Live Space Stuff Notification Thread

Well, that officially was the most exciting launch and splashdown I have ever seen, still can't believe what I saw.

I have been watching videos on the history of earth for weeks now, so I’m now a professionally qualified expert on the subject of life on Mars. It is still somewhat exciting that water exists on the planet, but considering how many billions of years it took for life to come into existence on Earth, I find it hard to believe life ever existed on Mars, beyond multicellular organisms. That makes me sad, but it’s still fascinating to have a neighbouring planet that could have sustained life if circumstances had been even slightly different.

Sorry. That has very little to do with that video. I just needed to share my thoughts on the kind of waffle I’ve been watching when I’ve struggled to sleep recently.

I do believe life could take hold in very extreme environments and maybe even live and breath off of something other than Oxygen, but it’s been eye opening to see just how long it tasks for life to take hold, and then evolve, and how quickly things can be undone or reset by things like solar storms sweeping through a solar system or exploding stars. Things that are actually incredibly common in the universe.

I had a slight panic when I realised our planet is well into the latter half of its life, not in terms of age, but in terms of how long it could reasonably sustain life. And then I realised it’s still a good 300-400 million years away. And then I remembered humans rarely live to be 100 years old and felt even worse.

If gods were real and I could be one, there’d be no heaven or reincarnation. Instead, you’d all enter spectator mode and fly around the universe, going backwards and forwards in time, watching everything that ever happened unfold forever.

Another interesting pop-sci article from CNN:

us.cnn.com/2024/06/13/science/dyson-spheres-alien-life-evidence-scn/index.html

Dark matter breakthrough?

us.cnn.com/2024/06/17/science/black-holes-dark-matter-scn/index.html

A new black hole:

www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/18/astronomers-detect-sudden-awakening-black-hole-1m-times-bigger-sun

Kerbal is more realistic than we thought.

Thought this update on the Starliner situation would be good to share. What started as an 8 day mission might turn into a 8 month mission. Basically Boeing thinks it’ll be fine to de-orbit, Nasa thinks otherwise, the guy that has to make the final decision personally had to endure a ballistic re-entry in a soyouz, even the upcoming presidential elections factor into this.

I’m just wondering what the two astronauts think about all this. I mean, some extra time up there must be great, but only up to a point. What about the families that don’t get a say in this?

Most likely outcome would be we’d get ejected from the solar system, and watch our nitrogen and oxygen snow down on us as we enter an endless night.

I live for this kind of craziness.