cubinator

Oh, that's SOUP-er annoying, isn't it? Waiter, there's a Dalek in my soup!

Business business.

Agreed. The deep sea is not a great place for life to start out in. That's why I suggested octopi, as an environment similar to that in which they evolved would likely work similarly well on other worlds. The only problem with that is that a world with rocky surfaces only a little below the ocean surface is quite likely to also have rocky surfaces above the water too, so it would basically be an Earth twin. The purpose of this thread is to speculate on life evolving on a world that does not have landmasses above its surface. To guarantee that, it would require that the ocean be quite deep and so life would most likely have to resort to chemosynthesis.

How can there be so many patterns in the universe, and yet there is also so much randomness? How can there possibly be randomness in patterns, and patterns in randomness? It's driving me insane...

When you are bothered so much by the amount of patterns in the universe that you have a sudden urge to sit and roll a die for a while.

No, you are not the only one. I'm a little hesitant to make one myself, seeing as I have no prior experience with solar filters for telescopes. Edit: I looked into the process for self-assembly and it seems doable with sufficient cardboard, knife, and tape. I'll consider buying some. How big should I make the aperture for my 8" reflector? Edit 2: I just bought a sheet of A4 film, it should fit nicely on my 8". It'll probably arrive next week, and then I'll see about making the mount for it!

I'd like to find a good solar filter that is not too expensive (<$150), which can be used to view not only transits, but also see features like sunspots and maybe granulation. So far I've found these: $173.51 $145.00 $129 $89.95 (this one seems perfect but is apparently discontinued. ) $89.00 (this one also seems perfect but the big "Pending Delivery" makes me think it would be a while...) Any advice? P.S. I'd like to have it before the May 9 transit, if it's possible. I've now bought a sheet of solar film, and am waiting for it to arrive in the mail. The film arrived this morning, and I've assembled a cover with it. The filter I made with the film works well for viewing sunspots, and cost me less than $50! Yay cardboard!

Octopi use their tentacles to open things like shellfish that they eat, and they are very good at it. In experiments, they have been shown to be very good at opening containers. I'd say it's not a far stretch to using objects as tools such as rocks, and eventually making tools themselves.

Wow. Seeing it done by a person shows just how crazy it is that we can pinpoint the landing site of that thing so precisely. Amazing.

After discovering KSP, there is pretty much no game I've spent much significant time on. Maybe Space Engine a little, and the occasional Goat Simulator when I'm feeling really out of it, but it's been almost all KSP for what, two years now? I've got 2646 hours logged. You might even learn more! Anyways, with my aspirations to become an astronaut, KSP is literally the closest thing I can get to actually going to space (besides riding an airliner) before I can do it in 11+ years. So, naturally, I love it.

Ehhh...you can't really get away with less than 60 fps and still be able to play for extended periods of time. I think with the widespread release of VR tech, there will be a mod for it soon enough.

There are actually plenty of exoplanets we've found that could be large 'water worlds', made mostly of water, kind of halfway between small rocky worlds and gas giants. As for intelligent life, I would say look at octopi. They are pretty smart and they can manipulate objects. That could lead to the development of tools later on, and we all know what happens after tools...They developed on a solid surface underneath a shallow(ish) ocean.

Granted, but it is only malevolent while playing Connect 4. Any other time it is quite amiable. I wish for 2016-05-09 to be a day off.

When you get mad when someone asks you if a 2x2 is harder than a 3x3.

Agreed.

Good points. Aliens probably have heads containing sensory organs and brains. That doesn't eliminate the possibility of other extreme differences, though. Not necessarily. When a large mammal shows up in a story, is an explanation of the Cretaceous mass extinction necessary to explain how they got to be that way? No. So if an alien shows up in a story sporting a beak, segmentation, tentacles, and fur, it would only really be necessary to explain what it's like, especially if it's the first time anyone has encountered one, because we will only know their features, not their evolutionary background.

Good points. Aliens probably have heads containing sensory organs and brains. That doesn't eliminate the possibility of other extreme differences, though.

Ah. The hump seems more like it is part of the spine/chest cavity and the fact that there is only one eye on each 'head' indicates that it may have been only one head with two eyes in the past, that split over time. I considered canines because of the shape of the legs and because the fur on the back is like a hyena's, and kangaroos because they use their tail significantly for support, which could lead to development of a tripodal descendant. In any case, it's not a far stretch to say that this creature could evolve on Earth. I would like to see something truly alien, that you could say "there's no way that could have evolved on Earth!" to. Extreme mixing of traits as described above would make me say that.

My great-uncle thought it was really cool when I showed him a flight to Minmus and back. I often reference KSP to my friends, and it doesn't bother me when they don't get it. Some of them do play it, though. I've occasionally done the stereotypical reference to a KSP body instead of it's real-life analogue, but it's rare that I actually say it (I think it every time, of course). Side note: One of my life goals is to give a presentation at NASA talking about, say, Mars, then put in a picture of Duna in the slide show. Same goes for the other planets. Or maybe I could edit in Ike into the sky of a real Mars photo... While I haven't gotten many people into KSP, a lot of my friends have started cubing.

That's cool, although I would think a tripodal creature would not fare as easily as one with an even number of legs. That creature also bears resemblance mostly to land mammals, and not really to anything else. It might be a descendant of a horse or canine (or possibly kangaroo), if for some reason evolutionary pressures start to favor creatures with split heads. My ideal alien would have features in a combination not found anywhere on Earth. Maybe it would have compound eyes, a beak, fur, and tentacles all in one creature. Or maybe it would have some other combination, and possibly some organ necessary for survival on its home planet but not found anywhere on Earth?

True. The point about cost is especially relevant, since we have been depicting aliens in movies for a long time, long before all the amenities of modern tech. It's natural that the original methods, proven to work pretty well, would stick.

It's pretty simple, really. I liked it when the lounge was called 'The Lounge'. Now it's called 'General Discussion' and that feels kind of boring to me. Feel free to discuss.

Of course, orbital mechanics are portrayed vastly inaccurately in most movies. Even Interstellar had some blips with transfers. The Martian, while the trajectories were actually calculated, also had the error of showing the ship with engines running burning towards the target, when it should have been burning retrograde (it was before they decided to turn around and go back to Mars). But everyone on this forum probably notices that. Also the glorification of criminology and forensics. I don't really like the way aliens are always humanoid. Yes, similar evolutionary pressures might make for some similar features, but... -Oversized humanoid heads: Why should the brain be in the head? It might actually have made more sense for it to be in the middle. -Big eyes: There are many types of eyes that could appear. Compound eyes, single large eyes, light-detecting patches of skin... -Bipedal with two arms: Octopi seem to be extremely good at manipulating objects with their very non-armlike tentacles. If humans hadn't shown up and screwed up everything, I would bet that octopi would be likely to achieve sentience, as they are intelligent and able to manipulate objects. Dolphins are high on the list too, but I'm not sure how they would develop tools quickly without manipulative appendages. It also bugs me when aliens are depicted as very much like a particular Earthly creature. An alien might be insect-like, or lizard-like, or human-like, or squid-like, but never seems to have a mixture of features that should probably be expected from a completely different biosphere. Not exactly science but it bugs me how at the end of [every superhero movie ever] an entire metropolis [almost always NYC] is totally destroyed, yet right when the hero beats the villain everything is better [except the mandatory clip showing the new enemy for the obligatory $-$-$-$sequel]. In real life, that amount of destruction would have worldwide economic repercussions for centuries.

I'd be speechless if I got to see that. If you were outside the galactic plane, you could probably make out the spiral arms, and be able to see a few neighbors. It wouldn't ever be as spectacular as a long-exposure of the same view, but it would certainly be a sight to behold. Anything much farther than that and the light is too dim to make out at all.

Someday soon we'll have the technology to make ourselves better eyes...