Category Archives: Astronomy
REASON: “Happy Winter Solstice” / Freedom From Religion Foundation ☮
HUMANITY: “The Pale Blue Dot” / Carl Sagan ☮
Find the following transcript on, “The Folly of Human Conceits,” blog:
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Continue reading
CRITICAL THINKING: “Teaching Creationism is Child Abuse, and it Validates Ignorance” / Laurence M. Krauss ☮
ASTRONOMY: “Happy Winter Solstice” ☮
h/t: The Voice of Reason
THEORETICAL PHYSICS: “Dr. Michio Kaku:What Physics Has to Say about Free Will” ☮
SCIENCE – EXOPLANETOLOGY: “WOW: Closest Star to Our Sun Has a Habitable Planet” / Secular Talk / Kyle Kulinski ☮
In a discovery that has been years in the making, researchers have confirmed the existence of a rocky planet named Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our sun, according to a new study. It is the closest exoplanet to us in the universe.
MUSIC VIDEO FROM SPACE: “Space Oddity / PBS / NOVA” and “Revised Version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity” / Recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield / On-board the International Space Station
SCIENCE – ASTRONOMY: “Welcome to Jupiter!” / The Big Picture RT / Thom Hartmann ☮
Dr. Leroy Chiao PhD, Former NASA Astronaut & International Space Station Commander joins Thom. Earlier today – at 3:18 Greenwich Mean Time – NASAs “Juno” spacecraft successfully reached Jupiter and entered the gas giants orbit. Scott Bolton – principle investigator for the Juno mission described his relief when orbit was achieved – telling The Guardian that “There’s a mixture of tension and anxiety because this is such a critical manoeuvre … The rocket motor has to burn at the right time, in the right direction, for just the right amount of time.” It took the spaceship 5 years to make the 1.8 billion mile trip from Earth to Jupiter and The Juno probe is equipped with 29 sensors and 9 instruments that will study the planet for the next 20 months. The probe will be making a map of the planet before its instruments finally fail and the probe falls to Jupiter’s surface.
SCIENCE – ASTRONOMY: “Journey to Jupiter: NASA’s Juno Probe Enters Jupiter’s Orbit” / RT America / Marina Portnaya, and Simone Del Rosario ☮
After a five-year journey, NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft has successfully entered Jupiter’s orbit. The craft has already sent back some stunning photos of our solar system’s largest planet.