Once I was made of stardust. Now I am made of flesh and I can experience our agreed-upon reality and said reality is exciting and beautiful and terrifying and full of interesting things to compile on a blog! / 27 / ENTP / they-them / Divination Wizard / B.E.y.O.N.D. department of Research and Development / scientist / science enthusiast / [fantasyd20 character]
162 posts
Latest Posts by in-pursuit-of-knowledge-blog - Page 5
X-ray binary (black hole devouring a star)
X-ray binaries are a class of binary stars that are luminous in X-rays. The X-rays are produced by matter falling from one component, called the donor (usually a relatively normal star), to the other component, called the accretor, which is very compact: a neutron star or black hole. The infalling matter releases gravitational potential energy, up to several tenths of its rest mass, as X-rays. (Hydrogen fusion releases only about 0.7 percent of rest mass.) The lifetime and the mass-transfer rate in an X-ray binary depends on the evolutionary status of the donor star, the mass ratio between the stellar components, and their orbital separation.
An estimated 1041 positrons escape per second from a typical low-mass X-ray binary.
source
animation
Flyover of Jupiters North Pole in Infrared via NASA https://ift.tt/2EM34s1
Robotic companions will never take the place of our furry best friends – but they can help us get them (and us) out of a jam! Test your robotic readiness by figuring out these futuristic scenarios.
I could find uses for this! and it’s strange and really neat!!!
(does anyone have the source?)
Glass of Supervicious Fluid
When you’re an umbrella jelly but you can never be dry 😓
But they never stop trying 💪
this is so rare!!! and it’s not albino, because its eyes are the usual color instead of pinkish- it’s the same gene that gives some moose white spots!
Nature spirit.
Nine relief printed original art greeting cards, each with a unique set of curios/specimens.
that must have taken so much resilience and deftness and i’m sure it was very intimidating to the attacker and I hope you were alright!!!
once i got shot with a crossbow, so i took the bolt out and stabbed the attacker with it
i think about that every godsdamned day
yes and that’s a happy fact
erasermic.png
Cotton Rat Skull
My first rat skull, found it in Florida all dried up next to our condo. Judging by the fur color, fur texture, and S shaped molars I THINK its a hispid cotton rat. There were a few of these little guys running around and they didn’t look like normal rats to me. But idk, there’s really no way for me to tell for certain just by skull measurements. I’m not quite that good at bone identification yet.
you: lich
me, an intellectual: spelleton
We should have, like … an event or a tag or something inspired by Magnus’s first duck carving where we’re encouraged to post art (visual, writing, handicrafts, music, whatever) that we’re nervous and uncertain about and then other people come in and say nice things about it.
1-800-ARE-YOU-SLAPPIN
honestly people can be so irritating about my collections. “why would you want that, it’s gross.” “why would you keep that, it’s toxic.” “why would you imprison that, it could kill everyone within a mile of here if it escaped.” ugh...
I may be a coward but I have this lovely intact eggshell to keep on my desk
@people who won't eat the eggshell
you are cowards and natural selection is coming for you
The Hunt for New Worlds Continues with TESS
We’re getting ready to start our next mission to find new worlds! The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will find thousands of planets beyond our solar system for us to study in more detail. It’s preparing to launch from our Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Once it launches, TESS will look for new planets that orbit bright stars relatively close to Earth. We’re expecting to find giant planets, like Jupiter, but we’re also predicting we’ll find Earth-sized planets. Most of those planets will be within 300 light-years of Earth, which will make follow-up studies easier for other observatories.
TESS will find these new exoplanets by looking for their transits. A transit is a temporary dip in a star’s brightness that happens with predictable timing when a planet crosses between us and the star. The information we get from transits can tell us about the size of the planet relative to the size of its star. We’ve found nearly 3,000 planets using the transit method, many with our Kepler space telescope. That’s over 75% of all the exoplanets we’ve found so far!
TESS will look at nearly the entire sky (about 85%) over two years. The mission divides the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will look at 13 of them in the southern sky during its first year before scanning the northern sky the year after.
What makes TESS different from the other planet-hunting missions that have come before it? The Kepler mission (yellow) looked continually at one small patch of sky, spotting dim stars and their planets that are between 300 and 3,000 light-years away. TESS (blue) will look at almost the whole sky in sections, finding bright stars and their planets that are between 30 and 300 light-years away.
TESS will also have a brand new kind of orbit (visualized below). Once it reaches its final trajectory, TESS will finish one pass around Earth every 13.7 days (blue), which is half the time it takes for the Moon (gray) to orbit. This position maximizes the amount of time TESS can stare at each sector, and the satellite will transmit its data back to us each time its orbit takes it closest to Earth (orange).
Kepler’s goal was to figure out how common Earth-size planets might be. TESS’s mission is to find exoplanets around bright, nearby stars so future missions, like our James Webb Space Telescope, and ground-based observatories can learn what they’re made of and potentially even study their atmospheres. TESS will provide a catalog of thousands of new subjects for us to learn about and explore.
The TESS mission is led by MIT and came together with the help of many different partners. Learn more about TESS and how it will further our knowledge of exoplanets, or check out some more awesome images and videos of the spacecraft. And stay tuned for more exciting TESS news as the spacecraft launches!
Watch the Launch + More!
Sunday, April 15 11 a.m. EDT - NASA Social Mission Overview
Join mission experts to learn more about TESS, how it will search for worlds beyond our solar system and what scientists hope to find! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
1 p.m. EDT - Prelaunch News Conference
Get an update on the spacecraft, the rocket and the liftoff operations ahead of the April 16 launch! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
3 p.m. EDT - Science News Conference
Hear from mission scientists and experts about the science behind the TESS mission. Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
4 p.m. EDT - TESS Facebook Live
This live show will dive into the science behind the TESS spacecraft, explain how we search for planets outside our solar system and will allow you to ask your questions to members of the TESS team.
Watch HERE.
Monday, April 16 10 a.m. EDT - NASA EDGE: TESS Facebook Live
This half-hour live show will discuss the TESS spacecraft, the science of searching for planets outside our solar system, and the launch from Cape Canaveral.
Watch HERE.
1 p.m. EDT - Reddit AMA
Join us live on Reddit for a Science AMA to discuss the hunt for exoplanets and the upcoming launch of TESS!
Join in HERE.
6 p.m. EDT - Launch Coverage!
TESS is slated to launch at 6:32 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Watch HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Something for my dad from the nature trade - a piece of Precambrian-era petrified wood! I thought he would enjoy it and he does, it’s a truly lovely little piece.
Academics
In popular culture: wear tweed/plaid/some sort of bland pattern; often in suits; pristine appearance, maybe with wild hair or ink stains; drink tea and coffee; constantly reading books for work and pleasure; erudite conversationalists; love what they do
Me: mostly wear sweatshirts and leggings with a messy bun because if no one needs to see me then screw getting into nice clothes; my blood is tea at this point; ink stains were surpassed long ago; spend a lot of time crying over theory texts and papers; eat a lot of ice cream and watch a lot of Netflix to avoid work; love what I do
What is America’s obsession with Bill Nye the Science Guy I once said in class that I had never seen it and this girl yelled YOU’VE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE and in 5 seconds flat half the class was screaming HOW COULD YOU HAVE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE while the other half chanted BILL BILL BILL BILL
reblog and tag the languages you speak/understand in order of proficiency!!
Stele depicting the Kassite goddess Lama. Circa 1307–1282 B.C. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
~Hasmonean
This slender-snouted crocodile skull in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Alcohol House was used to determine that each African region had a unique crocodile species. You can see this skull and its story on display at the new We Are Nature. Look for the Alcohol House media interactive in the gallery!
This post was originally posted on our curatorial assistant’s Instagram, which features specimens in the museum’s historic Alcohol House.
LiDAR continues to aid archaeologists by mapping ancient settlements in the Americas from the sky. Check out Dr. Fishers recent LiDAR research:
Did you know that Uranus was (accidentally) discovered on this day in 1781, the first planet to be discovered with the aid of a telescope? At first, British astronomer William Herschel thought the object in the sky to be a star or comet, but within two years, other astronomers showed it was a new planet orbiting the Sun. The ice giant is four times wider than the Earth and appears blue due to the methane in its atmosphere. Photo: NASA