mthomasapple

[mthomasapple]

Get ready for the great planetary alignment February 28th!

Note: Planets do not line up like this… The best day to see all seven major planets (yes, you read that right, all seven!) is Friday, February 28th. The link will describe (and give pictures) of where to find them all in the night sky. Finding Orion is the key to most of them. Knowing where the Pleiades are helps, too. The next time this “parade” appears will be 2040, so fingers crossed for…

[mthomasapple]

Fifteen years and counting…

Hi, everyone. I know I haven’t posted in a while now (about three months). Things happened. I’ll see if I can deal with that in a post this weekend before returning to regularly blogging about astronomy and etc. Winter is still here! (In the northern hemisphere.) Going on walks and hiking in 3C windy weather only makes hot chocolate taste that much better… ☕️

[mthomasapple]

Not “book” but “books”…

What book are you reading right now? I finished re-reading all my Usagi Yojimbo books a couple weeks ago (I’m a big Stan Sakai fan), so I got the thought that I should read his inspiration, Musashi (Sakai’s main character is an anthropomorphic bunny named Miyamoto Usagi). While I was reading Musashi, I also started a Japanese manga series about classic literature from 600 CE to the 20th…

[mthomasapple]

New study of moons of Uranus suggests life

Note: this is artwork and not an actual image The planet Uranus and its five biggest moons may not be the dead sterile worlds that scientists have long thought. Instead, they may have oceans, and the moons may even be capable of supporting life, scientists say. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk1333k0ypo Cue the jokes in five…four…three… “So, you mean there really is life in…ah…” Note…

[mthomasapple]

Gas…stations…in…space…! ⛽️

Jas Tiruvuru, business development manager for Orbit Fab in the UK and Europe, said the company was aiming to successfully demonstrate the technology in space by 2027. “This will essentially be the first ever satellite to satellite refuelling demonstration funded here in the UK,” she said. “Once we’ve proven that we can refuel to two spacecrafts we’ll be able to unlock a huge market…

[mthomasapple]

A taurid of meteorites now…

This is over China four years ago… The Taurids meteor showers get their name because the shooting stars appear to stream from a point in the sky where the Taurus constellation is located. Taurid meteors can be seen from pretty much anywhere on the planet except the South…

[mthomasapple]

Japan launches world’s first wooden satellite

Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3qzd5ql9o The researchers argue that “if” trees could be planted on Mars… OK, just stop right there. I’m pretty sure Mars will struggle to support even grass, let alone trees. And the argument that, due to a…

[mthomasapple]

Lots of catching up to do!

Hey, everyone. It’s been a while since I posted anything. Things just got way too busy. I hope you look forward to a bunch of articles about space!

[mthomasapple]

FB is a piece of festering algorithmic garbage

Yesterday, I wrote a (what I thought was a) rather benign post about Earth’s new “mini-moon,” a tiny asteroid that will orbit us for about two months. Within hours, Faceturd flagged it as “spam.” It was blocked from my FB page because it “tried to get likes” and etc. First off…so what? Is’t the point of FB to get “likes”? Nobody sees the post otherwise, right? Second…it was about a mini-moon!…

[mthomasapple]

That’s no mo…why, yes, it is…

The scientists hope to learn about the asteroid’s surface composition and how fast it rotates, he said. Those observations could help researchers figure out its origin, which in turn could shed light on other asteroids, including ones that could be dangerous to Earth. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/mini-moon-asteroid-to-orbit-earth-temporarily-rcna172264 This is of course not the first…

[mthomasapple]

Interstellar! If only...

According to Thorne, who served as a consultant on the science of Interstellar, quantum mechanics could hypothetically explain a way to time travel via wormhole. So far, it’s a thought experiment that leads to the conclusion that you’d lose information along the way—not very…

[mthomasapple]

Chinese scientists “create” water from lunar soil

Using the new method, one metric tonne of lunar soil will be able to produce about 51 to 76 kilograms of water, equivalent to more than a hundred 500-millileter bottles of water, or the daily drinking water consumption of 50 people, the state broadcaster said. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/chinese-scientists-use-lunar-soil-produce-water-rcna167951 The soil was from the 2020 expedition,…

[mthomasapple]

"The fungus among us": biohybrid machines and mushrooms

Researchers at Cornell have come up with a novel way to control a walking robot: with a mushroom. Cornell explained in a press release that these four-legged “biohybrid” robots were built by researchers who literally grew mycelia, the belowground connective threads that allow fungal communities to communicate, into the robot itself. https://futurism.com/the-byte/mushroom-robot-brain This is a…

[mthomasapple]

Wow, so realistic! Uh, waitaminute here...

Footage making the rounds on social media shows what appear to be astonishingly lifelike humanoid robots posing at the World Robot Conference in Beijing last week. But instead of showing off the latest and greatest in humanoid robotics, two of the “robots” turned out to be human women cosplaying as futuristic gynoids, presumably hired by animatronics company…

[mthomasapple]

Sorry for the long absence...

Haven’t posted anything in about five or six weeks. Sorry! I was going to initially post something about the Boeing crew that got stranded on the ISS, but NASA kept delaying their decision to use SpaceX. It was a given that they’d have no choice. Boeing, quite obviously, cannot be trusted to spend millions of taxpayer’s dollars and make a proper spacecraft. Anyway, I’ll start posting something…

[mthomasapple]

Time to see the Perseid Meteor shower! ☄️

The Perseids get their name because the shooting stars appear to stream from a point in the sky where the constellation of Perseus is located…The constellation rises in the northeast, but meteors should be visible all over the sky if conditions are clear. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/perseid-meteor-shower-begins-see-shooting-stars-rcna161911 The best time to watch is after…

[mthomasapple]

Who wants to train AI for free, hands up! 🙌

Post a comment on Reddit, answer coding questions on Stack Overflow, edit a Wikipedia entry or share a baby photo on your public Facebook or Instagram feed and you are also helping to trainthe next generation of artificial intelligence. https://apnews.com/article/genai-training-data-stack-overflow-reddit-9d71b75ec16c78c0d2c51cc46121c1a4 Well, if they’re scrubbing my public FB page for…