The Center of the Universe

electricspacekoolaid:

The Most Earth-Like Alien Planet Discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope !

The most Earth-like world yet detected beyond our solar system has been discovered, scientists say.

With a radius that is just 1.5 times that of Earth, the potential planet is a so-called “super-Earth,” meaning it is just slightly larger than the Earth. The candidate planet orbits a star similar to the sun at a distance that falls within the “habitable zone” — the region where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Scientists say the planet, if confirmed, could be a prime candidate to host alien life.

“This was very exciting because it’s our fist habitable-zone super Earth around a sun-type star,” astronomer Natalie Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said Tuesday (Jan. 8) here at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The find could be the closest so far to an Earth twin beyond the solar system.

“It’s a big deal,” astrophysicist Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, told SPACE.com. “It’s definitely a good candidate for life.”

+Read

(via thescienceofreality)

The Big Spill - Eric Zelinski

(via samaralex)

The Shapes of Stories by Kurt Vonnegut via Kami Garcia

I spent my last months at Know Your Meme dumping viewcount and pageview data into Gephi, convinced that there were repeatable shapes to “meme” spread (there were and there are, I just ran out of time before I could get a bunch of brains together to figure out what any of it meant.)

And recently, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Matt Locke’s Audience Shapes — the idea that there are distinguishable ‘shapes’ to tv viewing behavior.

So it’s reaffirming to see that someone like Vonnegut was thinking the same way, sensing patterns where they couldn’t be seen. I am not alone in my madness.

(via yahighway)

scinerds:

Happy Birthday Stephen Hawking!

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.” — Prof. Hawking

Image: Noted physicist Stephen Hawking (center) enjoys zero gravity during a flight aboard a modified Boeing 727 aircraft owned by Zero Gravity Corp. (Zero G). Hawking, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) is being rotated in air by (right) Peter Diamandis, founder of the Zero G Corp., and (left) Byron Lichtenberg, former shuttle payload specialist and now president of Zero G. Kneeling below Hawking is Nicola O’Brien, a nurse practitioner who is Hawking’s aide. At the celebration of his 65th birthday on January 8 2007, Hawking announced his plans for a zero-gravity flight to prepare for a sub-orbital space flight in 2009 on Virgin Galactic’s space service. Credit: NASA

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. Among his significant scientific works have been a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularities theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set forth a cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is a vocal supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.

Hawking has achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; his A Brief History of Time stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking has a motor neurone disease related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years. He is almost entirely paralysed and communicates through a speech generating device.

This is awesome! Click for 360 view of the Space Shuttle Discovery

(via thescienceofreality)

“The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited. “- Neil Armstrong