grawl

Congrats to the ArianEspace team !

That picture in the OP looks like a Lego staging I'd surely want that box for christmas !

I'd add RCS thrusters to your design. Practical to turn around your (probably) big interplanetary ship. Reaction wheels can do the trick as well. Also a set of redundant backup thrusters might be mandatory. I wouldn't dare to go in an interplanetary mission with only one motor. Imagine it fails ! A "flower" placement of the thrusters gives you the ability, if one should fail, to compense the displacement of the center of thrust by adjusting the power of each engine.

#Very personal perception not based on any actual scientific knowledge incoming, please be critical The consciousness is only a result of the complexity of our brain's neurons network, and how it reacts to events that are proposed to it. Much like a computer actually. But an organic adapting one. The output greatly depends on what has happened before. I think the right term is "deterministic". Now, let's take quantum interactions between particles (like how they can be tied to each other in some conditions for example, or still unknown ones ). These might form some kind of network, comparable to the brain's neural net. That causes consciousness, on a level higher/lower than any level we could ever imagine I give you, but still... So, to summarize it all, to me, "energy consciousness" is possible. Life form is a totally different thing though. It's only definable in our scale (cellular, viruses, etc).

I was wondering something : Can the tidal relation between Pluto and Charon induce some kind of energy release in the form of tiny almost undectetable orbit changes ? These forces making its orbit more and more eccentric, and more and more elliptic. An hypothesis came to my mind looking at Pluto's orbit : Pluto was actually originally a Neptune moon. Got slingshoted into solar orbit by something really big passing by. Any more chances than the 10^-10 probability ?

I pronounce it "late". French phonetics made me do it, not my fault, I swear

It looks like this side of Pluto might not be that unintersting after all ! \o/ <Go Pluto ! _|

One of the possibilities is they are just building it for the image of their space program. We might very well be looking at fake facilities here. What are NK space-related achievements ? Did they earned any badge ? I heard they managed to put a satellite up, but I'm not sure.

It's not the only bug to have survived in space, look at New Horizons **badoum tsha** How was it discovered Tardigrades have survived space ? We found some in a meteorite fragment ?

Definitely the first time I managed to rendez-vous and dock successfully. Biggest step forward in my space program. That was a long time ago though. But managing planetary transfer, aerocapture, or orbital manoeuvering never gave me this achievement feeling. Another moment would be the first time I managed to land on the Mun and come back to Kerbin in one piece. No landing legs at this time, you had to use a weird struts and wings contraption to land safely.

Guys, I've got a rope ! ** joins in ** I try to stay optimistic, if Philae woke up, New Horizon can surely recover (finger crossed).

That's sad. Now we will have to bear with the "dark side of Pluto" theorists

Maybe the system reached a point of equilibrium for these 26 years.

Pluto is more and more interesting. It seems to be way more than a dull rock in space. IF (let's supputate ) it's a crater, how old do you reckon it could be ? Charon formation ? I feel like I'm looking at an history book about the solar system when I watch these photos

Definitely with you on this one ! Looks like a planet from the book The Litte Prince as well That brightspot is coherent with the terminator though. That adds to the impression of looking at a massive crater.

True, but we are talking about common cold here. About cancer, some spectacular remissions have been seen. [edit] Well, nothing has ever came good of sitting and eating popcorn ^^ Let me rephrase, the common cold can be cured by a little boost of the immune system. This boost can be obtained in numerous ways. Placebo effect is one of this ways. There have been spectacular cancer remissions, but I admit this is anecdotic. Take this more as a wild argument to prove my point My point is placebo effect won't cure in a scientific rational kind of way. It won't have a precise quantified effect as antibiotics or a chimio have. But it doesn't mean it has no effect at all. The mechanics of the human brain are a still mysterious and under-explored side of science. I hope I defused the riot (please please please) [/edit]

Aspirin has been the cure for all my colds in the last 10 years or so. However I noticed I had a significant nosebleed increase when I was taking it - a quite common side-effect, as aspirin is fluidifying (..err??) the blood. But I stopped taking it, and switched to paracetamol. Treats headache, and flowing nose. I think aspirin has an antiviral effect as well, so when I feel like I'm going towards a flu I still take some. Ibuprofen is harder stuff, I take it when my leg is in pain (I have a recurrent pain in one of my upper-legs). Works like a charm. I just try to be careful and not eat it like candy. The resulting stomach-ache helps though lol On the homeopathic side, I think it's purely a placebo. But the placebo effect is a proven thing. If you really believe that what you are taking is going to cure you, then it might probably work as well as expected. Auto-persuasion is powerfull. Hear me well, homeopathy isn't plant medicine. Plant medicine can be rather tough, and even kill you if not taken carefully. That's not placebo.

Hello. Just came in to check by, and noticed the picture links in the OP (kerbin biome maps) are dead. [edit] Well, all of the links are dead, seems to be a wiki migration issue, might be temporary [/edit]

It's something around 12km x 6km if I recall correctly

All I could see in the second picture was this cute little chicken What jumps to my eyes is that the cone seems to have changed its shape in the interval between pictures 2 and 3. BUT I wouldn't trust picture 3 on the perfect 3D cone impression it gives at first glance. Looking closely, it might as well be a concave shape. One wild thought would be to think that is a still-active feature, isn't it ? The other feature, the one that looks like a drop of flour on the floor, does actually look like it's material thrown by the asteroid impact. Maybe there was a pocket of this lighter-coloured material right there, just under the surface. By the way, I have no idea how these pictures are generated. Is it a mix of radar heightmaps and photo textures ? Or is it simply the raw picture from the camera with some filters ? Or something else ? Some of them do have a surreal look.

Could it be ....... PYRAMIDS ??? **Aliens** It's the Mayon volcano, located in the Philippines. More about Mayon volcano Ceres' cone looks cropped at the top. This and the darker flows/trails/collapse on the side makes me think it had erupted violently before going silent. I had that in mind: It's an Indonesian volcano, located on the island of Java, the Merapi.

I found this animation showing the "cone". Definitely looks like a volcano. For comparison, an earth volcano : No sign of activity though, with the lack of erosion on Ceres, it could have appeared during Ceres early life, and been standing there extinct the rest of the time.

I see. What kind of thing can be in a fluid (or kinda) state in these conditions ? Do we know what types of rocks Ceres' surface is made of ?

Looking at the "cone", the extreme surface erosion is not that evident to me. If the erosion was that extreme and nothing has been happening there, we would'nt see any feature on the surface, apart from the meteor craters, and that cone wouldn't be, well, that cone-y. Please explain, why could'nt there be water on Ceres ? I understand there are no clouds and else, so a proper earth-like water cycle is out of the possibilities. But what if Ceres has a very slow "metabolism" (don't know the proper term for a planet) ? And what if it's not water but a mix of denser fluids ? Probably not possible, but if only probable things were happening, we wouldn't be there [rumble] Let me dream of an icy underground geode-like world . Don't break my vibe man. Science is already a slow, not so fun and abstract thing, so at least let people dream about it. Or share your knowledge while not looking down at non-documented comments, that would be even better In the end we are all educated monkeys after all. [/rumble] Well, that being said, let's continue I must admit, after seeing pictures of the moon Tycho crater, features look quite similar, as with the white spots (that's it for the diamond sea lol). But, on Ceres, where is the crater rim around the cone ? It is baffling me. Has it been named yet ?

Well, here goes my explanation about the white spots (I had water going out of volcanos and then freezing in mind). Anyway, it's a fascinating singleton, it looks huge compared to Ceres size. I can't wait to have a better resolution image of this feature.