Latest Posts by outofambit - Page 7

Terraformation of Mars: A New Look

We look at Mars now as a forgotten Red Planet that almost seems barren and life-less judging from our available images and study of it. But study shows Mars was once as ecologically prosperous as our own Earth. But what happened to all of its waters? Better yet why is it so dry and lacking any plants? Once the abundance of oxygen left and the waters froze over or dried off the planet became what it is today. But what if we can in a way reactivate’ Mars? Welcome to Mars, Terraformed’.

About Terraforming

Transforming Mars will be a long and complicated process. But this is exactly the type of subject that interests space researchers like Christopher McKay of NASA Ames Research Center. First, greenhouse gases, like chlorofluorocarbons that contribute to the growing ozone layer on Earth, will be released into the atmosphere. This traps the heat from the Sun and raises the surface temperature by an average of 4 degrees Celsius. In order to achieve this, factories would manufacture chlorofluorocarbons derived from the air and soil. A single factory would require the power equivalent of a large nuclear power plant.

The increasing temperature would vaporize some of the carbon dioxide in the south polar cap. Introducing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would produce additional warming, melting more of the polar cap until it has been vaporized completely. This would produce an average temperature rise of 70 degrees Celsius.

With the temperature this high, ice will start melting, providing the water needed to sustain life. This water would raise the atmospheric pressure to the equivalent of some mountaintops. While this would be a survivable level, it may still require the use of an oxygen mask. The next step, which may take up to several centuries, would be to plant trees that thrive on carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.

NASA: Terraforming Mars

Terraforming is the process of transforming a hostile environment into one suitable for human life. Being that Mars is the most Earth-like planet, it is the best candidate for terraforming. Once just the subject of science fiction novels, it is now becoming a viable research area. The famed astronomer and Pulitzer prize winner, Carl Sagan, says that there is enormous promise in the search for ancient life on Mars. If life was once sustainable on Mars, it is important to know what caused Mars to evolve into the cold and lifeless planet it is today. With this knowledge, we can terraform Mars by reversing the process.

NASA scientists believe that it is technologically possible at the present time to create considerable global climate changes, allowing humans to live on Mars. But this will not be by any means an easy task. Raising the atmospheric pressure and surface temperature alone could be achieved in a few decades.

This research has strong environmental implications for Earth. What researchers are trying to do involves global warming, a sort of greenhouse effect on the cold planet Mars. Scientists may be able to test their hypotheses about global warming in their attempts to elevate Mars’ surface temperature. Likewise, once theories, they may be applied to our own planet in an attempt to reverse environmental damage done by pollution and deforestation.

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (via cynicsdream)

New Galactic Supercluster Map Shows Milky Way’s ‘Heavenly’ Home

A new cosmic map is giving scientists an unprecedented look at the boundaries for the giant supercluster that is home to Earth’s own Milky Way galaxy and many others. Scientists even have a name for the colossal galactic group: Laniakea, Hawaiian for “immeasurable heaven.”

Image 1: Scientists have created the first map of a colossal supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea, the home of Earth’s Milky Way galaxy and many other. This computer simulation, a still from a Nature journal video, depicts the giant supercluster, with the Milky Way’s location shown as a red dot. Credit: [Nature Video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo)

Image 2: This computer-generated depiction of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way galaxy containing Earth’s solar system, shows a view of the supercluster as seen from the supergalactic equatorial plane. Credit: SDvision interactive visualization software by DP at CEA/Saclay, France

The scientists responsible for the new 3D map suggest that the newfound Laniakea supercluster of galaxies may even be part of a still-larger structure they have not fully defined yet.

"We live in something called ‘the cosmic web,’ where galaxies are connected in tendrils separated by giant voids," said lead study author Brent Tully, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu.

Galactic structures in space

Galaxies are not spread randomly throughout the universe. Instead, they clump in groups, such as the one Earth is in, the Local Group, which contains dozens of galaxies. In turn, these groups are part of massive clusters made up of hundreds of galaxies, all interconnected in a web of filaments in which galaxies are strung like pearls. The colossal structures known as superclusters form at the intersections of filaments.

The giant structures making up the universe often have unclear boundaries. To better define these structures, astronomers examined Cosmicflows-2, the largest-ever catalog of the motions of galaxies, reasoning that each galaxy belongs to the structure whose gravity is making it flow toward.

"We have a new way of defining large-scale structures from the velocities of galaxies rather than just looking at their distribution in the sky," Tully said.

Fuck It, Let's Talk About Wizards

I currently view this blog as a way for me to rant about math and stories without anyone being forced to be my audience. So let’s get on with it!

I am going to rant about my all-time favorite book series: The Young Wizards Series by Diane Duane.

SHUT UP. I know what you are thinking, imaginary reader, and YOU ARE WRONG. This is totally not a Harry Potter knockoff. The series was actually started way before Harry Potter. But to assuage your worries, I will list all the things this series has in common with Harry Potter:

It’s about people between the ages of 11 and 17.

Said people have some sort of supernatural powers that could be deemed ‘magical.’

That’s it. That’s the only ways they’re similar. 

Weirdly enough, Young Wizards actually has way more in common with Doctor Who than Harry Potter. Even though it’s basically fantasy, the stories feel much more like science fiction. 

All right, let’s get on with this. I know what you’re thinking, because I can read the minds of all my imaginary readers.

SO WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT ANYWAYS?

Basically, magic is real. It’s given out by “The Powers That Be,” basically the gods, to a bunch of people around the Universe. So that they can fight “The Lone Power,” who is basically Satan.

Yes, Satan. Voldemort doesn’t seem so scary now, does he?

Our protagonists, Kit and Nita, are kids that are both chosen for this. “Chosen” actually makes it sound a lot more organized than it really is. Basically, you find a book that tells you how to do magic and what it’s supposed to be used for. If you take the Wizard’s Oath, you now have magical powers. And as a sort of “welcome to the magical powers club” gift, you now have to immediately go fight Satan in a terrifying Ordeal. It’s fucking awesome.

So the first book, So You Want to be a Wizard, chronicles this Ordeal. After that, things get a bit more varied. The protagonists mainly just travel around the Universe, going on dangerous missions, and fighting Satan.

Yes, the Universe. Being basically the warriors of the gods, they are not confined to Earth. This is a fantasy book with aliens in it. Awesome aliens. Some of them are bad, some of them are good, some of them are also wizards. This is, in short, the books you have been waiting for: the books where MAGIC KIDS AND ALSO  MAGIC ALIENS FIGHT SATAN oh shit that sounds kind of like Homestuck.

The reason these books are my favorites of all time is because they never get old. Most kids’ books are awesome as a kid and kind of lame as an adult. I have loved these no matter how old I am. I loved them in elementary school and I still do now, in college. And not nostalgic love either, where I just like them because I used to. They’re still exactly as good.

It’s not even in the Harry Potter ‘they grow up with you’ way. Like, when you read The Philosopher’s Stone now, it’s not as good as it was when you were a kid. The first couple Young Wizards books are slightly more childish than the others. Slightly.  The series starts off fairly dark and stays that way. Shit gets real. People die. Sacrifices are made. Difficult moral questions are confronted.

One of my favorite parts of this setup is that it’s still our universe. The kids have to hide their powers from the world at large and still show up to school and do normal kid stuff. They have to cope with all that crap while constantly risking their lives to fight evil. And the magic isn’t easy either. 

All right, this rant is getting kind of ridiculously long, so I’ll leave you with one last comment. This is the kind of series where you are constantly fistpumping and yelling “HOLY SHIT” (and terrifying the people around you) because crazy awesome stuff goes down a lot. 

Here is the list of the books so far, in case you want to read them (you should):

So You Want to be a Wizard (Kids get powers, go on their ordeal)

Deep Wizardry (There’s no way I can describe this without it sounding stupid, but it’s awesome, trust me)

High Wizardry (One of the ones where a lot of crazy awesome shit goes down)

A Wizard Abroad 

A Wizard’s Dilemma 

A Wizard Alone 

Wizard’s Holiday 

Wizards at War (HOLY SHIT GUYS THIS ONE IS AWESOME)

A Wizard of Mars

Astronauts just found life in space, we kid you not

Russian cosmonauts have discovered something remarkable clinging to the outside of the International Space Station: living organisms.

“Results of the experiment are absolutely unique" | Follow micdotcom

Coldest Star Found—No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee

According to a new study, a star discovered 75 light-years away is no warmer than a freshly brewed cup of coffee.

Dubbed CFBDSIR 1458 10b, the star is what’s called a brown dwarf. These oddball objects are often called failed stars, because they have starlike heat and chemical properties but don’t have enough mass for the crush of gravity to ignite nuclear fusion at their cores.

With surface temperatures hovering around 206 degrees F (97 degrees C), the newfound star is the coldest brown dwarf seen to date.

Keep reading.

“So you’re made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”

―Neil deGrasse Tyson

These photos are on the shortlist for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2014, a competition and exhibition run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich. The winning images will be posted here on September 18.

Mars. In true colour.

Just so you know, a lot of images of Mars which you’ll see have been manipulated. A lot of them have boosted contrast and saturation. So if you’ve ever wondered – images like this one are what Mars actually looks like.

Does the Lone Power have… an en-trophy wife?

It was our destiny to walk in the light of other stars.

i legit started to tear up this is too lovely for words

(cont) Are these timeline issues fixed in the New Millennium Editions? And if you have a corrected timeline, could you post it here? Thank you!

Fixing the timeline issues was one of the main purposes of the NMEs. So I think it’s safe to say that yes, those issues have been fixed.

No, I don’t have a timeline as such. The general progression of the New Millennium editions, though, is given in the “time fix” at the start of each book. So it goes like this:

So You Want to Be a Wizard: May 2008

Deep Wizardry: July 2008

High Wizardry: August 2008

A Wizard Abroad: Mid-July through early August, 2009

The Wizard’s Dilemma: Late September, 2009

A Wizard Alone: January 2010

Wizard’s Holiday: April 2010

Wizards at War: Late April / early May 2010

A Wizard of Mars: Late June 2010

…Hope that helps. :)

http://jenesaispourquoi.tumblr.com/post/90776856846/someone-pointed-out-to-me-awhile-ago-that-in-syw

Someone pointed out to me awhile ago that in SYW… they need all sorts of special materials to do their spells, and then later they just need words. Does anyone remember the explanation for that shift? i’m looking back through DW because i figure that’s where it would be? Or maybe in HW or AWAb?

…

Epic map reveals Mars’s geography in unrivalled detail

Technology drives exploration and we’re building on the Apollo program’s accomplishments to test and fly transformative, cutting edge technologies today for tomorrow’s missions. As we develop and test the new tools of 21st century spaceflight on the human path to Mars, we once again will change the course of history.

NASA's Next Giant Leap

NASA's Next Giant Leap

Technology drives exploration and we're building on the Apollo program's accomplishments to test and fly transformative, cutting edge technologies today for tomorrow's missions. As we develop and test the new tools of 21st century spaceflight on the human path to Mars, we once again will change the course of history.

There was a point where, whenever I ran into my stalker...

…I wanted to greet her with “Fairest and fallen, greeting and defiance, now and always.”

Not because I thought she was literally the Lone Power.  But because she was clearly one of those people the Lone Power was acting through and loving it.  And because dealing with her seemed to be part of my Ordeal.

And honestly because remembering that there are malevolent forces in the universe that use people like her to hurt people (and that she would willingly hand herself over to such forces if she believed in them, she was that kind of person), and that those malevolent forces of the universe can be named, greeted, and resisted, even resisted politely, was very important.

If you ever hear me say anything starting with “Fairest and fallen…” you know I’m serious.  I may be wry, I may be half-joking, but some part of me is deadly serious if you hear those words come out of my mouth.  It means “I know you.  I know what I’m looking at.  I know where your evil comes from, even if you don’t.  And I won’t put up with it, and I won’t stand by and let this happen.”

The Young Wizards books are among a type of books I’ve read that hide deep and meaningful truths about the universe in the guise of ordinary children’s books.  That’s my favorite type of book, ever.

I once read someone on dduane’s tumblr saying that when she was a kid, she would repeat the Wizard’s Oath over and over again, hoping it would make her a wizard.

I wrote to dduane telling her that I hadn’t read them as a kid.  But when I grew up, I found that the Wizard’s Oath had already somehow become etched onto my heart, and it only took reading the words to remember how it happened.  She said she gets that response from adults now and again.

There are many versions of the Wizard’s Oath, and some fans (including me) have made our own recensions.  Each person gets the version they need.  But here’s the one from the first book:

In Life’s name and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so — till Universe’s end.

Here’s a version written for a dinosaur who had been living underground in a dystopian city:

“The Fire is at the heart, and the Fire is the heart; for its sake, all fires whatever are sacred to me. I shall kindle them small and safe where there are none, for the wayfinding of those who come after: I will breathe on those fires about to die in dark places, and in passing, feed those that burn without harm to any; the fire that burns and warms those who gather about it, in no wise shall I meddle with it save that it seems about to consume its cofocals, or to die. To these ends, as the Kindling requireth, I shall ever thrust my claw into the flames to shift the darkening ember or feed the failing coal, looking always toward that inmost Hearth from which all flames rise together, and all fires burn undevouring, in and of That Which first set light to the world, and burns in it ever more…”

And my personal recension:

In the soil, we are all growing, together.  I will moisten the roots of those who need water.  I will never allow the soil to dry out.  I will make room for seeds to grow into plants.  I will allow the soil to consume the parts of me that are no longer needed, and I will reach towards the sun.  I will not touch leaves that may die at my touch, unless it is necessary to prevent some greater harm.  I will love sorrel and tree, fungus and slug, alike.  I will live inside of love, and let love guide me, to the best of my ability.  I will look always to the place where all of our roots reach down as one.  

All right, lovely YW people on my dash (and beyond), willing to hook me up on whats so awesome about it? The title sounds dorky but apparently this is good

Crux  and Auriga 

book character fancast for repfest: #5

Xolo Maridueña as Kit Rodriguez, Young Wizards by Diane Duane

Since it came up in the chat, the “official”, from Diane Duane herself, pronunciation of ‘dai stiho’.

So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane

I’m a little nervous about doing a review of this book, actually. For one thing, it’s one of the foundations of my ethical code today. Who I am is, in a large part, based on this novel and the ones that come after. That makes it a little hard to be objective and give a nice unbiased review, but I’ll do my best. Another thing I’m nervous about is that the author, who I (obviously) respect, is a regular Tumblr user, and is probably going to see this at some point. Finally,this series has a devoted fandom comprised of intelligent, wonderful people who know a lot about the series.

Still, all those reasons to be nervous should make it clear that this is a series you really shouldn’t miss!

So You Want To Be A Wizard is the first book in what is, at the moment, a nine book series. The tenth book, Games Wizards Play, is due out… sometime… Well, we know it’s coming! Recently, the series got a revamp. The first book is copyright 1992, so the timeline needed a bit of help after twenty-two years. If you’re looking to get into the series, starting with the NMEs is a good choice.

But let’s talk about the book itself.

It opens with Nita Callahan, reader extraordinaire and space devotee, running away from bullies from her middle school. She manages to duck into the library, and as she’s hiding, her finger is snagged by a book - when she pulls it out, it’s a book called So You Want To Be A Wizard. Naturally, she thinks it’s a joke, but. Well. It doesn’t read like a joke. And if she was a wizard, if she had magic, maybe she could stop getting hurt. So she takes the Wizard’s Oath, and though momentarily lulled into a sense of complacency by finding another teen wizard and learning about exciting magic things and meeting a white hole, presently finds herself engaged in a struggle against the forces of entropy, embodied in the form of the Lone Power, where the stakes are the Earth itself.

But that’s the plot. What makes this series so exceptional is the motivations of the characters, wizardly and otherwise, and the level of responsibility with which they interact with their world. In retrospect, that first scene with the bullies is pretty telling for the series as a whole. It’s seriously treated - Nita is a victim, and she is not responsible for their actions or what happens to her. She is, however, responsible for her own actions; she chooses to antagonize the bullies to claim some power from the situation. What her Ordeal (the quest when you accept the Oath) lets her realize is that she already has power - she controls her own choices, her anger and what she does with it - and it shows her how to claim it. As a wizard, she has the power to terrify those who want to hurt her; as a human, she has the power to break the cycle of violence. The very nature of wizardry in this universe demands that she choose to “guard growth and ease pain”, but it doesn’t require her to forgive the bullies. That she does choose to use her power for forgiveness shows how strong she is as a person. 

Choice is in many ways the center of the book, and of the series. A species makes a Choice that defines their relationship to wizardry and entropy. Each wizard chooses to take the Oath. In the course of wizardry - and life in general - choices come up all the time. There are consequences to all of the choices you make, but what you do with your free will is in the end up to you. Figuring out what to do with your free will isn’t easy, though, and it becomes increasingly difficult as the series progresses and the characters age - the choices we make as children are always more straightforward than those we make as adults, when our ability to see the complexities of a situation grows, which is another thing I appreciate about the series. The characters are in no way static, and the books do become more difficult as the characters gain the age-appropriate abilities to handle the problems that come up.

Those problems aren’t always wizardly, either! There’s at least one very long-running romance subplot between Nita and her best friend Kit, not to mention a plethora of truly excellent sibling and parental contretemps. The familial relationships are absolutely phenomenal, by the way, and are pretty varied. Both Nita and Kit have complex, realistic, and person-specific sibling relationships. And the parents! One problem I often have with YA literature is that parents are very sketchily characterized, mostly a name and a figure to rebel against. Which makes sense - one’s perspective as a young teenager is limited, and one’s ability to see other people as people is also limited. Part of adolescence is learning to recognize that other people are distinct individuals, and in their lives, you’re on the periphery if you register at all. In this series, the parents are well-characterized from our perspective, and as the kids age, how they perceive their parents also changes. I’d like to see more of Kit’s parents - we get some of them, but not nearly so much as we get of the Callahans. There’s a good reason for that, but it’s a spoiler.

Their parents aren’t the only adult figures in these kids’ lives, either. Tom and Carl are Senior wizards who live just up the road, and provide an excellent sort of hands-off mentorship. They’re very clear from the beginning that they don’t have all the answers. The kids can ask for aid and answers, but they might not get them. I’m making a note of their care in establishing themselves as fallible early on, because the kids do forget this, and I feel like they should get some recognition for the effort. Good try, guys!

It’s an eminently quotable book, funny and heartbreaking by turns. It’s a great book to give kids - magic and mystery! Travel the universe, meet the gods! Be scared witless and thrilled breathless! Develop a strong ethical code based around the Hippocratic Oath, individual responsibility, empathy, and the strength of forgiveness, belief, and second chances! Save the world, with or without magic!

That last is actually the last thing I really want to talk about. Although it doesn’t come up much in the first series, one of the things that makes this series so very influential is the idea that you don’t actually need magic to change things. The wizards get to play in the grand scheme of things, but regular folks are no less important or influential. Sure, we can’t stop a sun from exploding, but we can slow entropy in a thousand other ways. We can conserve energy, spread order and kindness and cooperation, help the hurt, counsel the despairing, and if all that fails, we can stare evil down and refuse to go along with it because that, too, is a choice we have the capacity to make.

tl;dr - amazing book, with surprisingly nuanced discussion of ethics and excellent characterization. Purchase it for one and all! The only content warning I have for this one is bullies, though feel free to contact me if you want content warnings for the remaining books. This book is available as a multi-format package from Diane Duane’s ebookstore for $6.99. Hard copies can be purchased from Amazon for $7.19, but it’s not the NME, so be warned! You can also get the hard copy from your favorite local bookstore! If you want an ebook, I recommend getting it straight from the source. They’re excellent quality ebooks, reasonably priced, and frequently on sale as well.

last night i dreamed i was an orca, and my pod needed me to find out why there were no more fish in our part of the ocean, so i dove down really deep, to where i could draw spell circles on the ocean floor, and performed whale magic to find out.

i don’t remember why there weren’t any fish, but i think the whole point of this dream is that i was a whale wizard, and that’s basically awesome.

Orbital Mechanics by Tatiana Plakhova 

Vera Rubin (b. 1928)

When Vera Cooper Rubin told her high school physics teacher that she’d been accepted to Vassar, he said, “That’s great. As long as you stay away from science, it should be okay.”

Rubin graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1948, the only astronomy major in her class at Vassar, and went on to receive her master’s from Cornell in 1950 (after being turned away by Princeton because they did not allow women in their astronomy program) and her Ph.D. from Georgetown in 1954. Now a senior researcher at the Carnegie Institute’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Rubin is credited with proving the existence of “dark matter,” or nonluminous mass, and forever altering our notions of the universe. She did so by gathering irrefutable evidence to persuade the astronomical community that galaxies spin at a faster speed than Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation allows. As a result of this finding, astronomers conceded that the universe must be filled with more material than they can see. 

Rubin made a name for herself not only as an astronomer but also as a woman pioneer; she fought through severe criticisms of her work to eventually be elected to the National Academy of Sciences (at the time, only three women astronomers were members) and to win the highest American award in science, the National Medal of Science. Her master’s thesis, presented to a 1950 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, met with severe criticism, and her doctoral thesis was essentially ignored, though her conclusions were later validated. “Fame is fleeting,” Rubin said when she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. “My numbers mean more to me than my name. If astronomers are still using my data years from now, that’s my greatest compliment.”

 Sources:

1. http://innovators.vassar.edu/innovator.html?id=68; http://science.vassar.edu/women/

2. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/45424

Incredible photograph of the Sun, with the spicules that cover most of the Sun clearly visible as the carpet like texture of the surface. Near the top, several active sunspots can also be seen as the black marks on the surface. Sunspots usually appear in pairs: being created due to magnetic activity, each sunspot of a pair having the opposite magnetic pole of the other.

Celestial Monsters by Chris Keegan

The thrill of outer space is that we really just have no goddamned clue what’s out there. Aliens? Sentient planets? Intergalactic space police? Probably all of these, plus unfathomably more bizarre creations we couldn’t possibly produce with our earthly imaginations. Chris Keegan took a pretty good stab at it though, manipulating images from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory of floating space debris and vast, lightyears-spanning nebule into dark and majestic forms, surely just an echo of the monolithic entities just beyond our telescopic grasp…

Artist: Website (via: Wired / io9)