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browngirl(Which I doubt is a real word.)
Today's APOD is especially beautiful. I really love 'Pillars of Creation', as may be seen in my icon, and other images of nascent stars. I wonder if our sun once burrowed its way out of a pillar like that, and what eyes saw it and brains catalogued it that have been dust now for billions of years.
I was going to write about the discovery of Gliese 581's planet(well, more specifically, the news that the planet is in its parent star's habitable zone) but![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
__marcelo said it about a thousand times better. The sky looks less empty, you know?
Inspired by an episode of Nova hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D. *sighs in intellectual crushed-out-osity* I looked up the asteroid Apophis. It was thought that it might hit us, but by now we know it most likely won't. Still... people are beginning to worry about asteroid hits, but I wonder how often people think about a small black hole zizzing through the Solar System and upheaving everything? I can't see how we can even figure out the probabilities of that happening.
("Upheaving everything" are the words I choose to describe all the massive gravitational perturbations. Sheesh, Ayesha, no wonder you didn't end up being a scientist.)
Sometimes it amazes me that we little blobs of wet carbon have put together a society where we can think in the ways necessary to handle ideas such as 'extrasolar planets', and technology and systems of understanding sufficient to find such things. Then I look at how fragile and threatened such societal structures are, most importantly the modes of thought that must exist before any of the rest can happen, and I worry. But, anyway.
Mmm, the infinite sky above us. And people say science is joyless and sterile. But enough babbling, I have work to do.
Today's APOD is especially beautiful. I really love 'Pillars of Creation', as may be seen in my icon, and other images of nascent stars. I wonder if our sun once burrowed its way out of a pillar like that, and what eyes saw it and brains catalogued it that have been dust now for billions of years.
I was going to write about the discovery of Gliese 581's planet(well, more specifically, the news that the planet is in its parent star's habitable zone) but
__marcelo said it about a thousand times better. The sky looks less empty, you know?Inspired by an episode of Nova hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D. *sighs in intellectual crushed-out-osity* I looked up the asteroid Apophis. It was thought that it might hit us, but by now we know it most likely won't. Still... people are beginning to worry about asteroid hits, but I wonder how often people think about a small black hole zizzing through the Solar System and upheaving everything? I can't see how we can even figure out the probabilities of that happening.
("Upheaving everything" are the words I choose to describe all the massive gravitational perturbations. Sheesh, Ayesha, no wonder you didn't end up being a scientist.)
Sometimes it amazes me that we little blobs of wet carbon have put together a society where we can think in the ways necessary to handle ideas such as 'extrasolar planets', and technology and systems of understanding sufficient to find such things. Then I look at how fragile and threatened such societal structures are, most importantly the modes of thought that must exist before any of the rest can happen, and I worry. But, anyway.
Mmm, the infinite sky above us. And people say science is joyless and sterile. But enough babbling, I have work to do.
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Date: 2007-04-30 04:30 pm (UTC)The universe is one vast awe.
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Date: 2007-04-30 11:06 pm (UTC)I owe you a great many replies, incidentally. I really love seeing comments from you.
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Date: 2007-04-30 11:23 pm (UTC)You're doing just fine on the replies. *hug*
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Date: 2007-04-30 04:33 pm (UTC)Comins (if I recall the author's name correctly) has a good essay on just that in What if the Moon Didn't Exist?
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Date: 2007-04-30 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 05:19 pm (UTC)("Upheaving everything" are the words I choose to describe all the massive gravitational perturbations. Sheesh, Ayesha, no wonder you didn't end up being a scientist.)
Er, actually, you'd already lost me at "zizzing". :-)
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Date: 2007-04-30 11:13 pm (UTC)