We finally have a close-up image of Pluto

[amazinblue82]

Yet you have ½ the South going to their graves absolutely convinced the Earth is 6,000 years old and two people popped up out of nowhere...

cant follow you there on that one commando1 but I do understand your observation .

that topic makes for interesting AND combustible conversation depending on who's in it. and the discussion always polarizes "the camps" too .. then every gets mad and dialogue over and nobody's minds have changed/opened either way.

BUT, if you havent, we can vicariously watch the late Christopher Hitchens (a well known atheist) debate ANY religious figure (videos all over YouTube). always interesting is all i can say.

a forum like this i stay away from religion, race and gender, capital punishment, social security reform, the unborn, and who the next president is gonna be

 

[commando1]

Stick in the mud...

 

[commando1]

How do you feel about kitties? That's all that matters to me.

 

[Tink]

And throwing millions and millions of dollars at all this benefits humanity how?
Now that we spent a gillion dollars to confirm that, yep, just we we suspected, it's a big rock, what is our ROI on that.
And please, dont give me any of that "spinoff technology" BS...

That question could have asked many times throughout history yet we explored. Could we find a closer way to Asia by voyaging west instead of east when we thought the earth was flat? We couldn't get high enough up to see it was not flat. It isn't a matter of ROI, its a matter of exploration and finding what we didn't know about.

 

[commando1]

That question could have asked many times throughout history yet we explored. Could we find a closer way to Asia by voyaging west instead of east when we thought the earth was flat? We couldn't get high enough up to see it was not flat. It isn't a matter of ROI, its a matter of exploration and finding what we didn't know about.

All the exploration on Earth was done primarily for financial reasons, the expansion of countries.
We're subsidizing now a quatrillion zillion dollars the first guy that extracts and sells Boolchitonium118 from Saturn.

 

[Fratzog]

I will always support the advancement of science. Here is another area that is intriguing.

Excitement grows as Large Hadron Collider hints at new particle

 

[Tink]

We have some un-f*cking to do to our own planet. Maybe direct some smart minds and a couple billion to the oceans.

The pacific gyre is a disgusting problem. People around the planet have run out of places to put their garbage so they tow it out to sea in hopes that it will disappear. Organics do disappear but in-organics do not it seems. Yet, we have launched the space craft and it has traversed the solar system and just happened to flyby Pluto and photograph it and send the images back to us so, I intend to enjoy that incredible feat of engineering. Had it missed by just a little bit, we would not have seen them and that was one hell of a long shot from here.

 

[Tink]

All the exploration on Earth was done primarily for financial reasons, the expansion of countries.
We're subsidizing now a quatrillion zillion dollars the first guy that extracts and sells Boolchitonium118 from Saturn.

I think prospecting and exploration are different.

 

[Tink]

I will always support the advancement of science. Here is another area that is intriguing.

Excitement grows as Large Hadron Collider hints at new particle

Me too but some of it just soars over my head. My mathematics understanding just too poor to "get" what they are discovering in particle physics. Talk about investments though, they spend the big bucks and I hope it for a starship engine and not for an end all weapon.

 

[Tink]

Long story short, a group of astronomers met 8-10 years ago and decided WHAT a planet is (enough gravity to be round, goes around the sun, and clears its orbital path of every other object). Pluto fails the third criteria, so the group decided it was a Kuiper Belt object and viola now the solar system has EIGHT planets instead of the NINE when Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930.

I understand it now. Pluto is a frozen gas ball 17% the size of our moon. Thanks for seeding the thought. It makes sense. It has enough mass to condense into a sphere and frozen enough to have impact craters. It looks like a rock.

 

[65 500]

Stick in the mud...

Good point, he forgot sexual orientation.

 

[amazinblue82]

How do you feel about kitties? That's all that matters to me.

what not to like? kitties are great!

 

[amazinblue82]

I will always support the advancement of science. Here is another area that is intriguing.

Excitement grows as Large Hadron Collider hints at new particle

They found the Higgs Boson - finally. And now the next big discovery may be at hand. Great article.

The LHC is a magnificent machine, an engineering marvel ... and these folks keep filling in the "Standard Model" (all the particles - bosons and fermions - that make up everything in this THIS Universe) of Particle Physics.

and the Standard Model is only 5% of everything they think is IN this Universe (wanna get a headache, check out Brane Theory and the "multiverse")...most of the Universe is hidden from us (principally "dark" energy and "dark" matter -- called that because know its there but we can't see it and it makes up 95% of the Universe).

We gotta lot to learn. And its worth learning about to me... a tradeoff i say "Yes" to.

Yep , it cost $9 Billion to build the LHC (a LOT of countries put money in and continue fund its annual operations) -- "pocket change" in grand scheme of what the World spends money on.

Anyway, lots of Nobel Prizes coming from folks working in around the LHC. No telling what good things are coming in the future because humanity made THIS investment in learning new things.

 

[commando1]

Now the LHC I understand. This thing could change everything in the future from energy to medicine.

 

[67-Fury]

Stick in the mud...

is that a Gay Slur?

 

[commando1]

is that a Gay Slur?

You are terrible...

stick-in-the-mud
noun
informal

1. a person who is dull and unadventurous and who resists change.
   synonyms: old man with a hat, (old)fogey, conservative, fossil, troglodyte, museum piece, fuddy-duddy, square, stuffed shirt, dinosaur,throwback
   "her fun-loving boyfriend had become her stick-in-the-mud husband"

 

[sixtyf]

Fake. Done in a TV studio....

It's '69 all over again

When I left school in the 80's I could calculate the angle of deflection as light from the sun passed by a planet or other large mass, but I couldn't then and still can't figure out now why no one else has ever landed on the moon ( Earths moon ).
I feel that the 'Bransons' and 'Trumps' of the world would surely have been there for a champagne breakfast if it was at all possible....

 

[detmatt]

Trump wouldn't do it because there's nothing in it for him.

 

[commando1]

Memo to self: If visiting Detroit, do not talk politics...

 

[70bigblockdodge]

Trump wouldn't do it because there's nothing in it for him.

He could be President of the moon, then tell us we are all stupid for still living on earth, and he might be partially right. Hmmmm.
Stan I think your 50% estimate is a little low.