Micro-Outbursts from a Little Big Man

longlivesanfrancisco: Lombard Street Vertical

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:27:21 -0700

Lombard Street Vertical

ianbrooks: Science and Space Posters by Ron Guyatt Part of a...

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:12:55 -0700

Space Rocks by Ron Guyatt / posted by ianbrooks.me

Mountain of the Gods by Ron Guyatt / posted by ianbrooks.me

Science and Space Posters by Ron Guyatt

Part of a series for spacevidcast.com to help inspire and spread the Good Word of Science! Prints available at etsy.

Artist: Tumblr / Website / Facebook

liberalsarecool: The GOP hates students, loves their debt...

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:55:11 -0700

liberalsarecool:

The GOP hates students, loves their debt payments.

pxlbyte: Nostalgia “A little reminder to ourselves, telling us...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:08:33 -0700

pxlbyte:

Nostalgia

“A little reminder to ourselves, telling us that people might change but our essence, stays the same.”

- Charringo Pichardo

mikeypoo91: bjbreesy69: This. Is. Terrifying Wait… did they...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:03:40 -0700

mikeypoo91:

bjbreesy69:

This. Is. Terrifying

Wait… did they change the Nicki cover?

OHMYGOD IM TERRIFIED

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:14:30 -0700

sevenluck: Pokemorphs by =sevenluck

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:14:08 -0700

sevenluck:

Pokemorphs by =sevenluck

mothernaturenetwork: Service dog wears cap and gown at...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:02:49 -0700

mothernaturenetwork:

Service dog wears cap and gown at graduation

Bridget Evans’ service dog, Hero, attended all her classes, so she thought he deserved to graduate too.

Truth: Thoughts on the Yahoo! Thing

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:05:27 -0700

Truth: Thoughts on the Yahoo! Thing:

edwardspoonhands:

First, I love Tumblr and want to keep loving it. And yes, it is immediately terrifying to hear that Yahoo (which, from a lot of our perspectives, is a laughably backwards and culturally irrelevant company) is going to own Tumblr. I sympathize.

But there are a number of…

gay-men: Haha.

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:04:27 -0700

gay-men:

Haha.

we-are-star-stuff: If Earth Had a Ring Like Saturn Our planet...

Tue, 21 May 2013 13:02:26 -0700

we-are-star-stuff:

If Earth Had a Ring Like Saturn

Our planet is lucky enough to have a large moon orbiting not too far away, which makes for very pretty moonlit nights. But for spectacular skies it might almost be worth trading in our moon for a ring like Saturn’s.

In fact, the earth did once have a ring - as part of the formation of our moon, ironically enough. When the planet Thea crashed into the earth, a titanic amount of material was blown into space. This went into orbit around the earth, forming a ring until it all eventually coalesced into our present-day satellite. This only happened because the material was orbiting outside of earth’s Roche limit.

In 1848, the French mathematician Edouard Roche calculated that if a large satellite were to approach too closely to a planet, it would be torn apart by the planet’s gravitational forces. This happens because the gravitational attraction of a planet on a moon is not equal. The planet pulls more on the side of the moon closest to it and less on the side further away. If the moon gets too close, this unequal pull can become great enough to tear the moon apart. Every planet has what is called a Roche limit.

Some astronomers believe that Saturn’s rings are material that was unable to form into a moon because it lies within the planet’s Roche limit. The gravitational pull of Saturn prevents particles from clumping together to form a moon. Another idea popular among scientists suggests that during the time when Saturn was first forming, it had one or more moons just outside its Roche limit. The bigger a planet is, the more gravity it has. And the more gravity it has, the bigger its Roche limit is. So as Saturn grew larger, its Roche limit grew, too. The limit soon moved past the inner moons and these moons soon broke apart. The remnants of the destroyed moons eventually formed the magnificent rings we see today. There may still be large pieces of these ancient moons within the rings. They would be much smaller than their ancestors but a thousand times larger than a typical ring particle. Another theory suggests that a few hundred million years ago - at a time when the early ancestors of the dinosaurs were roaming Earth - Saturn may have had no rings at all. The rings formed when one or more small moons wandered too close to Saturn. When they got within the Roche limit, Saturn’s gravity ripped them apart. After millions of years of bumping against one another, the pieces of moon were ground into the tiny particles that form the rings today.

If we had rings in the same proportion to our planet that Saturn’s are to it, it is pretty easy to figure out what they would like like from different places on the earth. From the equator the rings would be passing directly overhead. Since you’d be looking in the same plane as the rings, all you would see is a bright line arching from horizon to horizon. Here is what the rings might look like from Quito, Ecuador:

If we travel just a little further north to Guatemala, the rings begin to spread across the sky. The earthlight illuminating the dark side of the moon is many times brighter than we are accustomed to, due to the increased sunlight being reflected from the rings.

From Washington, DC (at 38° latitude), the rings begin to sink below the horizon, though they would still be an awe-inspiring sight as they dominate the sky both day and night.

At the Arctic Circle, the rings barely reach above the horizon. Seen here from Nome, Alaska, the brilliant rings illuminate the barren landscape scarcely more than a full moon would. Unlike the sun or moon, however, the rings neither rise nor set… they are always visible, day or night, always in exactly the same place.

afronaut: physicsphysics: An interesting model of our solar...

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:06:47 -0700

afronaut:

physicsphysics:

An interesting model of our solar system’s path as it travels through space in the Milky Way.

Certainly a departure from usual models that show the Sun as a static object, which it certainly isn’t

I have been waiting for this picture to come back around for so long to show it to someone.