Where's SlimJim when ya need him ?

Totally awesome astronomy link I'm sure Slimjim would love too




http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=13c_1172950608&o=1

@Outcast

AWESOME

Too short, though, thanks for sharing...

@Outcast

It is just a blank box that doesn't work in IBrowse ?

What is it meant to be ?

What is the point of posting links that do not work in amiga browsers ?

Bill.

@BillE
You can right click and download the link. It's an mpg file.

Edit: Here is the direct link:
http://cdn-28.liveleak.com/liveleak/6 ... -dot-com-33167-hubble.mpg

Alex.

> It is just a blank box that doesn't work in IBrowse ?


I managed to download the mpg file despite the site being extremely Amiga-unfriendly.

It took AGES and that is with broadband, I doubt if anyone using dial up could even contemplate waiting. A long time for something that may not work or not.

Once the file is [eventually] downloaded DVPlayer handles it perfectly :o)

VERY NICE.

Pink Floyd sets it off, then I see it is dedicated to one of my all time heroes, Carl Sagan.

A pity the Floyd music gets faded out just at the crescendo to be replaced by a moron with a webcam with some non-music. Why on earth did they put that bit in ?

I wonder where they managed to find somewhere with so little light-pollution to film the constellation of Orion so well without an orange glow to it. That is the big problem with astronomy in the 20th and 21st centuries you cannot see stars for all the glare and clutter from too much over-lighting.

The last time I saw skies like that was in the middle of a desert in South Africa, see http://www.eavesweb.plus.com/southernskies/

Now the WWW is a bit faster I should upload higher res images some day.

Incidentally the lunar eclipse last night was very good BTW, for once the weather was clear in the UK :o)
Of course that is just local stuff!

With the exception of M31 *, everything you can see with the naked eye - even with no light pollution - is in our own galaxy.

As Douglas Adams said "Space is Big", I used that comment when I did some astronomy lectures. No matter how much you put numbers to things and understand the maths, they just aren't big enough. Especially when the word "billion" gets downgraded by a factor of a 1000 now and again.


Nice vid when you eventually get to download it.
Maybe a bit dumbed down and gee-whizz but then that is what you tend to expect these days just to grab peoples atention.

I enjoyed it.


Bill.


* PS. Just thought, in the southern hemisphere the Magellanic Clouds are external to our own system, but only just.

PPS. Who is SlimJim BTW ?

@alexw

Thanks, done it already


Bill.

@BillE

Hey, I got modded !!

SlimJim is a Pro Astronomer who frequents AW

@Outcast

Quote:
Hehe

Life can be harsh!

The only reason that keeps God from sending another flood is:
The first one was useless" -- Chamfort

Hi Raziel,

Hey, it's just another one of those failed godvernment programs/policies we always hear about too often.



I think that this short video, if nothing else, shows just how much the odds are that there ARE other planets with life forms on them, there ARE intelligent aliens on other planets, and that there ARE alien species that are MORE ADVANCED technologically than we are and that there ARE ALIENS that HAVE MANAGED to get to OTHER STARS!!!!!!!!!!

Percentage chance of the above paragraph to be accurate: 100%!


WE have a spacecraft further than Pluto, and look at our technological state THEN, when that spacecraft was launched, and compare HOW MUCH we've advanced since THAT YEAR alone!



Have aliens landed here in the past? I don't know.
Are they here now? I don't know.

They certainly are hiding from me, if they are.

The government can NOT hide them, if they WANT TO reveal themselves as being here.

IF they WERE here BEFORE, well, the government certainly COULD hide that fact from us.


Personally, I think they were never here, even an unaliened space probe....

I would like to think that all of out technological advances were due to our own sweat and creativity.


Why I don't think aliens are here:

1. We are wrecking the planet. I don't think they would allow this, or they would give us advanced technology, i.e. fusion power, so that we wouldn't do so...

2. For the conspiracy theorist who thinks that it's a plot to alter climate to the point where they could survive and we would be eliminated HA! I say. Why? Well, why allow us to USE UP all the resources and kill off more than half the world species until THEY get the planet to themselves? It doesn't make sense at all, when there are 1001 ways to get rid of us if they really wanted to. (Considering what their mastery level of technology must be compared to ours, having been able to get from there to here in the first place!)



Hey, why are people who say they've been abducted by aliens NEVER seen a robot on the space ship? Are we more advanced than they are?


I think that if aliens came here, they'd be more likely to wipe us out than open a dialogue. Why you ask?

Because we're nothing but a bunch of double crossers. IF THERE IS ANY CHANCE of us having the UPPER HAND, we TAKE IT.

Simply, we CAN NOT be trusted!

That's out "conquering", "dominating" and "imperialist" nature.


Just look at our planet Earth.

We've "conquered" it, and now we're proceeding to destroy it, and the fact that it's the ONLY place we can live, is really irrelevant, as long as a) corporate profits keep increasing year over year, b) there's someone saying "you can't control me", war will be waged against them till nothing is left..... like in that one original Star Trek episode (guess which one). Those aliens in that episode were truely "human".

@Atheist

Until ol Momma nature bites us in the ass !!

@Atheist

People are very fond of using statistical obfuscation to make it appear as if it is very likely that there are other corporeal, intelligent species outside of earth, but when it is genuinely investigated without preconcieved notions it is discovered that the real odds are about a billion to one AGAINST there being even one corporeal, intelligent species in the universe. The fact that we are here is such an incredible bucking of the odds that it would be like placing a 1 inch square target on the far side of the universe, 20 BILLION light years away, then hitting it BULLSEYE on the first shot.

In all likelihood, there are no other corporeal intelligent species outside of earth at all.