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

[DEyncourt]

A collection of interesting maps and graphics, like the names of countries that most closely match the state in terms of area:



The country names followed by "(number)" indicates that there are at least 2 states that match, so Greece is closest in area to each Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.

My search-fu has failed me, but I recall how someone was objecting to a (Boston?) school wanting to replace the Mercator projection for maps? Titled "Africa is much bigger than you think":

[ukimalefu]

[maurvir]

Ah, college...

[ukimalefu]

[dv]

18342144_1300277300093552_7096017190985125557_n.jpg

[DEyncourt]

18342144_1300277300093552_7096017190985125557_n.jpg

Speaking of perfectionist <ahem>: if that shot were from the Moon (which it couldn't be since the Earth would never appear so large except perhaps through a really odd telephoto lens effect), then from the Earth the Moon would be "oppositely" lit up meaning that the shaded part of the Earth would be the lit part of Moon as seen from the Earth. Apparently that landing location was close to the lunar north pole--none of the lunar landings were close to that (see below)--and close to the centerline of the nearside of the Moon which means that that location on the Moon should have been in the dark.

For example, take this shot from Apollo 11 while in orbit:



I'm pretty sure that the brownish land mass on the left side of the Earth is Australia, making north to the right in that picture.

BTW: to find that pic I passed a LOT of fake pics of the Earth supposedly as seen from an Apollo landing mission.

Compare that to where Apollo 11 landed:



You can estimate that the Eagle landed "soon" after local sunrise though with a two-week long daytime for any particular location on the Moon, Tranquility Base was a day or two after sunrise.

I'm just sayin'.

[DEyncourt]

Heh: #bowwowchallenge.

The rapper Bow Wow posted the pic on the left on Instagram supposedly of his ride parked next to a private jet, but the pic on the right is someone on a commercial flight showing Bow Wow on HIS flight shortly after the rapper's post.



Thus #bowwowchallenge:

[maurvir]

[ukimalefu]

[ukimalefu]

[ukimalefu]

[ukimalefu]

[user]

[Donkey Butter]

who's the green guy?

[maurvir]

who's the green guy?

Sully from Monster's Inc.

[user]

From an article in The Atlantic about how Pixar has ended up in never-ending sequel world now that the Mouse bought them. Didn't surprise me at all that something like that happened.

[ukimalefu]

From an article in The Atlantic about how Pixar has ended up in never-ending sequel world now that the Mouse bought them. Didn't surprise me at all that something like that happened.

SO WHERE'S MY INCREDIBLES SEQUEL!?

Sorry, uhm... I'd complain if the movies where bad, but they're not. Disney did NOT ruin Pixar, or Marvel, or Star Wars... IMHO... so far... (crosses fingers)

[user]

That's the one that has been sorely missing, I even had a hard time finding a copy on Blu-Ray.

[Pariah]

[TOS]

SO WHERE'S MY INCREDIBLES SEQUEL!?

coming out next year

[DEyncourt]

Tweet of tattoo cover-up.

[maurvir]

[ukimalefu]

[jkahless]

Most honest flight delay reason I've ever seen.

[DEyncourt]

"Russian Orthodox Leader Sprays Holy Water on Government Computers to Stop WannaCry Attack":

[Yori]

"Russian Orthodox Leader Sprays Holy Water on Government Computers to Stop WannaCry Attack":

Bloody fool. Everyone knows computers demand a blood sacrifice.

[TOS]

[dv]

How is babby get whiplash?

[dv]

[maurvir]

[Yori]

13179463_825906874179821_4880365939060395739_n.jpg

[DEyncourt]

New news on Tabby's Star: Tabby's Star has begun to dip in brightness:



That's already a drop of about 2% in brightness over about an hour.

[dv]

New news on Tabby's Star: Tabby's Star has begun to dip in brightness:



That's already a drop of about 2% in brightness over about an hour.

How has that star not exploded?

Or is there a close-orbiting gas giant in an eccentric orbit?

[DEyncourt]

New news on Tabby's Star: Tabby's Star has begun to dip in brightness:



That's already a drop of about 2% in brightness over about an hour.

How has that star not exploded?

The short answer is: "We don't know."

I've ventured a guess that what may be going on is that the star is going through a very short--meaning lasting only tens of thousands of years in over a 10+-billion-year lifespan--phase such as the transition from a hydrogen-fusing core to one that is fusing helium. Because that phase is so relatively short, we are very unlikely to see ANY stars going through it.

But that is only a guess.

Or is there a close-orbiting gas giant in an eccentric orbit?

We do know the answer to this: no. The thing about gas giants is that gases are highly compressible. By our current understanding one could add a LOT of mass--up to about 80 times that of Jupiter above which a "planet" will become at least a brown dwarf star meaning that it could fuse only deuterium and tritium but not regular hydrogen--into a gas giant but at most it will be about twice the cross-section of Jupiter.

If one were able to observe our Solar System along its plantary plane (and thus be able to see Jupiter crossing across the face of the Sun) from light years away, then Jupiter could account for about a 1% dip in the Sun's brighness during that occultation. The most that even the largest possible super-Jupiter could block would be about 2%.

On top of that: a close-orbiting gas giant would mean that we should have seen these dips on a regular basis of every X days. There have been years between these changes in brightness in Tabby's Star with no regularity of when they happened. Photographic records have shown that erratic changes in brightness have been happening over for at least a century (though no one took note of this until Tabetha Boyajian).

[TOS]

"it's not what it looks like, i swear"

[TOS]

[juice]

That took an abrupt turn.

[DEyncourt]

[snip]
We do know the answer to this: no. The thing about gas giants is that gases are highly compressible. By our current understanding one could add a LOT of mass--up to about 80 times that of Jupiter above which a "planet" will become at least a brown dwarf star meaning that it could fuse only deuterium and tritium but not regular hydrogen--into a gas giant but at most it will be about twice the cross-section of Jupiter.
[snip]

An update: a newly released study of red and brown dwarf stars finds that they can start fusing hydrogen at about 6.7% the mass of the Sun or around 70 times the mass of Jupiter.

This means that those brown dwarves which can fuse deuterium and tritium can have masses a bit lower than that BUT they will not be fusing those isotopes of hydrogen for very long--up to millions of years?--given that deuterium is about 0.02% of all hydrogen. While tritium is a short-lived isotope--half-life of 12 years--it can be rarely produced from alpha-particle fissioning from uranium and plutonium and their various by-products through radiation. By far most alpha particles will be helium-4 nuclei but a few per thousand will be tritium or helium-3 nuclei.

[user]

" Move here, move there..."

[ukimalefu]