“Some asteroids may die before ever reaching the sun:
Scientists have long-thought that asteroids end their lives in the solar system by making a final death-dive into the sun, but a new study suggests that at least some space rocks appear to disintegrate before ever coming close to the star.”
Sorry, buddies. Close your eyes before you hit home.
Just look at it as the sun refusing to take asteroids for a competitive advantage. Way to go, sun!
This is simultaneously the best and worst comment. If I could take back my thumbs up and give it back to you a thousand times in a row I would.
From the writeup on Mashable: “It looks like darker asteroids are more likely to break up before reaching the sun than bright ones, so those dark space rocks may have a different composition than others in the solar system.” Big light-colored star selectively destroying asteroids of color– problematic.
I am still sad about Pluto.
Also, I finished my work at 10:30 and am just pretending to look at spreadsheets for the rest of the day. Counting down to the open thread!
I wish they’d post more hate mail from third graders on the PBS website. I found reading them made me feel better. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/hate-mail-plut…
I WOULD READ THAT ALL DAY
“Please write back, but not in cursive because I can’t read in cursive.” THE BEST
“We’re sorry about giving you mean letters saiing we love Pluto but not you. I’m very sorry. it’ll be ok.”
EVEN MORE THE BEST
RIGHT?! I love angry notes from children.
You can always move to my home state of New Mexico! In 2007, the state legislature passed a bill declaring that Pluto is too a planet, and that the IAU may collectively go play in traffic.
Although the wording in the bill is kind of confusing, and it might actually state that Pluto is a planet only when it’s nighttime in New Mexico and Pluto is above the horizon. I am neither a lawyer nor an astronomer, so I can’t make a final ruling on that.
On the one hand this TERRIFIES me as someone who has written a lot about people’s collective refusal to roll with and understand scientific developments is a big problem (even if the logic behind the demotion was… not… great, and nomenclature in astronomy is a hot mess sometimes, anyway), but on the other I’m just delighted as a human that New Mexico went “nah, we’re still gonna honor Pluto, we have the legal power to do this thing.”
“Fuck it, Pluto’s still a thing.”
fuck on that
Indeed. Fuck, as you say, on that.
Music video: Clare and the Reasons, “Pluto”.
Perhaps I’m Your Moon by Jonathan Coulton will help cheer you up. Charon + Pluto, BFFs.
“Sad about space” is one of my most familiar emotions. I once cried while watching a Science Channel show about what could (maybe! potentially!) be on distant planets because I knew that I would never have the chance to actually go to these planets.
I did quite a bit of astrophysics in college and one day even though I had seen it dozens-hundreds of time the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field just brought me to tears when I really knew what it meant that they were all entire galaxies.
SERIOUSLY. There’s just so much out there and it goes so deep. I can’t help but feel overwhelmed, with an undertone of grief for all that I will never see or know.
“There is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done.”
AKA started bawling my eyes out in the first minute of the LIon KIng for this very reason.
Let’s all take a moment to thank France Córdova for her work when she was NASA Chief Scientist in making sure that Hubble images are made publicly available.
I admit that I like her at least in part because she got her undergrad degree in English, wrote and novel and a cookbook, became a guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine, and THEN thought “astronomy is pretty cool, maybe I’ll do that.”
Although I am sentimental, I refuse to get upset over rocks.
More pathos for me then.
Even if they can smell what you’re cooking?
Do you have a heart of stone? No, clearly not.
“Sad about space” has its own spot on my “Wheel of Emotions,” right next to “Excited to see a puppy walking down the very same street as me.”
Feelings and space: I recently read an article about how, once all the stars in the universe are extinguished, whatever intelligent life remains might find a way to live on planets orbiting black holes. And I was like, Well that's such a relief, we just bought ourselves a few billion more years.
People who get sad about Pluto mostly make me feel bad for Haumea, Makemake, Eris, and Ceres. What, you think they're not good for Pluto? ARE THEY NOT GOOD ENOUGH?
Yeah, screw that. Eris is just as good as Pluto and deserves the same recognition.
“Astrophysicists remain puzzled by a mysterious arrowhead-shaped object which appears to facilitate the destruction of asteroids.”
A billion years is such a long time though. Such a very very long long time. A billion years ago life on Earth was mostly stromatolites and had only just evolved sex. Plants are only half a billion years old.
Humans aren't going to be around for even one billion years, let alone outlast the sun
Humans aren't going to be around for even one billion years, let alone outlast the sun
Well not with that attitude!