortunately, the info about Oumuamua comprises only a small part of the book. To flesh this material out into a decent sized book, the author pads the pages with information about his family, his career, and his views on philosophy and science, all of which were, fortunately, pretty interesting. The author does some railing against the scientific community, complaining about how most scientists today need to follow the money rather than follow the data, and that pursuing ideas that aren’t trendy or fashionable might brand you as unfundable, putting an end to your career. Typical bureaucracy. In any event, the author has a nice, clear writing style, sharing compelling tidbits from both his personal life and his professional life. The notion that we’ve detected an object that originated from an intelligent civilization outside of our own is truly fascinating, and the author conveys that wonder and excitement on every page.


It can be used around any Solar eclipse as a ritual practice, but you can also use it every day, any day. It calls upon the energies of a solar eclipse, transcending time, space, dimensions. There are also channelings from my voice used during this meditation to further access these realms of perception.
Can you meditate on eclipse?
When the Sun, Moon and Earth are in one line, there is a different cosmic energy pattern that happens and it is called “Eclipse”. It is a celestial phenomenon. This time is very good for meditation and chanting.
Should we meditate during solar eclipse?
Both lunar and solar eclipses are of great significance. These are especially beneficial times for performing spiritual practices, such as chanting, meditation, and mantra repetition, and are considered inauspicious times for initiating significant activities.
What should not be done during solar eclipse?
Prohibited actions during solar eclipse: Avoid sleeping at the time of eclipse, only the elderly, unwell persons and infants are allowed during the eclipse. Cooking and eating food during the eclipse period is both inauspicious, but unhealthy people can take medicines. One should not buy land during the eclipse period.
Which mantra should be chanted during solar eclipse?
You should recite Surya Mantra. Reciting Gayatri Mantra is also recommended. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra should also be recited during the solar eclipse.
What do you pray during a solar eclipse?
Salatul Kusoof is a prayer in the Muslim faith known as the “eclipse prayer,” which occurs when the moon comes between the sun and Earth. The prayer is unique because there is no first call or second call to prayer.
Can we drink water during grahan?
It is believed that exposure to contaminated atmosphere during eclipse might affect the health of baby and probability of miscarriage is increased. Oil massage, drinking water, Mal-Mutra Visarjan, combing hair, brushing teeth and involving in sexual activities are prohibited during Eclipse.
Can I drink water during solar eclipse?
It is advised that one should not eat any food or drink water during the solar eclipse. One should not travel during the solar eclipse. Commencing any auspicious task must be avoided.
Can we drink water during Surya Grahan?
According to health experts, expecting women should drink water regularly during the Surya Grahan period to avoid weakness that could harm the unborn child. There is a belief that pickled food gets destroyed during Surya Grahan period.
Should we study in solar eclipse?
A total solar eclipse is an ideal opportunity to study the Sun under conditions impossible at any other time, as the crisp lunar shadow reveals the corona’s inner and middle parts in visible light. Ground-based observations along with satellite data offer the most complete view of the Sun’s atmosphere ever seen.
Can we use phone during solar eclipse?
You can use your smartphone or a DSLR camera to capture detailed images of the Annular Solar Eclipse, but you must scout a location where you will get a perfect view of the eclipse a few days ahead.
Can Hindus pray during solar eclipse?
1. Worshipping or touching gods is strictly prohibited during this period. Even temple doors usually stay closed during eclipses. After the eclipse ends, the idols are supposed to be washed with Ganga water to purify them.
Can we do puja during solar eclipse?
After 12 hours from starting of Solar Eclipse, when inauspicious time (Sutak) is started, the doors of temple are kept closed. At this time no worshiping, praying or God visiting is not carried out.


Total Solar Eclipse Presentations located at Sabin Hall and Bay Shelter. Beach Shelter will be open from 8:00am to 4:30pm with food, refreshments, souvenirs, viewing glasses and information. For more information please call the park office at 315-947-5205 or email email@example.com ... 12-2 Sabin Hall Talks: Join Dr. Tyler Nordgren* and Environmental Educator, Josh Teeter as they give alternating, short presentations about the eclipse and the NYS Parks Centennial. Dr. Norgren’s talk is titled, See the Sun and Moon Align with You and will cover the spectacle that has terrified and inspired humans for millennia and is just as awe inspiring today. 12-2 Bay Shelter Activities: Join Science Center staff to celebrate the eclipse with hands-on space activities! Explore why eclipses happen, investigate the future of lunar exploration, create a pocket-sized solar system, and more as we await first contact. I'll point out the phenomenon in the sky and things to see above us, around us, and beneath us as they become visible while eclipse progresses up to the moment of totality. We will start at 2:00pm to watch for First Contact: the moment the first bite is taken out of the Sun as the Moon's disk appears to touch the Sun. Things we will see over the next hour and twenty one minutes (weather permitting): sunspots, projected images of the eclipsed Sun on the ground, weather changes, temperature changes, lighting and color changes, bright planets appearing, shadow bands, Baileys Beads, Diamond Ring and totality at 3:21pm lasting for 3 minutes and 26 seconds. 2:30-Totality Roving Activities: Make your own pinhole eclipse viewer, catalog the changing shadows, and more with roving activities brought to you by the Sciencenter. End Totality - 4:30 Bay Shelter Activities resume and Facilitated Discussion: Hands-on space activities with the Science Center resume! The Sciencenter team will offer a combination of written reflection prompts to create a community art observation/reflection project as well as a conversation with Dr. Nordgren and Sciencenter about the eclipse experience. Fair Haven Beach staff will be selling refreshments, snacks, souvenirs, etc. at the Beach Shelter. Please dress overly warm for the weather. Fair Haven Beach State Park can be colder and windier that the surrounding area. Please also make sure to have plenty of water, food, and snacks for before AND after the eclipse. There may be traffic issues after the eclipse.


Feeling alone and sorry for myself last night. Sorely missing the family I once had, and still love deeply. Decided I couldn’t sit in the house any more, so I grabbed my camera and tripod and went out to shoot the moon. You wouldn’t think that staring into the vastness of space would be much help in making you feel less insignificant. However, being out in the quiet darkness, and focusing on getting a good shot can clear the inner darkness out in a hurry.


Earlier today Starwars.com released the cover for the highly anticipated fifth book in the Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi series, "Allies" by Christie Golden. The book will be released in June of 2010 so there is no synopsis yet, but the cover truly makes the imagination wonder where we are all headed in this series!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
I saw the original photo (left) on NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" and could not resist. It seems Target has set some new goals...to take over MERCURY! Science Fiction? Fantasy? Reality? Dun dun duuunnnnnnn.
Here is a little blurb from the NASA website in regard to the original photo of "A Double Ring Basin on Mercury":
"What caused the smooth floor inside the double ringed basin on Mercury? No one is sure. The unusual feature spans 160 kilometers and was imaged during the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft's swing past our Solar System's innermost planet last week. Double and multiple ringed basins, although rare, have also been imaged in years past on Mars, Venus, Earth, and Earth's Moon. Mercury itself has several doubles, including huge Caloris basin, Rembrandt basin, and enigmatic Raditladi basin. Most large multiple ringed basins on planets and moons are caused initially by a forceful impact by a single asteroid or comet fragment. One interesting feature of the above-imaged double ring is that the basin center appears much smoother than the region between the rings. Possibly, the internal floor was smoothed by later volcanic activity. Also possible, however, is that the floor was smoothed by melting and flowing of material upon impact. MESSENGER has now completed its last flyby of Mercury but will return and attempt to enter orbit in 2011 March."
Monday, October 5, 2009
Wow! It's been a month since my last post! Shame on me! Sometimes I feel like I am repeating the same things over and over, but free books are free books and I must bring them to you! If you haven't checked out the Suvudu Free Book Library recently they have just released three more books in multiple digital formats including PDF, Kindle, Sony Reader, BN.com and Scribd!
For October 2009 Suvudu brings us:
"Starfist: First to Fight" by David Sherman and Dan Cragg
"The Demon Awakens" by R.A. Salvatore
Not new books by any means but FREE and a wonderful way to enjoy books that you have not had the chance to for whatever reason. And did I mention FREE!? Enjoy!


Temperature, Moisture and the Weight of the Atmosphere
In this post I am simply sharing a widely understood but poorly distributed view that in addition to any solar radiant forcing, the weight of our atmosphere and its moisture contents are the primary determinants of its temperature over a planetary scale. Over a geostrophic scale, the additional widely recognized circulation factors come into play. As part of my UNM research I find that in accordance with basic thermodynamics, other than the mass fraction of moisture and the weight of the atmosphere, relative IR absorption properties of the gases are not significant contributors to an atmosphere’s temperature fluctuations. In addition to many examples, one can also consider that there is no applicable CO2 equation integrated into the already highly accurate psychrometic tables and related which are routinely used to calculate temperature.
Standards including the Beer Lambert Law, Kirchoff’s Law, and collisional broadening are a few of several physical and chemical laws that can be explored by any proficient student to understand the extinction of absorbed radiation. IR and other fields of spectroscopy are only successful because energy emitted from gas molecules will virtually always occur at a longer wavelength than the absorbed energy. Through their ability to map and differentiate between absorbed and emitted radiation, and to filter for other contributions such as Rayleigh scattering, IR spectroscopic techniques have been routinely applied for over a century in identifying elemental gas components of selected planets, stars, and other celestial parcels.
Although IR spectroscopy is cited within greenhouse gas literature as a foundation, the greenhouse gas notion attributes a narrow zone of their longwave absorption bands as an outsized controller of the temperatures of planetary atmospheres. In that view, the most significant quantities of atmospheric energy are stored and released through the molecules such as water and carbon dioxide which are IR active. Yet while it’s true that atmospheric moisture stores and releases the lion’s share of heat, virtually all of that can be accounted for by routine latent heat (LEDIV) rather than any greenhouse gas recursive calculation.
Between the latent heat of moisture and atmospheric weight, it is clear that temperatures of planetary atmospheres can be approximated. In addition to the Ideal Gas Law, factors such as e-folding and its cousin the “H” scale, have allowed researchers to develop relative perspectives for the temperature of any planet’s atmosphere. It may be widely known that beyond the inner planets, gas giants are free to exist throughout space and time without regard to distance from any energy source (such as our Sun). The outer planets Neptune and Uranus appear to point in that direction, if only through comparison of current information regarding their size, gas compositions and temperature-pressure profiles. They are comparably sized, their gas compositions are remarkably alike, and their temperature profiles are similar. Yet Neptune is roughly half again as distant from the Sun as Uranus and happens to be slightly warmer. In the figure below from NASA, the relative sizes and colors of the planets are indicated at the top and the relative distances of each planet from the Sun are illustrated behind that. Uranus and Neptune are the two bluish orbs to the right.
.. from rocky planets to gas giants to stars, the impact of gravity upon temperature is clear, whether fusion is evident or not
There might be an abundance of gas giants light years from any star. The gravity and the thickness of the atmosphere leading to sufficient temperature can be invoked to explain why the gas giants are not frozen ice balls in such cold empty neighborhoods of space. Complementary consideration of brown dwarf stars, their similarity to gas giants and their anticipated relative abundance in the universe add “weight” to the notion. As one considers a continuum of sizes of objects from rocky planets to gas giants to stars, the impact of gravity upon temperature is clear, whether fusion is evident or not.
Even after the greenhouse notion is set aside, there are still some basic challenges to better estimation of the distribution of temperature across the volumes of a planetary atmosphere. In addition to eddies and gyres and their local impacts, temperature inversions with elevation within the atmosphere can be encountered. These are often mapped as a boundary layer such as a stratopause or a tropopause. Yet authoritative resources that promote the greenhouse gas notion appear to universally and arbitrarily describe a tropopause for both Venus and Mars even when no inversion can be found. The image below is an example of charts of three associated planetary atmospheric profiles from a related academic source.
Source for image: http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/CLASS14/14EVM-5.html
Of these three examples, only Earth indicates the signature temperature inversion associated with any tropopause. On Earth, such an inversion appears to be strongest when the atmosphere is relatively moist. Other planetary atmosphere profiles may express inversions that are similar to a tropopause, but those would merit different names according to the chemicals which are changing state or which are undergoing other transformations. For example, the mesopause represents the beginning of a layer where no gas component is homogeneously distributed.
Depending upon the resource, contemporary atmospheric spectroscopy describes various stripes and intensities of “atmospheric window” panes in the IR regions of their spectra. These open panes are spans in the wavelength spectrum that allows direct escape of emitted longwave energy from the Earth’s surface and atmosphere to outer space without further absorption. It may be that for any photon that is emitted from an IR – active gas molecule, the entire world’s atmosphere, from its bottom to the top, becomes an IR – open window pane. That atmosphere does however exert a heavy weight, and along solar forcing, geostrophic circulation, and the state-changing latent-heat transferring moisture component, our temperatures will always be easily understood and calculated.
About the featured image: This chart is a product of mine used to explore conceptualizations of changes in atmospheric weight and moisture content as a function of changes over time in the total solar irradiance (TSI). For more information the best current resource to visit is at:
Wallace, M.G., 2017, Application of Solar – Tropospheric Connections Towards Improved Forecasts Of Streamflows In The Western US. in review at Hydrological Sciences Journal. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318322662_Application_of_newly_identified_solar-atmospheric_connections_towards_improved_forecasts_of_streamflows_in_the_Western_US DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18264.19203
4540total visits,1visits today


On Sunday SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed pictures of the Starship Raptor Engine’s first firing.
With the SpaceX’s prototype Starship people will be carried on quick hops across the world and eventually to Mars. That phenomenal vehicle will be powered by new Raptor rocket engine.
Musk posted on Twitter pictures and videos from the first test firing of the full-scale, built-for-flight Raptor engine for his Starship super-rocket, expressing his pride of the “great work” by SpaceX team. A slight green hue can be observed in the rocket flame, later explained by Musk on Twitter as “either camera saturation or a tiny bit of copper from the chamber”.
Earlier last week Musk posted pictures showing the Starship raptor engine and declaring SpaceX preparation for firing it. They announced moving the testing of the Starship prototype to their south Texas facility.


|“||Moon, remember what I told you a few million years ago? Is happening!||”|
— Earth, The Beginning 3
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, it is the most unique and unique planet in the Universe today, it has life on its surface, and that makes it smarter and more peaceful, and it is the main one responsible for the advances in the Milky Way, she has now become extremely sensitive, asteroids and meteors impacts frighten her greatly, so she has a project to stop it.
It also has a moon, the Moon, a frighteningly large moon compared to it, but the Moon is still small, it is her daughter, and main protector, being hit by many more meteors and asteroids than the Earth, for not having atmosphere, nothing prevents meteors from attacking the Moon.
Despite being a good and friendly planet, she has several projects of probe constructions to explore her neighbors, sometimes leaving her neighbors angry with the amount of probes sent to them.
The Earth is known for being very friendly, but it also has a more extreme side, a super protective side of itself, as she is afraid of losing her life again, so she may be able to take measures that can take her away of its own friends, because its surface covered by water and organic life has become extremely fragile, an impact with a considerable asteroid can end all life on Earth.
The Earth has the Moon, however, also several quasi-satellites, small asteroids that seem to follow the Earth, in which it does not consider them a threat, since these small asteroids are usually less than 1 kilometer in diameter, so it considers these asteroids her friends, and maybe even deserve her protection, because the Earth frankly has many problems with asteroids.
Earth is certainly one of the most open-minded and sympathetic individuals in the universe, there is no stressor or irritation, it just seems to see the whole universe with its core open, embracing each new discovery and new object that appears in the universe, regardless of whether this is a possible threat or not, she just loves to discover and explore more.
The Earth was born in a special place around the Sun, and since its inception, it has already proved to be his favorite, although other planets like Mars and Venus stand out as well, and Jupiter and Saturn have had a strong influence on the Solar System. The earth, however, suffered a devastating blow to her life, the collision with Theia, she had never felt so close to death at that time. Despite this, the Earth has developed into a planet that always loves others, and especially, discovering new things.
Over time, from the invention of the telescope to Galactic Communication, the Earth has had virtually little time for anything, as it practically works tirelessly to discover and explain new things, but in the meantime it always has free time for its friends, her family, the Solar System. After all, Earth's life is quite simple, and so is her personality, she always takes care of life on its surface, protecting them, even if they do anything against her, she still has faith in them, characteristic of her ever since.
Today, the earth is busy doing many things, trying to push the technological boundary across the universe, unraveling things about black holes, and its eternal search to catalog and research all objects in the universe.
There was a time when all the continents of the Earth were united in only one, the conditions of this supercontinent called Pangea were precarious, basically all the center and north were an endless desert, and the points of the continent connected the North pole to the South pole.
In this period, the continent together, began to separate, and with that, an asteroid collided with the Earth, and killed its hitherto main form of life, the dinosaurs.
The earth always acts as a living organism, storms, tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes are all too common, and often strike human societies on their surface, causing relative chaos.
Inside the Earth
The Earth, being a planet with life, was invited by the Milky Way, to be head of research of the whole galaxy, the Earth is responsible for all the investigations realized in the Milky Way, and in the outer space, in galaxies like Andromeda Galaxy, Large Magellanic Cloud, and in addition to the Local Group.
Exploration and Research of Space
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Kepler Space Telescope
- Gaia Space Telescope
Research of Space
- Space Exploration
- Economy of the Earth
- Colonization of the Solar System
- Terraforming the Solar System
- Space Programs
- Rocket Programs
- Land Telescopes
- Exploration of Sun
- Exploration of Mercury
- Exploration of Venus
- Exploration of Earth
- Exploration of Moon
- Exploration of Mars
- Exploration of Jupiter
- Exploration of Saturn
- Exploration of Uranus
- Exploration of Neptune
- Exploration of Pluto
- Exploration of Jovian Moons
- Exploration of Saturnian Moons
- Exploration of Asteroids
|The 42 Planemos|
Mercury • Venus • Earth • Mars • Jupiter • Saturn • Uranus • Neptune


It’s not for the first time, but its different this time NASA generated quite a bit of buzz in recent days with the apparent discovery of flowing water on Mars. Now to everyone who has been following astro science, this may sound very familiar, because for years we have been reading that NASA has been finding evidences of water on Mars. So what is the … Continue reading Water on Mars
The solar system appears to have a new ninth planet. Two well known researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin have found evidences in the outer solar system of an object that could be a real ninth planet, Plant-X. This January, these two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune (but to be seen yet) orbits … Continue reading The solar system gets a new planet-Planet-X !!


|aeroway = launchpad|
|A launchpad or landing pad for spacecraft|
|Used on these elements|
|Status: in use|
|Tools for this tag|
The tag aeroway=launchpad is used to map a launch pad (or landing pad): an above-ground platform or flat space from which spacecraft (usually rocket-powered) is vertically launched into outer space, and sometimes where they land again.
Also see military=launchpad for a launchpad used for military purposes, such as launching missles. There is also an undocumented tag man_made=launch_pad (https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/man_made=launch_pad) which is equally common as of early 2020.
A launch pad is distinct from a missile launch facility (or missile silo or missile complex), which also launches a rocket vertically but is located underground in order to protect against attack.
How to map
- Create a closed way around the extent of the launch pad area.


Mar 21, 2018
On today's show, Bob and Dan discuss Red Planet Mars (1952), a film about two scientists who begin communicating with Mars and the Martians inform Earth that there is, in fact, a God. It's a Mike Pence wet dream! Other topics discussed: real vs. imagined theocracies, the Russians, pi, propaganda, and - wouldn't you know it? - the Nazis.
Join the Million Dollar Movies Facebook group to dicuss the show and the movies we've covered.
Follow us on Twitter: @MDMpodcast
Follow Dan on Twitter: @DanWilbur


Astronomers have spotted the tell-tale signs of so-called dwarf galaxies being digested by bigger spiral galaxies.
Spiral galaxies are known to grow by swallowing their diminutive neighbours; as this process occurs, the dwarf galaxies become severely distorted.
An international team have now observed the characteristic signs of this process occurring in distant galaxies, beyond our cosmic neighbourhood.
The findings are published in the Astronomical Journal.
The researchers say the findings could shed further light on the evolution of galaxies.
As dwarf galaxies are digested by spirals, they form tendril-like structures and so-called stellar streams - long filaments of stars produced by the stretching action of tidal forces.
Astronomers have been observing such events in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood, known as the "Local Group" of galaxies, for more than a decade.
But the Local Group, with its three spiral galaxies, is much too small a sample to determine how common this process might be in the rest of the Universe.
David Martínez-Delgado from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and colleagues carried out a survey of spiral galaxies at distances of up to 50 million light-years from Earth.


ispace, a Japanese space startup has sent off a rocket to the moon after many postponements, a stage toward what might be a first shuttle for a privately owned business and country. After two delays brought on by inspections of ispace Inc.’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the HAKUTO-R mission launched without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
At a viewing party in Tokyo, more than a hundred people watched the rocket launch as it flew into the night sky. People who attended the gathering said that they were so happy and that, after numerous delays, it was good to have a proper launch.
In the past 50 years, soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbors have been achieved by the national space agencies of Russia, China, and the United States, but not by businesses. At a time when China is becoming more competitive and Russian rockets are no longer available due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, the success of the mission would also be a milestone in space cooperation between the United States and Japan.
According to iSpace, the name HAKUTO is a reference to the white rabbit, which is believed to live on the moon in Japanese folklore, as opposed to the notion of a western man living there. The venture project had been a finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE prior to being resuscitated as a business organization.
Writing is a medium to express feelings and convey facts. A creative mind never rests in peace and this amazing platform gives me the freedom to write about what I like most.
I’ve been a writer/blogger for the last twelve years and have covered technology-related topics. However, I also have considerable years of experience in writing for various domains – Technology, Beauty, Fashion, Pharmaceutical, human psychology etc. Technology is my forte.
I’ve handled many interesting projects. Writing is my passion. As an author, I’ve learned a lot in my long journey of penning down my thoughts!


2012 & North Pole Expedition
Doctor of Physics, Brooks Agnew discussed possible cataclysms that may occur around 2012, and offered an update on his planned North Pole Inner Earth Expedition. The current timetable is to embark on the expedition in August 2009, traveling to the Arctic region aboard a nuclear powered icebreaker. A helicopter and ship stored in the icebreaker will be used to advance scout for a hole that might exist in the curvature of the crust, he detailed.
Agnew said ancient Mesoamericans described visits from the 'Shining Ones'-- possible ETs, who may have given them the knowledge of astronomy, architecture and agriculture. One of the Mayans' complex calendrical systems ends in 2012, coinciding with the Earth aligning with a black hole in the center of the galaxy, he outlined. This positioning will cause planets to heat up in the solar system, and potentially wreak havoc with our climate, he said.
A pole shift could take place within a short time period-- 3 to 5 days, and the reversal of Northern and Southern hemispheric patterns could set up a "global superstorm," with 300 mph winds lasting up to a month, Agnew warned.
Ark of Millions of Years Volume Two: 2012 and the Harvest of the End Times
Ark of Millions of Years: Volume Three
Thursday, November 20, 2008
2012, Hollow Earth, Pole Shift
Posted by Robert Reckmeyer at 10:41 AM
Labels: Aliens, Brooks Agnew Shining Ones Mayan pole shift Mesoamericans 2012 North, EARTH, Expedition, HOLLOW, Pole
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Ancient Constellations Making Workshop
A classic we just had to bring back again! What did the skies look like for ancient people? Learn about stars, space, and the constellations by viewing the skies of Ancient Egypt, Africa, Greece, and Rome in an inflatable planetarium, a collaboration between the Museum and Stars on the Move. View objects from Museum collection inspired by the stars, like an ancient astrological calendar, and create your own constellation art!
Free with Penncard. Dinner and materials provided.
Making Workshops are Museum-sponsored events that encourage Penn undergraduate and graduate students to become more familiar with the Museum’s collection by getting their hands involved. These events provide a fun and educational setting to promote social interaction and engage students with artifacts and ethnographic objects. Create something related to the objects or theme of the night!


Family Sleepover at the Ontario Science Centre
Calling all wannabe aerospace engineers and mission specialists! Lift off for a fun-filled night of space exploration in our Space Odyssey Sleepover. Discover the make-up of the Universe and learn how we use space technology every day. Test how rockets fly and how satellites stay in orbit around the Earth, then join our Canadarm Challenge or show-off your new spacesuit design. Blast off for what’s sure to be an out-of-this-world overnight experience!
The sleepover program includes Science Show, IMAX® film Born to be Wild, hands-on Science Workshop, DJ/PJ Dance Party and free admission the next day!
For details visit www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/Sleepovers
Time: 5:00-5:45 p.m. Check-in
Price: $59 per person


Finding the North Star
Finding the North Star, also known as Polaris, is one of the ways you can get your bearings if you need directions and are without a compass. God gave us a blessing in supplying with some visual aid that:
- Nearly everyone can use
- Doesn't move with the Earth's rotation across the sky like other stars throughout the night AND
- "Happens" to also be aligned in space with our north magnetic pole, which compasses use to find North.
What are the odds of that?
This time-lapse image helps demonstrate this phenomenon. The streaks in the sky are stars over the course of a few hours. As the Earth rotates, the stars appear to "move." For that reason, these stars could not be used to tell directions, because they would lead us in different directions depending on the time we looked at them.
Clearly there is one star at the center, however, that doesn't appear to move, so always will point us in the same direction. This star is Polaris AND amazingly it also aligns with our North.
Polaris is almost directly above the North Pole. As a result, locating the North Star can only be performed in the Northern Hemisphere - you won't see it otherwise. If you are in the Northern half of the planet, though, locating it is best done by first finding the constellation known as the Big Dipper.
Polaris is not the brightest star in the sky, but it is fortunately not surrounded by a number of other bright stars that might make locating it more difficult. It appears to be about as bright as the two pointer stars in the Big Dipper.
Once you locate the big dipper, find the edge of the cluster of four stars we'll call the "scoop" opposite the "handle." Let's call this edge the "pointers" for pointer stars. Follow the pointer stars approximately five times the distance between the two pointer stars you will find the North Star.
How high the North Star is in the sky depends upon your latitude. If you are in Northern Alaska, the North Star will appear almost overhead. If you are in the Florida Keys, the North Star will be much closer to the horizon.
Interestingly, Polaris forms the final star in the "handle" of the Little Dipper.


Jasper was designated as a Dark Sky Preserve by the Royal Astronomy Society in Canada, due to its limited light pollution. The Jasper Dark Sky Festival began with the goal of celebrating and preserving this status that also creates ideal conditions for dark sky viewing. At 11,000 square kilometres, Jasper National Park has a limitless amount of observation sites.
Jasper's Dark Sky Festival is held in the townsite of Jasper, Canada. Events are also held at various locations throughout Jasper National Park.
Favourite viewing sites in the Park:
1. Marmot Meadows
2. Pyramid Island
3. Athabasca Glacier
4. Jasper House
Favourite Dark Sky viewing sites from farther away:
1. Maligne Lake
2. Old Fort Point
3. Big Bend
Group Dark Sky observation sites(may be only open to groups/events):
1. Annette Lake
3. Jasper Airfield
4. Snaring Overflow campground


LONDON — The Olympic opening ceremony was watched by around a billion people around the world… but were there spectators from even further afield? As fireworks and light displays lit up the sky above the Olympic Stadium on Friday night, a UFO was spotted hovering above the action.
The saucer-shaped, metallic object has set tongues wagging after it was caught on camera as the ceremony drew to a close around 12.30 A.M. The appearance of the object has excited alien hunters, and only weeks ago one of the UK’s top UFO experts predicted that mass summer events would be an optimum time for spacecraft to reveal themselves to humans. He told the Daily Mail: “It has been a widely held belief in Ministry of Defense circles that ‘aliens’ have been able to detect us for decades via TV and radio broadcasts.
“What once seemed like science fiction is steadily being realised by central governing bodies as distinctly real.
“If aliens have studied our psychology, they may choose to appear in our skies on a significant date. — Agencies


Review: Star Chart
Having all these maps and navigation applications is all well and good if the sun is up or you are on a road, but what happens when you want to get off the beaten track? When you want to do less 'over there' and more 'out there'. When you look up into the star filled night sky, why not look up with Escape Velocity's Star Chart.
Version Reviewed: 184.108.40.206
The advantage of using your smartphone instead of a regular map or star-chart is the sensors built into your phone. Take a detailed map of the night sky, assume that the time is right on the smartphone (syncing your time with the network is always advised), have the GPS work out exactly where you are on the Earth's surface, and finally the accelerometers and gyro can work out where you are pointing your phone... and you get an annotated screen of exactly what you are looking it.
It's the same technology as the augmented reality of Nokia's City Lens, but I suspect I'm going to be using Star Chart a lot more than City Lens.
Star Chart is very fluid, and one of the easiest ways to see this is by placing my Lumia 820 onto a flat surface. Thanks to the slight bevel in the back casing for the QI wireless charging hardware, my 820 spins on the spot. And if I spin round the Windows Phone when Star Chart is running, the display keeps up with the rotation (in essence, the stars 'under the floor' stay in the same relative place according to my eye, even though the phone and screen is spinning at around 60 rpm.
In terms of accuracy and interpretation of the sensor data, Star Chart is as good as any effort I've seen on all three major mobile OS platforms.
Star Chart also has a good range of data, with over 5000 stars in its database, the major planets of the Solar System, the 88 main constellations (and the gorgeous artwork based on Johannes Hevelius that is instantly recognisable), and the deep sky objects of the Messier collection.
Not sure what something is? Tap it and look up the database to find out more. Want to find Venus? Use the search box and you'll be guided to it. Star Chart may not have a wealth of options to tweak (and those that it does have are listed on one handy settings screen) but for someone curious about the night sky it does all that it needs to do, does it well, and does it smoothly. And there's a handy red tint mode to preserve your night vision as well!
Something for the professionals? Nope, they're all busy with radio telescopes and never leave their monitors and look up, so catering for the eager amateur is a much better space to be in for this application.
It also looks wonderful, with smooth gradients of colour, the fading in and out of the artwork, and little touches such as the text always staying aligned to the horizon, no matter where you point your phone - which makes for some interestingly angled screenshots but works well in the real world.
Perhaps the only disconcerting point about Star Chart is that the trial version is more of a rolling demo than an actual trial. It steps through all the different viewing modes of Star Chart, allowing you to see the star chart, the constellations, the Messier objects, and so on, in sequence. What it won't let you do is try out any of these functions out of sequence, or pause the transitions so you can do a little more exploring on your own.
It does make sense from a developer's point of view. You want to convert as many people from trials to full price as possible. I would love to see the numbers on Star Chart's conversion to the full price $2.49/£1.99 and how they relate to other less restrictive trial versions of applications.
Star Chart is a great choice if you need to navigate around the night sky. As for directions, the app won't help you with any turn by turn routing, but I can help you out with that. Point Star Chart up at the sky. Star on the left. Head out there, and turn left in the morning.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at


Durable Acrovyn by Design was installed on the corridor walls and lobby doors of the IMAX Experience at the Kennedy Space Center, showcasing floor-to-ceiling photographs of astronauts floating through the International Space Station.
Full Case Study
O Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex é um museu repleto de diversão com mais do que 23 atrações, que permite mais 1. 5 milhões de visitantes por ano para explorar o espaço. Entre suas muitas atrações está um cinema 3D IMAX, apresentando documentários sobre exploração espacial e as descobertas que a NASA fez desde a sua fundação em 1959.
Kennedy Space Center chose DesignShop, a leading exhibit designer, to design and create a new experience within their IMAX complex, in addition to updating and stylising the lobby & concession area.
As the IMAX Experience is one of the most popular attractions at the Kennedy Space Center, wall and graphics damage – and its associated repair costs – were a concern for DesignShop. They needed a graphic solution that could withstand the daily wear and tear of such a popular facility. Therefore, DesignShop chose CS Acrovyn by Design.
CS Acrovyn by Design combina uma impressão digital de alta resolução com um material de proteção de parede Acrovyn PVC-Free comprovado em milhares de instalações por todo o mundo.
Installed on the corridor walls and lobby doors, Acrovyn by Design showcases floor-to-ceiling photographs of NASA astronauts floating through the International Space Station, helping to protect the underlying wall and door surfaces from damage.
And because the images are encapsulated behind a clear Acrovyn protective layer, the photographs won’t be damaged by surface bumps and scratches, ensuring they will stay looking good for years to come.
Michael Rainey of DesignShop said “With Acrovyn by Design’s customisation capabilities, we were able to bring our design visions to life.”


Poor Pluto Wallpaper for Windows – Poor Pluto Wallpaper Free Download for Windows 10, 7, 8/8.1. Poor Pluto Wallpaper Free & Safe Download for Windows 10, 7, 8/8.1. With Earth as the leader the planets of the Solar System has turned aga… Poor Pluto Wallpaper app was create by Mathias Pedersen. And now this Windows App for PC is updated to the new version.
So if you need to run the new version of this App into your Windows PC/Laptop, yeah you are in the right place guys. Then please follow the installation guides on this page. This application also compatible with 64-bit and 32-bit Operating System.
Download Poor Pluto Wallpaper App for PC
|App Name||Poor Pluto Wallpaper App|
Poor Pluto Wallpaper Free Download for Windows 10, 7, 8/8.1
Poor Pluto Wallpaper Review
With Earth as the leader, the planets of the Solar System has turned against poor Pluto excluding him from their group of planets, that?s what we can think when we look at this really well designed wallpaper.
This image is build upon recent events in which Pluto has been degraded to a ‘dwarf planet’. From 1930 (when it was discovered) until 2006, Pluto was considered the Solar System?s ninth planet, but on August 2006 the IAU definition for ‘planet’ excluded Pluto from planethood, and reclassified it under the new category of dwarf planet. After that reclassification, Pluto was added to the list of minor planets and given the number 134340.
Poor Pluto Wallpaper tries to give a funny look to that situation. It includes many little funny details into the image. It?s a really good masterpiece of Mathias Pedersen which shows the actuality of the planetary situation.
Poor Pluto Wallpaper is a product developed by Mathias Pedersen. This site is not directly affiliated with Mathias Pedersen. All trademarks, registered trademarks, product names and company names or logos mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.
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Published on Feb 21, 2015
” NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts completed the first of three spacewalks to run cable outside the International Space Station on Saturday. Carly Marsh reports.
Wall Street Journal
Here is the time-lapse video comprised of one still shot of the sun taken every eight hours from June of 2010 until February 2015 as recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory …
Published on Feb 11, 2015
” The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) celebrates its 5th anniversary since it launched on February 11, 2010. This time-lapse video captures one frame every 8 hours starting when data became available in June 2010 and finishing February 8, 2015. The different colors represent the various wavelengths (sometimes blended, sometimes alone) in which SDO observes the sun.
For more about SDO, please visit http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ “
While this video pays tribute to the fifth anniversary of the SDO and provides some spectacular film closeups of the sun , solar flares , corona dances and more … simply awe-inspiring …
Published on Feb 11, 2015
” February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.
In honor of SDO’s fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun’s surface.
The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths – and therefore different temperatures – scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun’s atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun’s magnetic fields are constantly on the move.
Five years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists’ curiosity. For example, in late 2014, SDO captured imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what’s called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space. In this case, the sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone.
Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA’s Living with a Star Program. The program’s goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11742 “
” So the results are in. The main US global-temperature scorekeepers – NASA and the NOAA – say that last year was definitely the hottest year on record. But they’ve been contradicted by a highly authoritative scientific team, one actually set up to try an establish objective facts in this area.
On the face of it, there’s no dispute. The NASA and NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) statement says:
The year 2014 ranks as Earth’s warmest since 1880, according to two separate analyses by NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists.
Open and shut, right?
But in fact, detecting a global average temperature rise – of less than a degree since the 1880s, as all sides agree – among thousands upon thousands of thermometer readings from all over the world and spanning more than a century is no simple matter. The temperature at any given location is surging up and down by many degrees each day and even more wildly across a year. It can be done, across a timescale of decades, but trying to say that one year is hotter or colder than the next is to push the limits of statistics and the available data. This sort of thing is why the battle over global temperatures tends to be so hotly debated.
A few years ago, a new dataset was established called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. It was intended to address various issues raised by climate skeptics: but in fact it has plumped down firmly on the warmist side of the debate, saying that in fact there are no undue biases in the temperature records, changes in the Sun do not have any major climate effects, and so on.
Now, however, the BEST boffins have broken ranks with the NASA/NOAA/UK Met Office climate establishment and bluntly contradicted the idea that one can simply say “2014 was the hottest year on record”. According to BEST’s analysis (pdf):
Our best estimate for the global temperature of 2014 puts it slightly above (by 0.01 C) that of the next warmest year (2010) but by much less than the margin of uncertainty (0.05 C). Therefore it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.
That may seem like not such a big deal, but it is really. At the moment the big debate in this area is about the “hiatus” – has global warming been stalled for the last fifteen-years-plus, or not? “
” NASA’s Opportunity rover celebrated 11 years on Mars Saturday (Jan. 24), and the robot’s handlers are marking the occasion with a gorgeous panoramic photo that Opportunity took of its Red Planet home.
Opportunity landed on Mars on the night of Jan. 24, 2004, a few weeks after its twin, Spirit, made its Red Planet debut. The rovers were tasked with three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet. Both Spirit and Opportunity found plenty of such evidence, and then kept rolling long after their warranties expired.”
” Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later, but Opportunity is still going strong. The robot has been exploring the rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 kilometers) Endeavour Crater since August 2011, and it crested a rise on the rim known as Cape Tribulation earlier this month. [Latest Mars Rover Photos from Opportunity & Spirit] “
” A mountain-size asteroid will zoom past Earth Monday (Jan. 26), marking the closest pass by such a large space rock until 2027.
Asteroid 2004 BL86, which is about 1,800 feet (550 meters) wide, will come within 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) of our planet Monday — about three times the distance between Earth and the moon. While this flyby poses no threat to Earth, it does present a rare opportunity to get a good look at a near-Earth asteroid, NASA officials say.
Scientists are eager to study 2004 BL86 to pinpoint its orbit, observe its surface and even look for moons. The plan is to track the fast-moving asteroid using the 230-foot (70 m) dish-shaped Goldstone antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network in California, as well as the 1,000-foot (305 m) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. These radio dishes will beam microwave signals at the asteroid, which will then bounce off the target and return to Earth. [Photos: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids]
” For objects that get this close, that are this large, the radar observations are really analogous to a spacecraft flyby in terms of the caliber of the data that we can get,” said Lance Benner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is the principal investigator for the Goldstone observations of the asteroid.”
” Using images from the Hubble Space Telescope, a bird’s-eye panoramic view of part of the Andromeda galaxy is the clearest, largest picture ever assembled by NASA of the galaxy next door.
The Andromeda galaxy is located more than 2 million light-years away from Earth but the Hubble Space Telescope was powerful enough to capture part of it, bringing together 1.5 billion pixels representing a stretch of galaxy with a length of 61,000 light-years. Over 100 million stars were immortalized in the image as well, some of them seen in clusters of thousands.”
” The impressive photograph raises the bar for precision studies involving spiral galaxies dominating the universe as they number more than 100 billion. Astronomers have never been able to view stars so clearly yet so widespread in external spiral galaxies. “
” An unmanned cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded Tuesday over a launchpad in Virginia.
No injuries were reported following the first catastrophic launch in NASA’s commercial spaceflight effort.
The accident at Orbital Sciences Corp.’s launch complex at Wallops Island was sure to draw criticism over the space agency’s growing reliance on private U.S. companies in this post-shuttle effort.
NASA is paying billions of dollars to Orbital Sciences and the SpaceX company to make station deliveries, and it’s counting on SpaceX and Boeing to start flying U.S. astronauts to the orbiting lab as early as 2017. NASA spokesman Rob Navias said there was nothing on the lost flight that was urgently needed by the six people living on the space station.
Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket blew up over the launch complex, just six seconds after the liftoff. The company said everyone at the site had been accounted for, and the damage appeared to be limited to the facilities.”
” A small asteroid, designated 2014 RC, will safely pass very close to Earth on Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014. At the time of closest approach, based on current calculations to be about 2:18 p.m. EDT (11:18 a.m. PDT / 18:18 UTC), the asteroid will be roughly over New Zealand. From its reflected brightness, astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about 60 feet (20 meters) in size.”
” At an evening event in the SpaceX Headquarters on Thursday night, CEO and founder Elon Musk revealed the Dragon V2 space capsule, a next-generation version of SpaceX’s current Dragon capsule that will be able to ferry up to seven crew members and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS) and eventually to other destinations. The capsule is reusable, and will be able to make a controlled landing “with the precision of a helicopter” upon re-entry.
The capsule, which has been in development for several years with help from NASA, will be a part of a new generation of commercial space vehicles since the US shuttered its own shuttle program in 2011. Currently, NASA pays Russia around $71 million a head to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS on Soyuz vehicles.
Tonight, Musk told the press that his company foresees being able to send astronauts to the ISS and back for around $20 million per seat.
Musk added that depending on how many flights SpaceX is able to launch, that cost-per-head number could come down significantly to where it could “potentially get into the single-digit-million figure.”
NASA has publicly stated that it wants a commercial space vehicle to be ready for prime time by 2017; Musk told Ars tonight that NASA is being characteristically cautious: “from a SpaceX standpoint we expect to be ready to transport crew by 2016,” he said. “We feel fairly confident that we’ll be ready in two years.” When the Dragon V2 does launch, it’ll launch from the historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, which SpaceX recently signed a 20-year lease for.”
Ars Technica has much more
” One of the latest missions from the ISS is kind of amazing. The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment consists of four cameras that have been attached outside of the ISS. Though temperature is controlled, the cameras are exposed to the radiation from the sun, which will allow astronauts to understand how radiation affects the instruments.
The experiment is being run in conjunction with High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program that serves as outreach for students 9-12. Students participating in this program also helped design some aspects of the camera.
The cameras point down at Earth at all times, which makes for some breathtaking images. The feed will sometimes go down as the signal switches between the cameras, and it is hard to see when the ISS is on the dark side of the planet. If the cameras are down, the screen will be grey.”
” ***QUICK NOTES ABOUT HDEV VIDEO***
” Black Image = International Space Station (ISS) is on the night side of the Earth.
Gray Image = Switching between cameras, or communications with the ISS is not available.
No Audio = Normal. There is no audio on purpose. Add your own soundtrack.
For a display of the real time ISS location plus the HDEV imagery, visit here: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/HDEV/
The High Definition Earth Viewing (HDEV) experiment aboard the ISS was activated April 30, 2014. It is mounted on the External Payload Facility of the European Space Agency’s Columbus module. This experiment includes several commercial HD video cameras aimed at the earth which are enclosed in a pressurized and temperature controlled housing. Video from these cameras is transmitted back to earth and also streamed live on this channel. While the experiment is operational, views will typically sequence though the different cameras. Between camera switches, a gray and then black color slate will briefly appear. Since the ISS is in darkness during part of each orbit, the images will be dark at those times. During periods of loss of signal with the ground or when HDEV is not operating, a gray color slate or previously recorded video may be seen.
Analysis of this experiment will be conducted to assess the effects of the space environment on the equipment and video quality which may help decisions about cameras for future missions. High school students helped with the design of some of the HDEV components through the High Schools United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) program. Student teams will also help operate the experiment. To learn more about the HDEV experiment, visit here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/917.html “
” A potential game changer in the hunt for life outside our neighborhood has just been discovered about 493 light years away. Using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have found a rocky planet that is similar in size to Earth and is within the “habitable zone” of the star it orbits.
The discovery of this planet, called Kepler-186f, is confirmation that exoplanets the size of Earth do exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun. The habitable zone – often referred to as the Goldilocks Zone – is the range of distance from a star where liquid water can pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.
This is not the first planet that has been discovered within the habitable zone, but it is the first of near equal size to Earth. Other larger planets that have been found have been at least 40 percent larger than Earth and have been difficult for researchers to determine their exact composition.”
Red Orbit has the story
” An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug that has exposed a collection of popular websites — from Airbnb and Yahoo to NASA and OKCupid — could be one of the biggest security threats the Internet has ever seen. If you have logged into any of the affected sites over the past two years, your account information could be compromised, allowing cybercriminals to snap up your credit card information or steal your passwords.
You’re likely either affected directly or indirectly by the bug, which was found by a member of Google‘s security team and a software firm named Codenomicon. The bad news: There’s not a lot you can do about it now. It’s the responsibility of Internet companies to update their servers to deal with Heartbleed, and once they do, you can take action (see below).
The issue involves network software called OpenSSL, which is an open-source set of libraries for encrypting online services. Secure websites — with “https” in the URL (“s” stands for secure) — make up 56% of websites, and nearly half of those sites were vulnerable to the bug. In theory, a cybercriminal could have exploited Heartbleed by making network requests that could piece together your sensitive data. The good news: There isn’t any indication that a hacker caught wind of this; it seems the researchers were the first to locate the problem.”
Read more at Mashable and learn how to save your data
” Sydney – NASA’s new study says the crunch time for civilization could be very near. Usually, when civilizations fall, it’s a big deal. Whether or not anybody will even notice the fall of this particular civilization is highly debatable.
A new study sponsored by Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilization could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.” Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to “precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – have been quite common.”
NASA is sounding like an adjunct to the extremists of the Democratic party . While the drumbeat of income inequality is sure to grow louder and louder as the 2014 election nears we wouldn’t expect such a blatant show of partisanship from an allegedly apolitical scientific organization such as NASA , but such is life in Obama’s Amerika .
” You can see where this is going. Distribution of wealth, social inequalities, etc. One word would do- “Mismanagement”. The historical societies didn’t just collapse. They fell to pieces over time. At any point, they could have revived, but they didn’t.
Old economics are still very much part of this perspective. The economic hierarchy is given as the primary symptom of the decline of civilization. Resource depletion is cited as the primary issue for economic management. “
The fact is that we are not in disagreement with the concept of the “s**t hitting the fan” , on the contrary , we see no other possible result under our present leadership of ignorance , foolishness and corruption . No , where we take issue with the NASA prediction is in the root causes … NASA’s main focus deems “income inequality” and “unsustainable resource exploitation” as the culprit in civilization’s impending death , which is just another way of demanding MORE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION .
” As a matter of fact, inequalities have existed since the caves. There are no recorded instances of any society of economically equal people, either, in those 5000 years. Quite the opposite, the “1%” of the historical past records the elites, not the mass of the society. “
We here at YouViewed on the other hand feel that the demise of our way of life , should it come to be and things are not looking good , will be a direct result of an overabundance of State action rather than a need for more . Trying to shift the blame to two of the Left’s favorite stalking horses all but guarantees our imminent collapse by throwing more gasoline on the already raging pyre . The solution to our ills lies at the very fingertips of our innovative citizenry if only those fingertips weren’t being crushed under the boot heel of the Leviathan State .
” History is made by individuals and groups, not by the whole society.”
Read the rest
” NASA scientists announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets around distant stars, including four alien worlds roughly the size of Earth that might be the proper temperature for liquid water to form and, therefore, potentially suitable for life.
The discovery, based on two years of data collection on 150,000 or so stars by the agency’s orbiting Kepler space telescope, brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700.
” We have almost doubled the number of planets known to humanity,” said planetary scientist Jack Lissauer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., who is a science co-investigator on the $600 million Kepler space telescope mission.”
Discover more at WSJ
” Looking for a truly out-of-this-world camera? Then an upcoming auction in Austria might have something to interest you — at a price.Vienna’s Westlicht gallery, the world’s largest auction house for cameras, will auction in March a camera returned to Earth, having been used on the moon, during NASA’s Apollo 15 mission.
Compared to present-day cameras, the Swedish-made Hasselblad, used for landscape photography on the lunar surface, is something of a dinosaur. Inconvenient for selfies, it could never be slipped inside a pocket, weighing in at several kilograms.
Its lack of electronic wizardry means no geotagging, hence no metadata. But if anyone was concerned about the NSA getting wind of what it was up to, it’d be hard pushed to film anything surreptitiously. The Hasselblad, a boxy brontosaurus of a camera that Apollo 15’s Lunar Module Pilot Jim Irwin used to take nearly 300 pics while on the lunar surface, couldn’t be said to have a stealth mode.”
” Thanks to the nearly 3,000 satellites monitoring Earth, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is able to capture some of the most breathtaking images of our planet from outer space. NASA recently released the best photos that these satellites have taken from space this year. “
” Clouds hovering off the coast of California “
” The unmanned X-37B spacecraft — flying a mission known as Orbital Test Vehicle 3 (OTV-3) — launched into space atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 11, 2012. What payloads the space plane is toting and the overall mission goals on its confidential cruise are classified.
But it is known that the OTV-3 mission signals a milestone for the X-37B program. “
Published on Nov 29, 2013
” A pristine comet called ISON, which left its home at least a million years ago, will be making its closest approach to the sun on Thanksgiving day. Gautam Naik reports.”
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” South Korea has unveiled designs for its planned Moon lander, a key part of President Park Geun-hye’s pledge to revitalize the country’s aerospace industry and space programme.
The uncrewed module — of which a scaled-down mock-up was unveiled to the press on 22 October — will travel on board a Korea Space Launch Vehicle-2 rocket and is designed to carry a lunar rover weighing 10–20 kilograms, which will look for signs of rare minerals on the Moon’s surface. A robotic orbiter will also circle above the lunar landscape for more than a year at an altitude of about 100 km.”
Bring it on … the more the merrier .
” Scientists say that solar activity is stranger than in a century or more, with the sun producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected and its magnetic poles oddly out of sync.
The sun generates immense magnetic fields as it spins. Sunspots—often broader in diameter than Earth—mark areas of intense magnetic force that brew disruptive solar storms. These storms may abruptly lash their charged particles across millions of miles of space toward Earth, where they can short-circuit satellites, smother cellular signals or damage electrical systems.
Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is “a total punk,” said Jonathan Cirtain, who works at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as project scientist for the Japanese satellite Hinode, which maps solar magnetic fields.”
Are the lights about to go out ? End times anyone ?
” The countdown has commenced and the excitement is building for India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) – which will conduct a detailed study of the Martian atmosphere and is the nation’s first ever mission to the Red Planet.”
” The 56 hour 30 min countdown started at 6:06 a.m. IST today (Nov. 3), according to an official statement from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) leading to liftoff on Tuesday, Nov 5, from a seaside launch pad in Srihanikota, India.”
” MOM is the first of two new Mars orbiter science probes from Earth set to blast off for the Red Planet this November. Half a globe away, NASA’s MAVEN orbiter remains on target to launch barely two weeks after MOM on Nov. 18 – from the Florida Space Coast.”


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We are celebrating summer solstice today on 21st June. It is also the longest day of the year. Summer solstice is celebrated depending on when the sun reaches most northern point from the equator. Summer solstice is the day with the most hours of sunlight during the whole year. Today total daylight will be 13:58 hours in New Delhi and 13:33 hours in Ahmedabad.
It is actually an indication that sun’s path stops moving northward in the sky. It is the northern solstice in northern hemisphere and southern solstice in southern hemisphere. We are celebrating summer solstice in northern hemisphere likewise winter solstice is celebrated in southern hemisphere today. However we won’t be noticing the days becoming more shorter.
Now Let’s know more about summer solstice.
- Summer solstice is not celebrated every year on the same day. In the northern hemisphere date of summer solstice ranges from 20th June to 22nd June. It is because of difference between Gregorian calendar system which has precisely 365 days in a year in comparison to tropical year of about 365.242199 days. To compensate this difference in fraction, a leap days is added every 4 years. Although It is not the only but few other factors also influence the date like wobble in Earth’s rotation, gravitational pull of other planets and the Moon.
- There are actually two solstices we observe every year. One is Summer solstice when sun’s rays are directly on tropic of cancer which is now and other is Winter solstice observed in December. This is valid only for northern hemisphere. For the southern hemisphere It is reversed.
- If we talk about other planets, Mercury has no tilt (in fraction) that’s why there are no seasons.
- We believe ancient prehistoric structure Stonehenge has co relation with the summer solstice. It is so much aligned to the solstice that the rising sun only reaches middle of the middle stone on this day of the year only. Yet we are unable to find the main purpose of building the monument.
- In ancient Egypt, Summer was believed to be the start of the new year. Rising of the brightest star of the night Sirius coincided with summer solstice and annual flooding of the Nile river.


Modern Cosmology, Second Edition, provides a detailed introduction to the field of cosmology. Beginning with the smooth, homogeneous universe described by a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric, this trusted resource includes careful treatments of dark energy, big bang nucleosynthesis, recombination, and dark matter. The reader is then introduced to perturbations about an FLRW universe: their evolution with the Einstein-Boltzmann equations, their primordial generation by inflation, and their observational consequences: the acoustic peaks in the CMB; the E/B decomposition in polarization; gravitational lensing of the CMB and large-scale structure; and the BAO standard ruler and redshift-space distortions in galaxy clustering. The Second Edition now also covers nonlinear structure formation including perturbation theory and simulations. The book concludes with a substantially updated chapter on data analysis. Modern Cosmology, Second Edition, shows how modern observations are rapidly revolutionizing our picture of the universe, and supplies readers with all the tools needed to work in cosmology. Offers a unique and practical approach for learning how to perform cosmological calculations. New material on theory, simulations, and analysis of nonlinear structure. Substantial updates on new developments in cosmology since the previous edition.


Space Patrol (1963)The New Planet – Season 1, Episode 20 - Aug. 16 1963 - Galasphere 347 is in deep space. After a comet collides with the ship, Dart and his crew discover a new planet beyond the orbit of Pluto. Touching down in the dense forest, Dart and Slim meet one of the planet's giant inhabitants.
Back to the Space Patrol Library
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Jim Kazanjian has worked professionally as a commercial CGI artist for the past 18 years in television and game production. His clients list include: Nike, Adidas, NBC, CBS, HBO, NASA, HP, Intel and others. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. With photographs found online, Jim Kazanjian creates fantastical buildings using a famous software. “I am basically manipulating and assembling a disparate array of multiple photographs to produce a single homogenised image.” he says. Jim uses up to 50 different photographs in one image without shooting anything, it’s just recycling images.
Heat to the Rescue: Sturdy Oil Drum Survival Kit Also Converts Into Stove.
Like the Haitian earthquake of 2010, last year’s Japanese tsunami disaster spurred designers to re-think what an effective, life-saving response might look like.
Focusing on providing a source of heat, water and food housed in rollable oil drum that can be converted into a stove, Eindhoven-based Japanese designer Hikaru Imamura’s “Heat Rescue Disaster Recovery” kit reflects his belief that something as simple as heat and hot water may mean the difference between falling deathly ill or surviving.
Cross stitch by @dannikeens she will have some for sale at Brighton Tattoo Convention
The Four Humors.
1 & 2. Sanguine: too much blood, passionate, bold, impulsive
3 & 4. Melancholic: too much black bile, depressed, anxious,moody
5 & 6. Choleric: too much yellow bile, irritable, hostile, bitter
7 & 8. Phlegmatic: too much phlegm, passive, introvert, rational
A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common center of mass. The brighter star is called the primary and the other is its companion star or secondary.
Binary stars are often detected optically, in which case they are called visual binaries. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy (spectroscopic binaries) or astrometry (astrometric binaries). If a binary star happens to orbit in a plane along our line of sight, its components will eclipse and transit each other; these pairs are called eclipsing binaries, or, as they are detected by their changes in brightness during eclipses and transits, photometric binaries.
The first GIF shows an artist’s impression of an eclipsing binary star system. As the two stars orbit each other they pass in front of one another and their combined brightness, seen from a distance, decreases.
Algol, known colloquially as the Demon Star, is a bright star in the constellation Perseus. It is one of the best known eclipsing binaries, (2nd GIF) although Algol is actually a three-star system (Beta Persei A, B, and C) in which the large and bright primary Beta Persei A is regularly eclipsed by the dimmer Beta Persei B.
The second animation was assembled from 55 images of the CHARA interferometer in the near-infrared H-band, sorted according to orbital phase.
Image credit: ESO/CHARA
Children are not their parents’ property, but when the parents treat them like property, that is attachment, not love.
This guy isn’t even in the general vicinity of fucking around and I love it.


Yes, we've all looked up at the stars before. And calling it therapy could seem silly. But it's something that I appreciated being reminded of. It's so easy to forget about the stars.
I feel very lucky to have my walk home from work. When it gets dark early in winter, I have the privilege of an unspoilt nighttime panorama with Orion above me.
After reading Tools of Titans, I now pay a bit more attention. I try to sit out on my balcony at night more often, or just look out the window after turning the lights off. I sit, admire, and ponder. It's my nightly free therapy session. Sometimes I need a reminder to do it and pay proper attention, but when I do, it's absolutely worth it.
As BJ Miller says in Tools of Titans:
When you are struggling with just about anything, look up. Just ponder the night sky for a minute and realize that we’re all on the same planet at the same time. As far as we can tell, we're the only planet with life like ours on it anywhere nearby. Then you start looking at the stars, and you realize that the light hitting your eye is ancient, [some of the] stars that you’re seeing, they no longer exist by the time that the light gets to you.
Ed Cooke, the Memory Champion and Co-founder of Memrise (who I've been so impressed by for years), shares something similar in Tools of Titans:
I'd just think, ‘Oh, everything feels terrible and awful. It’s all gone to shit.’ Then I’d [consider], ‘But if you think about it, the stars are really far away,’ then you try to imagine the world from the stars. Then you sort of zoom in and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s this tiny little character there for a fragment of time worrying about X.’
Looking up at the stars and thinking about our place in the cosmos doesn't come with a price tag. If you can see the sky it's accessible, and you don't need to do anything to turn the stars on. You don't even need to travel. All you need is a clear enough day and the motivation to go or look outside.
Like Tim Ferriss says, "The effects are disproportionate to the effort". The stars are one of nature's finest beauties and they're just out there waiting for us to admire them.
Enjoy more from me
- Retreat into my new book, Your Life in Bloom: Finding Your Path and Your Courage, Grounded in the Wisdom of Nature.
- I'm also the author of Mountain Song: A Journey to Finding Quiet in the Swiss Alps, a book about my time living alone by the mountains.
- If you love books, are feeling a little lost right now, and would love some gentle comfort and guidance, join The Sanctuary, my seven-day course to rebalance your life.


In 0xUniverse players build spaceships, explore the galaxy, and colonize planets. Players must extract resources and carry out research allowing to conquer the remotest corners of the galaxy. Players can also contribute to the story and unravel the mystery of the universe. Every planet within the 0xUniverse is a digital collectible with a unique design and resources. With a finite number of planets to be discovered, the value of those richer in resources and population will increase over time. Enjoy the returns of your galactic investments as you play!
in 0xUniverse players build spaceships, explore the galaxy and colonize planets. You can buy, trade and sell collectibles in 0xUniverse.Players have ownership of their planets and spaceships forever.
In their own words
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Time occupies a pivotal role in the functioning of this Universe. Its importance is often understated and lost in clichés such as ‘Time and tide waits for no man’. We all know that most events in our daily life occur on the basis of time. From the ubiquitous sunrise to the birth of a baby, everything hinges on the passage of time. There is no aspect in this cosmos that does not rely on time.
Every major civilization developed a method of measuring time at various points in history. The hourglass and the sundial were amongst the most ingenious of solutions. Modern science has given us the atomic clock, powered by nuclear energy and is said to the most precise time keeping device in history. Yet, plotting the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars has always provided the most reliable methods of measuring time. Using these tools, man has always tried to guess the age of this Universe, the starting seconds of the Big Bang and even guess the time when ‘Time’ began!
The Bhagwatam gives us an accurate account of time measurement. Starting with the smallest unit of time, they reveal a journey of unimaginable proportions, leading us all the way to the age of the Universe.
The smallest particle in the Universe is a Paramanu. It is invisible to the naked eye and is a sub-atomic particle. It is impossible to divide, dissect or destroy a Paramanu. A Paramanu retains its original state / personality till it combines forces with another Paramanu.
2 Paramanus = 1 Anu (an atom)
3 Anus = 1 Trasarenu (visible to the naked eye, in sunshine)
3 Trasarenus = Truti (8/13,500th of a second)
The time taken by the Sun (or its rays) to travel through 3 Trasarenus is called a Truti.
100 Truti = Vedh
The Chaitanya Charitavali reveals that 300 Trutis make a Bodh and 3 Bodhs make a Lav.
3 Vedh = 1 Lav (8/45th of a second)
3 Lav = 1 Nimesh (8/15th of a second)
3 Nimesh = 1 Kshan (1.6 seconds)
5 Kshan = Kashta
15 Kashta = 1 Laghu (approx. 2 minutes)
15 Laghu = 1 Ghadi (also called Nadika)
2 Ghadi = Muhurth (approx. one hour)
6 or 7 Ghadi = Pahar (3 hours to 3 and a half hours)
The length of a day and the night keeps varying according the solstice in which the Sun is currently in. Hence, the no .of hours in a day keep changing, depending on whether it is a long day or a short day.
8 Pahars = 1 Day and 1 Night (a full cycle of 24 hours)
7 Days / Nights = 1 Saptah (1 week)
15 days = 1 Paksh
A lunar month is divided into 2 Pakshas, of 15 days each. They are called Shukla Paksha (light half) and Krishna Paksha (dark half). It depicts the passage of time between new moon and full moon (waxing or shukla paksha) and then between the full moon and the new moon (waning or krishna paksha).
2 Pakshas = 1 month
2 months = 1 Ritu
3 Ritu = 1 Ayan
2 Ayans = 1 year
Uttarayan and Dakshinayan split a year into two equal halves. Uttarayan, known as the ‘Summer Solstice’ in the western world, marks the transition of the Sun from south to north (Tropic of Cancer), in the Northern Hemisphere. The beginning of Uttarayan is celebrated as Sankranti, in January and generally ends in July.
Dakshinayan, popularly known as the ‘Winter Solstice’ for the people of the Northern Hemisphere, marks the beginning of the transition of the Sun from north to south, towards the Tropic of Capricorn.
The two Ayans make for one full movement of the Sun from, north to south and then south to north. 1 human year constitutes a day and a night for the Devtas (Demigods). Uttarayan is the day and Dakshinayan is the night.
Endless cycle of time
The Vedas mention that creation and destruction is a cyclic phenomenon and eternal. The basic classification of time has 4 yugas.
Satyug = 1,728,000 years (4000 Devta years)
Tretayug = 1,296,000 years (3000 Devta years)
Dwaparyug = 864,000 years (2000 Devta years)
Kaliyug = 432,000 years (1000 Devta years)
The passage of each yug denotes a progressive degradation of human, moral and spiritual values. People in Satyug are very pious and spiritually evolved. Violence, crime and other negative characteristics are almost non-existent. The same cannot be said of the people in Kaliyug (the current age that started about 5100 years ago).
A full cycle of 4 yugas takes 4,320,000 years (4.32 Million years) to complete. This is known as Chaturyugi or Chaukdi. The ‘transition period’ between two yugas is known as Sandhya and Sandhyansh. At the beginning of every yug, the passage of a defined number of years is called Sandhya and the transition period at the end of that yug is called Sandhyansh.
This cycle of 4 yugas is also known as one ‘Divya Yuga’, or the passage of 12000 Devta years.
When 71 cycles of the 4 yugas are complete, a manvantar is said to have passed. A manvantar takes approximately 306,720,000 years or 308.57142 million years to complete. A partial destruction of the Universe takes place at the end / beginning of every manvantar.
The passage of 14 manvantars is called kalp. This constitutes 1 day of Lord Brahma’s life!
The total time elapsed in a kalp is approximately 4,320,000,000 years or 4.32 Billion years. This is equal to 1000 Chaukdis or 1000 ‘Divya Yugas’.
An equal amount of time (4.32 Billion years) constitutes Lord Brahma’s night. When each day in Lord Brahma’s life comes to a close, the earth planet and the three celestial adobes (Bhu, Bhuv and Swah) enter a transition stage. The Sun and The Moon cease to exist. This is called as Kalp Pralaya. The complete Universe as we know it merges into Lord Brahma during his night. When the night (4.32 Billion years) passes and a new day dawns, Lord Brahma manifests the Universe in exactly the same stage as it was before they merged into his form.
1 year of Lord Brahma’s life is 3,110,400,000,000 years or 3.11 trillion years.
100 years of Lord Brahma’s life equals 311,040,000,000,000 years 311. 04 trillion years.
The lifespan of Brahma is identical with the lifespan of this universe. After 100 years of Lord Brahma’s lifespan, the complete Universe is dissolved. This event is known as Maha Pralay, when nothing except the Supreme God exists. Everything merges (not destroyed or terminated) into the Supreme and lies in a dormant state till God manifests them again to begin the endless cycle of life and destruction.
What time is it now?
According to the Vedic scriptures, we are now in the first day of the second half of the life of Lord Brahma (he is now 50). Fifty years of Lord Brahma’s life is called Parardh.
Within this current day (kalp) of Lord Brahma, we are in the seventh manvantar (of Vaivasvata Manu), in the 28th cycle of the 4 yugas. In the 28th cycle, we have completed the 3 yugas, Satyug, Tretayug, Dwaparyug. Kaliyug started just over 5000 years ago.
In this way, it is clearly established in the Vedas that life and time ride on an endless and eternal cycle of yuga, manvantar and kalp. There is no end.