lajoswinkler

Really, you're recommending him a quackery book? What's next, Deepak Chopra's crappy pamphlets?

Yukon, that's good to hear. Nah, that's an entirely different thing. This is a popular science documentary, not a science fiction series. I'm watching this again after a long time. Just about to start episode 3.

A great deal of you probably remembers this series aired at the end of 20th century. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283775/ I just wanted to introduce it to younger viewers and those who missed it because it was made right before the boom of extrasolar planets and Kuiper belt objects. It's not obsolete, but it offers a nice historical insight. It's also very informative. A book was published following the mini series. It was pretty huge with nice color images. I can only recommend it for everyone into planetary geology and Solar system exploration.

That's it, my little moths, fly into the fire. It's so bright and warm and there's candy and dances and fun.

The crew is awake. TAC+DeepFreeze caused the food supplies to plummet rapidly despite using the recommended trick. Good thing HyperEdit has a slider for it. The ship will soon pass above the anomaly reported a decade ago by an orbiting probe, so you'll get better images of it.

One of the rare things they do right. I'd rather ride a Soyuz than a Space Shuttle or any other SRB-powered vehicle.

Platinum will never become cheap as aluminium. The reason why aluminium can be cheap is its abundance and it was expensive because it used to be isolated by using reduction with alkali metals which are themselves very expensive. There is an enormous amount of aluminium in Earth's crust. Its mass fraction is a bit over 8.23 %. Platinum's mass fraction in the crust is 0.000005 %, more than a million and a half times less. The price isn't going anywhere. It is fluctuating hourly by a small amount, which is governed by the stock market. The price of platinum from space would not be any better because the expenses of the production process would be astronomical. In fact, I'm pretty much sure the price would be way larger.

You can't compare platinum with diamonds. Diamonds are not nearly that rare as platinum, and you find them formed, just like people who will give lots of money for them will use them - as huge bling. Platinum is rare, dispersed (requires enormous concentration) and is actually turned into products of vital importance to the society. No platinum and we're basically ruined. Agriculture would suffer enormously, because platinum is used to make catalysts that make the nitrates synthesis a lot cheaper than it used to be in the past. No big diamonds? Rich people's egos are ruined.

Breaking at periapsis to establish a circular low Wal orbit. Kron 4 is now in a roughly 50x50 km, almost polar orbit near the terminator, which enables high contrast of the surface features. - - - Updated - - - Engineer Bill is the first to wake up. Time to inspect the ship.

Yes, it is frequently irrelevant to laymen because they know nothing about it. That article is a pretty decent pile of journalistic misleding wishful thinking, and you seem to be unable to see through it and. Most importantly, this is about cold plasma. Here is the paper, read all about it. http://necsi.edu/events/iccs/2002/Mo01_LozneanuFixed.pdf Those blobs are a simulation governed by basic electromagnetism and can not possibly be brought into any connection with stuff like Oparin's coacervates which are few steps from actual real cells and might've actually been a real thing during the transition of chemical to biological evolution.

The opposite. I do think there could be something like that, although it would not be pure liquid phase. Only water and a handful of other compounds and elements exibit the anomaly of solid phase being less dense than the liquid phase so you get ice floating on a lake and fishes below it. I'd expect slushy material, perhaps more solid with pores through which liquid is draining like our water drains through rocks. When it reaches upper layers by very slow convection, pressure there not enough to keep any liquid so it partially freezes and partially solidifies. Gas finds its way up, and the solid makes a crust. Absolutely. There is no reason why it would be any different from other cores. It came from the same primordial material. Gold, uranium, thorium, lead, iridium, you name it.

That's a totally crappy definition. I'm very surprised such crap is found in Oxford dictionary. Inteligence is not "it exists" or "it does not exist". It is a spectrum. And yes, dolphins possess an amazing degree of intelligence for a mammal, humans excluded. Compared to humans, they're like retarded juveniles with decent motoric skills.

Well, chaps, I had to play Kod. Yes, this is 1.0.2., but it is a 1.0., therefore I expected some problems will occur. I had the reentry heating set to 120% and I have Deadly Reentry installed, so even with periapses at 105, 112, 119 and even 123.5 km (basically just scraping the atmosphere) would end up with the ship tearing itself apart. I watched it end up like Tiangong 2 in "Gravity" at least five times. First the strut endpoints would explode, then the ship would start tilting no matter how strongly the 3.75 m reaction wheel and RCS worked. Then it would be too exposed and as the tanks would start breaking, mass symmetry would be lost and total breakup would occur. It was gradual and spectacular, but really awful. It proved that this kind of design can not work for Hohmann transfer and aerobraking beyond Sarnus. So I disabled the heating and watched the ship start tumbling 123 km above the "surface". Indeed, it tumbled its way through the brick wall of Urlum's high atmosphere. When it was finished, periapsis was between Priax/Polta and the rings. I've corrected the orientation and set up a low delta v cost burn to catch Wal. Main heatshield was jettisoned, Instruments, radiators and antennas have been deployed and nuclear rockets have performed the burn. Kron 4 is now in a highly eccentric orbit of Wal. Next, Kerbals will be awaken to start preparing for the finer adjustments of orbit, surface scan to find the weird bright spot on Wal, send a rover near it and then land.

There, now we have that, too.

That is pretty much expected, yeah. Of course, reality is probably more complicated, but current models predict this situation, more or less accurate. There is also a pretty high possiblity of liquid N2/CO/CH4 at some depths just about anywhere on Pluto. Complex solutions of cryogenic liquids might exist at equilibrium with their gaseous phases in the sealed caverns. It is entirely possible. However, the Sputnik planum does seem to be the richest deposit of those compounds. The geologically dead areas (dark cratered ones) might extend deeper. The liquid water parts are probably highly variable in thickness. The core is rocky, therefore contains silicates and metal. No reasons why there shouldn't be any nickel and iron as those are abundant.

This is not a question of living in a medium. It's a question of organism constitution. Plasma is a mixture of nuclei (or cations, depending on temperature) and electrons. As such, it is physically impossible for it to form higher associated structures. Its temperature prevents formation of atoms, let alone molecules. Life requires organization of matter and plasma is one of the best examples of extreme disorganization. It's contradictory to its composition, therefore you can say with realistic 100% certainty that such things are impossible. Pure energy, what would that be? "Here, have a glass of capability to work". There is no such thing in our universe. There's also no pure matter, either. They're always mixed. Photons are not energy. They are particles that carry a certain, quantified, amount of energy.

Yeah, that seems to be on a good track. Sputnik planum might very well extend pretty deep like a mole in a skin. What your model lacks are exotic ices. At high enough pressures, all expected inner temperatures will not be sufficient to turn it into a liquid. Exotic ices (term reserved for water ice phases under enormous pressures) would cover the core. So first a relatively thin layer of normal ice, then liquid water, and then a thick layer of ice VII, X, XI encasing a mixture of ice XI (and perhaps other forms) and rock. No tidal heating can occur because they are tidally locked. The tidal bulge does not move.

Yeah, probably is.

No, that's just a woo woo myth. It's not nearly that simple. On those levels, there are fields only, and those fields contain energy. Energy is not something you can experience. Only particles carrying it. Energy alone, there's no such thing. Plasma is fundamentally different from anything alive, and noble gases do not form stable molecules. Therefore no.

AI would be an informational form of life. Energy is the capability to do work. As such, it can not form anything coherent. However, neither matter can all by itself. It needs energy.

I think it's much better than the usual rumble.

Here's a funny question. Would this known situation have an apparent and significant effect on the distribution of volatiles on Pluto?

I was just stunned by that atmosphere sillhouette image. How truly lucky we are to witness these wonders.

27 minutes to go. Kron 4 is falling over the first rings of Urlum. - - - Updated - - - 125 km above Urlum, the main heatshield of Kron 4 begins to heat up. Initial speed is 3160.0 m/s.