Pluto!!!

[Cocoa Beware]

[trdsf]

Wow.  I mean, wow.

https://youtu.be/ydU-YrG_INk

[SGOS]

Wow.  I mean, wow.

Yeah, I didn't expect so much detail.  A few days ago, someone said it's at it's closest point/  But we had been looking at photos for the last week, so I didn't expect to see that much difference.

[SGOS]

No, he's not Sagan, but consider what a tough act to follow Carl Sagan was.  They're equally gifted, I think, and Tyson fills those shoes well.  When Sagan died, there was left a big gap where cosmologists failed to explain things to the average stargazer or excite them much.  Tyson does, though, and he doesn't trivialize the wonder of the universe by invoking the supernatural. 

[drunkenshoe]

I like Tyson and admire him for what he does, but no they are not equally gifted, NOT even in the same league or position to be compared.

Carl Sagan has more than half a thousand scientific papers and made direct contribution to science. Also when he started to popularise science, that was something a NO-NO to do for a hard scientist in that period, he suffered from it, but didn't back down an inch. I'd like to see the new generation to do something like that. Yeah men with balls. Got to love them. No way around it. Very few.

He reached half a BILLION people over 50 countries on earth with Cosmos series -hi, I am one of them- also managed an influence all around the world in so epic porportions, in an era without the internet and popping up videos, when people didn't know what they were looking at, he redefined the way what people understand with the concept of nature. He carried the scale to its home; universe.

So there. Nobody is in the same league with Carl Sagan. He is stiill underrated.

[Solitary]

Just think what science could have done if it had all the money the Church and churches have made for 2000+ years. We would be seeing pictures and videos of Kulob. 

[SGOS]

Sagan claimed that if the Arab world would have kept up with scientific inquiry like it had before the burning of the Library of Alexandria and Europe would have avoided it's religious preoccupation and the contempt for the acquisition of knowledge during the Dark Ages, we would now be populating other planets.  I dunno.  It sounds like heady optimism.  No doubt we would have progressed unbelievably beyond where we are now, however.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I like Tyson and admire him for what he does, but no they are not equally gifted, NOT even in the same league or position to be compared.

Carl Sagan has more than half a thousand scientific papers and made direct contribution to science. Also when he started to popularise science, that was something a NO-NO to do for a hard scientist in that period, he suffered from it, but didn't back down an inch. I'd like to see the new generation to do something like that. Yeah men with balls. Got to love them. No way around it. Very few.

He reached half a BILLION people over 50 countries on earth with Cosmos series -hi, I am one of them- also managed an influence all around the world in so epic porportions, in an era without the internet and popping up videos, when people didn't know what they were looking at, he redefined the way what people understand with the concept of nature. He carried the scale to its home; universe.

So there. Nobody is in the same league with Carl Sagan. He is stiill underrated.

If a pig in a wig got people to be more interested in science I'd slop that hawg.

[drunkenshoe]

Sagan claimed that if the Arab world would have kept up with scientific inquiry like it had before the burning of the Library of Alexandria and Europe would have avoided it's religious preoccupation and the contempt for the acquisition of knowledge during the Dark Ages, we would now be populating other planets.  I dunno.  It sounds like heady optimism.  No doubt we would have progressed unbelievably beyond where we are now, however.

It's an anachronistic anology to point out how religions are the huge obstacles in road to the development. Also shows his natural objectivity to different cultures making of an example from opposite ones. :)

Who knows? No doubt we would be far ahead though. :/





 

[drunkenshoe]

If a pig in a wig got people to be more interested in science I'd slop that hawg.

And I'll follow you with the bucket around, but no underrating certain figures. 

[trdsf]

Yeah, I didn't expect so much detail.  A few days ago, someone said it's at it's closest point/  But we had been looking at photos for the last week, so I didn't expect to see that much difference.

And we haven't even had anything from the actual closest pass yet.  We're going to be getting data for nearly a year and a half -- they took that much, even at 30,000+ mph.  It won't really start coming back until later this month, after they finish the post-encounter data grabs and can spin-stabilize that puppy.

And this is where I get a deeper sense of awe and grander sense of majesty than I ever had in any church.  I repeat, wow.

[SGOS]

And we haven't even had anything from the actual closest pass yet.  We're going to be getting data for nearly a year and a half -- they took that much, even at 30,000+ mph.  It won't really start coming back until later this month, after they finish the post-encounter data grabs and can spin-stabilize that puppy.

That's kind of what I thought was happening.  So the stuff we looked at last week was probably taken a month before?

[trdsf]

I like Tyson and admire him for what he does, but no they are not equally gifted, NOT even in the same league or position to be compared.

This is kinda like complaining that Bernini was no Michelangelo.  I think Tyson definitely has the same infectious sense of fascination and fun for the subject, and is equally unwilling to pull punches.

Also keep in mind that Sagan came of age professionally at the peak of the space race; by the time Tyson was out of college, NASA was the red-headed stepchild of the US' annual budget and the opportunities there were considerably less.

But there's no question in my mind that Neil 'gets it' in exactly the same way that Carl did, and that he's just as capable of expressing that excitement over the universe and our place in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0teSHmk2aM

[trdsf]

That's kind of what I thought was happening.  So the stuff we looked at last week was probably taken a month before?

Oh, no, the ice mountain and ice plains shots were taken during the encounter, at a distance of several tens of thousands of miles.  NASA wisely understands that while in an optimal world they'd be spending all their time on data acquisition at this stage, this is not an optimal world and they need to have something to show for it now, so they lost a little post-encounter observation time in order to send back a couple visual hors d'oeuvres.  Even I, who appreciate the limited opportunity they have to capture data, would have been sore disappointed to have nothing to show for the encounter until a month later.

And keep in mind, there's more to come, beyond the year and a half's worth of data transfer from the close approach -- the plan is to have an encounter with another KBO in the next few years, probably in 2019 if they go with the current most easily reached target.

[trdsf]

Oh, and there is a place for 'faith' (as it were) in science, insofar as New Horizons was launched with the expectation of visiting a KBO after Pluto, but with absolutely no suitable target in mind, just the expectation that one would be located by the time they had to make a decision--which will be next month.

Three were found.  In 2014.  Now that is trusting your instruments.