The Random Image Thread (keeping it PG-13 at the worst)

[Kirk]

Guess it's what you have to do when you can't afford explosive demolition. The shovel operator sure has balls.

Or where one dare not use explosives. With all the other buildings in the background, that may be more the issue. Certainly it was the deciding factor where I saw a slightly smaller shovel doing similar work. In my case the shovel just whittled the building down from about 12 stories to around 4. Thereafter a wrecking ball finished it off. There was a relatively wide (about 30 ft) periphery cordoned off where the concrete chunks fell.

[maurvir]

[maurvir]

[TOS]

Guess it's what you have to do when you can't afford explosive demolition. The shovel operator sure has balls.

My first thought ws, "How'ed they get it up there?"
My second thought was, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuk!"

i think we know the only way he's getting down: by doing his goddam job

[maurvir]

[maurvir]

[jkahless]

Turkish coffee?

[maurvir]

[maurvir]

[maurvir]

[Warin]

Turkish coffee?

That's the way an old Turkish lady in Cyprus made me coffee for three days in a row, so it's gotta be turkish.

I kept going to her cafe even after I discovered a Starbucks a few blocks away. And in spite of my curiosity, I didn't try the McDonalds in the building across a small sidewalk from the Starbucks.

[Geesie]

[TOS]

the ceres bright spots, up closer

[Kirk]

Neat

[Kirk]

[DEyncourt]

Movie poster deliberately displays 2-star review from the Guardian:

[DukeofNuke]

Nice outfit, Geesie.
Where'd you wear that to? Your Baptism?

[dv]

Well, at least the sword didn't break and he's got all his fingers.

Youtube - lowering expectations since 2006.

[Kirk]

[maurvir]

[maurvir]

[user]

I like it.

[dv]

You mean people actually leave those boots on instead of cutting them off? They drive me nuts.

[Kirk]

You mean people actually leave those boots on instead of cutting them off? They drive me nuts.

Great design Cisco!

[ukimalefu]

You mean people actually leave those boots on instead of cutting them off? They drive me nuts.

Great design Cisco!

Yes Pancho!

[obvs]

You mean people actually leave those boots on instead of cutting them off? They drive me nuts.

Those things are one of the major reasons I keep scissors at my desk.

[TOS]

i saw that story and was blown away

imagine being able to see individual solar systems, planets in that galaxy

that's a hell of a long time for evolution to tinker and tweak ...

[Kirk]

i saw that story and was blown away

imagine being able to see individual solar systems, planets in that galaxy

that's a hell of a long time for evolution to tinker and tweak ...

I was more amused how it affects our understanding of the 'Dark Ages'. Supposedly there should not be any visible galaxies from that long ago. The hydrogen was not supposed to be ionized yet. Ionization of the diffuse hydrogen cloud spread around the universe being required for light to travel any significant distance. Since we can see a galaxy, that means the hydrogen was ionized in at least that one area. The ionized bubble had to be big enough the light didn't run into nonionized hydrogen before the 'Dark Ages' ended for the rest of the universe. They'll have to modify the theory.

Though yeah, if life got started that long ago, they certainly should have been able to populate their galaxy by now. Not that we can see their galaxy as it is now to check.

[DEyncourt]

i saw that story and was blown away

imagine being able to see individual solar systems, planets in that galaxy

that's a hell of a long time for evolution to tinker and tweak ...

I was more amused how it affects our understanding of the 'Dark Ages'. Supposedly there should not be any visible galaxies from that long ago. The hydrogen was not supposed to be ionized yet. Ionization of the diffuse hydrogen cloud spread around the universe being required for light to travel any significant distance. Since we can see a galaxy, that means the hydrogen was ionized in at least that one area. They'll have to modify the theory.

Though yeah, if life got started that long ago, they certainly should have been able to populate their galaxy by now. Not that we can see their galaxy as it is now to check.

Yeah, estimates are that this galaxy would be about 45 billion light years from Earth AT THIS MOMENT due to the expansion of the universe.

Understand that views like the one Kirk posted are very much a time machine. Life (well, as we know it) would have been extremely unlikely back then because the stars inside that galaxy hadn't had enough time to significantly process the initial composition from the Big Bang of about 90% hydrogen, 9% helium and most of the remaining 1% being lithium. While much of that early lithium would get "cooked" relatively quickly by fusion in those early stars into heavier elements, contrast those numbers with the Sun's current composition of about 75% hydrogen, 23% helium, 1% oxygen and the remaining 1% assorted other elements mostly from the light end of the periodic table.

Any planets that might exist within this galaxy that we could "see" (if such were possible) are likely to be Jupiter-like gas- and ice-giants BUT without the interesting colored bits due to the relative lack of oxygen (for ice), carbon (for methane and other hydrocarbons) and nitrogen (for ammonia). Perhaps visually planets there would be more like Saturn without its rings (no ice) and its occasional storms, or like Neptune without its blue color (which is due to methane in its atmosphere removing most of the reflected red light).

[Kirk]

i saw that story and was blown away

imagine being able to see individual solar systems, planets in that galaxy

that's a hell of a long time for evolution to tinker and tweak ...

I was more amused how it affects our understanding of the 'Dark Ages'. Supposedly there should not be any visible galaxies from that long ago. The hydrogen was not supposed to be ionized yet. Ionization of the diffuse hydrogen cloud spread around the universe being required for light to travel any significant distance. Since we can see a galaxy, that means the hydrogen was ionized in at least that one area. They'll have to modify the theory.

Though yeah, if life got started that long ago, they certainly should have been able to populate their galaxy by now. Not that we can see their galaxy as it is now to check.

Yeah, estimates are that this galaxy would be about 45 billion light years from Earth AT THIS MOMENT due to the expansion of the universe.

Understand that views like the one Kirk posted are very much a time machine. Life (well, as we know it) would have been extremely unlikely back then because the stars inside that galaxy hadn't had enough time to significantly process the initial composition from the Big Bang of about 90% hydrogen, 9% helium and most of the remaining 1% being lithium. While much of that early lithium would get "cooked" relatively quickly by fusion in those early stars into heavier elements, contrast those numbers with the Sun's current composition of about 75% hydrogen, 23% helium, 1% oxygen and the remaining 1% assorted other elements mostly from the light end of the periodic table.

Any planets that might exist within this galaxy that we could "see" (if such were possible) are likely to be Jupiter-like gas- and ice-giants BUT without the interesting colored bits due to the relative lack of oxygen (for ice), carbon (for methane and other hydrocarbons) and nitrogen (for ammonia). Perhaps visually planets there would be more like Saturn without its rings (no ice) and its occasional storms, or like Neptune without its blue color (which is due to methane in its atmosphere removing most of the reflected red light).

Yeah, so let's speculate freely about giant intelligent blimps floating in the air of those gas giants. Still, given the nature of space-time, we cannot view that galaxy as it exists today to check how our speculation has evolved. Looking that far away we are also by necessity looking at the distant past.

[maurvir]

[DEyncourt]

More pics of Pluto and Charon downloaded from New Horizons:



The general gallery--which has all of the pics in download order--is here.

Here is the Bad Astronomer's always informative take on some of the additional details.

[TOS]

those images are spectacular ... the mission has been totally amazing

[Warin]

So amazing. Now we need a manned mission to Pluto to explore.

[user]

It'll be a strain just to make Mars. BTW, just saw Buzz Aldrin on The Nightly Show wearing a "Get Our Ass To Mars" t-shirt.

[Warin]

It'll be a strain just to make Mars. BTW, just saw Buzz Aldrin on The Nightly Show wearing a "Get Our Ass To Mars" t-shirt.

We really need sarcasm tags

[user]

I wanted to post about Buzz anyway.

[DEyncourt]

It'll be a strain just to make Mars. BTW, just saw Buzz Aldrin on The Nightly Show wearing a "Get Our Ass To Mars" t-shirt.

True, dat, on both points.

While the pics from New Horizons ARE gorgious and glorious especially considering that our very best images of Pluto before New Horizons were merely a simple disc about 6 pixels wide with SOME hints of color and differences in shading, Pluto is going to have to wait until MUCH longer after humanity has become a truly space-faring society with a considerable chunk of the population working in orbit and on the Moon and Mars, AND likely some breakthrough with fusion propulsion (much less just workable fusion reactors) that likely will not be safely bench-testable ON Earth (hmm--the idea just occurred to me: could looking for odd fusion by-products [perhaps a relatively high presence of lithium from the necessary incomplete "burning" of hydrogen fuel] from propulsion be a way to detect space-faring civilizations? I guess we'll have to wait until AFTER our own development of such propulsion).

And didn't you get the sense of high SQUEEE! from Larry Wilmore? He is a good interviewer and the comedic setup for his segment interview of Aldrin was kinda lame (quite frankly), but Wilmore's pure excitement more than made up for those shortcomings. He's a space nerd and proud of it.

[ukimalefu]

Mars south pole

[DukeofNuke]

He is soooo out!