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Do you share a birthday with an astronaut? (no.61)
Were you following a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays? Did you share a birthday?! If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?! Or maybe, one of the 100+ additional astronauts has beaten you?! These astronauts have flown since this original list was pulled together. We have started listing…
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Space and science-related puns & jokes no. 66
Everyone loves a pune (or pun) or a joke. Here follows more space and science-related puns/jokes – enjoy or groan or meh. More to follow! __________________________________________________________________ How do you start a fight in space? “Comet me bro.”. __________________________________________________________________ PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can In the…
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Do you share a birthday with an astronaut? (no.60)
Were you following a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays? Did you share a birthday?! If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?! Or maybe, one of the 100+ additional astronauts has beaten you?! These astronauts have flown since this original list was pulled together. We have started listing…
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“A poet once said, “The whole universe is in a glass of wine.” We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood.” (This is a year of Feynman – week 34 of 52)
– Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 Feb 1988) From the Manhattan Project to the Challenger investigation, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman loved to shoot down what he called “lousy ideas.” Today, the world is awash in lousy ideas — so maybe it’s time to get some more Feynman in our…
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Space and science-related puns & jokes no. 65
Everyone loves a pune (or pun) or a joke. Here follows more space and science-related puns/jokes – enjoy or groan or meh. More to follow! __________________________________________________________________ The standard of jokes about entropy just aren’t what they used to be. __________________________________________________________________ PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and we can…
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Do you share a birthday with an astronaut? (no.59)
Were you following a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays? Did you share a birthday?! If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?! Or maybe, one of the 100+ additional astronauts has beaten you?! These astronauts have flown since this original list was pulled together. We have started listing…
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“Incidentally, psychoanalysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring.” (This is a year of Feynman – week 33 of 52)
– Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 Feb 1988) From the Manhattan Project to the Challenger investigation, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman loved to shoot down what he called “lousy ideas.” Today, the world is awash in lousy ideas — so maybe it’s time to get some more Feynman in our…
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Space and science-related puns & jokes no. 64
Everyone loves a pune (or pun) or a joke. Here follows more space and science-related puns/jokes – enjoy or groan or meh. More to follow! __________________________________________________________________ Last week I attended a lecture on Halley’s Comet. It went completely over my head. __________________________________________________________________ PS: I love coffee. BuyMeACoffee, leave a message with a date and time and…
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Do you share a birthday with an astronaut? (no.58)
Were you following a weekly list of forthcoming astronaut* birthdays? Did you share a birthday?! If not, perhaps it will be you who adds your name to the list?! Or maybe, one of the 100+ additional astronauts has beaten you?! These astronauts have flown since this original list was pulled together. We have started listing…
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“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is ‘mere’. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.” (This is a year of Feynman – week 32 of 52)
– Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 Feb 1988) From the Manhattan Project to the Challenger investigation, the physicist and Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman loved to shoot down what he called “lousy ideas.” Today, the world is awash in lousy ideas — so maybe it’s time to get some more Feynman in our…
Stargazing Guy
Connecting people to the Stars
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“I believe in evidence.”
– Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind (1997), (2 January 2 1920 – 6 April 1992) Scientist and science fiction author Asimov’s output of novels and books popularising and explaining science was prodigious. As a rationalist he often railed against superstitious and pseudoscientific beliefs that tried to pass themselves off as genuine science and had this…
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What is a light-year?
A light-year is a measure of distance – not time (or anything to do with Disney’s Toy Story). It’s used to indicate the distance to stars and galaxies. It’s the distance light travels in one year in a vacuum, which is about: – 4.2465 light-years OR 5.88 trillion miles OR 9.46 trillion kilometres Light travels…
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How far is that star?
Basically, far! The Sun is the closest (and brightest) star. It is about: – 93 million miles – 150 million kilometres The next closest star (Proxima Centauri) is invisible to the unaided human eye and you need to be in the Southern Hemisphere to see it with a telescope (it’s too dim to see with…
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Death rates from disasters have fallen over the last century.
Good news. Recent data indicates that natural disasters are NOT going to kill us all. The global death rate from all natural disasters (drought, floods, storms, earthquakes, wildfires, extreme temperatures, etc.) has fallen by more than 90% over the last century. The total number of deaths has fallen substantially, despite there being four times as…
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“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
– Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie (Marie Curie) (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934) She was a was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist. The first woman to win a Nobel Prize. The first person to win a Nobel Prize twice. The only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.…
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You Can Still Read NASA’s Deleted “First Woman” Graphic Novels
With thanks to Keith Cowing of NASAWatch.com Credit: https://nasawatch.com/education/you-can-still-read-nasas-deleted-first-woman-graphic-novels/ ____________________________________________________________________ The following is mainly taken from NASAWatch.com‘s page about this story. In 2021 NASA issued the first of two interactive comic books/graphic novels (“First Woman: Dream to Reality”) depicting young women dreaming of – and then training for – a future that would comprise the…
Stargazing Guy 