Gravity’s Rainbow By NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

From the invention of wireless to Radio Broadcast to Space

The word radio was coined in 1907 after a decade of furious activity to discover the mechanism for wireless transmission.  A decade earlier, French physicist Édouard Branly coined the term radioconductor to describe a means of wireless transmission.  He based his term on the verb radiate which ultimately came from the Latin word radius meaning the spoke of a wheel, a ray or beam of light.  The word radio was first used by itself in a 1907 article by Lee De Forest. It was used five years later by the Navy to distinguish it from other wireless technologies and entered common usage in the next decade.  Radio technology advanced so quickly that a little over 50 years later on November 16, 1974, scientists broadcast the first interstellar radio message out to the stars, a program that later became known as METI, the Message to Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. To date, only 9 messages have been transmitted by a variety of organizations:

{The Morse Message (1962)}

Arecibo message (1974)

Cosmic Call 1 (1999)

Teen Age Message (2001)

Cosmic Call 2 (2003)

Across the Universe (2008)

A Message From Earth (2008)

Hello From Earth (2009)

RuBisCo Stars (2009)

Wow! Reply (2012) 

The first radio message, known as the Morse Message, does not technically belong on this list as the Russians directed the message to Venus, and thus the primary mission was not Interstellar.  The message targets vary in distance from the very short (the majority of targets are under 100 light years away) to the very far, including the Arecibo Message, which targets the M13 globular cluster 24,000 light years away.  

While there have been some dissenting voices who argue that ‘revealing’ our location to enemy or hostile alien civilizations is ill-advised at best, most scientific consensus agrees that due to the physical restrictions on speed and travel (as currently understood) we are in no danger of imminent attack.  While the Arecibo Message won’t reach its target for another 25,000 years or so, the first of the other messages should arrive by 2029.  Other scientist point out that our current terrestrial radio and television broadcasts represent their own METI signal and thus we have no need to fund additional broad- or narrow-cast messages.  

Image of the Arecibo Radio Telescope courtesy Marius Strom under a Creative Commons 3.0 share alike license.  

Image of the Arecibo Message of 1679 bits in the public domain.  

Important science info guys.

Welcome to….DEVONIAN PARK. Please don’t tap the glass (the dunks are very sensitive).

the red eyeshine of the alligator occurs when light enters its eyes, passes through the rods (light receptors) and cones (color receptors) of the retina, strikes a membrane behind the retina called a tapeatum, and is then reflected back through the eye to the light source. most of the animals with eyeshine are, like alligators, night hunters who must make use of limited light. photos by larry lynch and david moynahan

sauropod emojis, as rated by a palaeontology student

apple:

not a bad start here overall! this is recognisably intended as a brachiosaurid, and the skull shape and overall profile are pretty good (though they look a bit juvenile-ish). points off, though, for the inaccurate hands - rather than elephantine columns, they were more shaped like lima beans in cross-section. yes, really. they also only had one claw per hand (it was on the thumb). also points off for having the external fleshy nostril located on the dome of the skull; while this is the position of the bony external nostril, there is evidence that the fleshy nostril was probably located at the tip of the snout. its dead eye haunts me

score: 7/10 solid attempt

google:

google clearly went for a cartoonier approach, and to my view it served them well. still recognisably a brachiosaur - the shape of the skull and overall proportions make it resemble Europasaurus, a type of dwarf sauropod that lived on an island in what is now eastern europe. which immediately ups its score in my book. however, it falls victim to the same issues with elephantine hands as did the apple one, and as such i can’t give it a perfect score.

score: 9/10 friendly!

microsoft:

this emoji cleverly avoids any scientific inaccuracies by being extremely cartoony. i like the use of single colours rather than gradients. a little too simple for my tastes though. i can’t tell what find of sauropod, if any, it was intended to be - a brachiosaur, because of the upright neck? a mamenchisaur, maybe? i have little to work with.

score: 6/10 just too vague

samsung:

i don’t like her at all. clearly a brachiosaur - sensing a common theme - but something about it is just unpleasant to me. the body seems too fat, the limbs too short, the tail too noodly, the head too pointy. also messes up the hands again.

score: 3/10. please leave.

whatsapp:

at last, an emoji that bucks the brachiosaur trend!! this is clearly not a brachiosaur. in fact, it looks like a possible Cetiosaurus-type deal. whatever it is, it’s charming. the nostrils are at the end of the snout as they should be and - is it? - can it be? - it is! the hands are anatomically correct! each clearly has one claw, located on the thumb, and though we can’t see well, they don’t appear to be elephantine. i love them a lot.

score: 10/10 only shooting stars break the mold - oh god im so sorry i shouldve phrased that differently–

twitter:

a classic. what it lacks in detail it makes up in simplicity. it has pleasant lines and an appealing silhouette. it’s extremely vague and not based off of any real genus, and the tail is far too short, but for some reason this doesn’t bother me too much. 

score: 8/10. exquisite

facebook:

hm. hmm. a lot of anatomical though was clearly put into this; overall the body form looks like a plausible sauropod. the proportions look a little weird, sure, but that seems to be perspective - after all, most sauropods were gigantic beings. beefy boys, if you will. its nostrils, upon close inspection, are correctly placed; however, its hands and feet are all messed up. i guess the real conundrum for me is that it seems to be a mish-mash of sauropods - remove the braciosaur-like domed skull, and it would be a great fit for an Apatosaurus. 

score: 8/10 i’m conflicted

joypixels

what in the hell is joypixels? and what in the hell is this? i just…the hands and feet are plantigrade, meaning that the ankles touch the ground, when actual sauropods were digitigrade - walking on their toes. the shoulder and hip muscles aren’t there, and instead the limbs are just awkwardly connected to the body. it reminds me of a turtle, and not in a good way.

score: 4/10. uninspired and dull

openmoji:

they didnt try. nor will i.

score: 0/10 make an effort

emojidex

every emojidex emoji i have ever seen has just been awful. this is no different. this looks like a stereotypical loser from a meme, but as a dinosaur. the contrast between the decently moderate level of artistic detail put in and the blatant disinterest towards making it look like an animal is staggering. just awful.

score: -3/10 i just cant care enough about it to rate it lower

emojipedia:

excuse me? what the fuck? what the fuck is this? this is the main character from the low-budget ripoff of the good dinosaur. the head looks like a Corythosaurus  and the body looks like barney in leapfrog stance. the gradients just make me feel a little sick. it’s awful. look at the hindlimbs and tell me that any love was put into drawing this. it’s like how a dinosaur would be drawn on tom and jerry but like, the bad charmless ones made in the 90s that were trying hard to emulate the originals. the hands look like green snowboots.

score: -500/10 i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you 

I am so grateful that this thing is fucking extinct.

I would never have been able to tolerate having the job of creating this 3D model.

THIS IS WHAT MY WORST NIGHTMARE LOOKS LIKE.

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

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

Just fucking look at them!

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

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

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

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

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

Scientists Stunned By a Neanderthal Hybrid Discovered in a Siberian Cave

Okay, the title of The Atlantic’s article might be a little click-bait-y. But the discovery is truly remarkable. A new bone has been analyzed from the already-famous cave in Russia, and it belonged to, per DNA analysis, the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father.  

A rendered view of the night sky from a planet in a globular cluster. Source: Reddit

Europa and Jupiter from Voyager 1