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Getting to Know You, October 2019


TaleSpinner
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5 hours ago, TaleSpinner said:

October 9: Other than the one we are currently inhabiting, what's your favorite planet and why?

 

In our solar system? Venus. Deuterium measurements and computer modelling imply it had a water ocean and it had that ocean more than long enough to form life. UV measurements of the current atmosphere show big dark patches where the night side atmosphere is absorbing light reflected from the hot surface. "We found life, we can see it right there" is still a serious scientific contender for what's going on; multiple chemical species have been proposed but each one fails in testing, it turns out chemistry alone isn't working like that.

 

Outside our solar system? The PSR B1257+12 system of Draugr, Poltergeist, and Phobetor. They were the first extrasolar planets found, the first pulsar planets found, and at half of the Moon's mass Draugr is the smallest planet anywhere. At least until we reclassify that one as a 'dwarf planet' as well <_< They orbit close enough to the pulsar that hypotheses for their formation include "were swallowed by the red supergiant and somehow survived the supernova" and "coalesced from the supernova remnants somehow".

 

Fictional? Vulcan. What? While research implies the 40 Eridani system should be devoid of planets we totally found one. It's pointlessly uninhabitable but it's there. We found one, we should keep looking.

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59 minutes ago, redambrosia said:

Neputune is a lovely shade of blue.

 

This was gonna be my real planet answer. Because I like blue and cold.

 

 

6 minutes ago, Crowley said:

You all need to expand your horizons beyond this little solar system. There are literally THOUSANDS* of other weird planets out there... ::P:

 

*Thousands of millions most likely, or more, just in this galaxy, but thousands that we've discovered

 

But we know so little, so few specifics, about any of them. Pretty much Sci-Fi writers got it right, (planets, planets everywhere!) science is just now catching up.

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1 hour ago, CashWiley said:

We were also taught that the sun revolved around the Earth. Good science updates itself, no matter how we feel :)

And Pluto went from being the tiny little hunk of barely planet to king of a whole new class of celestial objects, the plutoids! A KING! I welcome the plutoid overlord.

Still my favorite, and you kids get offa my lawn! I thought it was classified as a dwarf planet now, along with several others out past it?

 

Honestly this one is nearly impossible for me, because I love Astronomy. I like so many things about each of them. I do love Pluto though.

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6 hours ago, TaleSpinner said:

October 9: Other than the one we are currently inhabiting, what's your favorite planet and why?

I am fond of the gas giants. I would have to pick Neptune if I only got one.  The images tend to be those cobalt blue tones that speak to me.

 

On 10/8/2019 at 6:35 AM, TaleSpinner said:

October 8: What not-so-fun project is keeping you from painting your minis or that you are blithely ignoring while painting minis.

I'm not currently a mini painter. It has been a very long time since that hobby appealed to me as something to spend time on.  

 

What was my recent wasting time-avoid responsibility activity? I put costumes on the Skeletals.IMG_20191009_134959.jpg

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2 hours ago, Crowley said:

You all need to expand your horizons beyond this little solar system. There are literally THOUSANDS* of other weird planets out there... ::P:

 

*Thousands of millions most likely, or more, just in this galaxy, but thousands that we've discovered

 

That's true, but most of them sound like terrible places for a holiday.

 

2 hours ago, Jasper_the_2nd said:

Fiction:  Pern has to be up there. Fire breathing dragons that can teleport through space and time? Yes please. 

 

I get the appeal of dragons and sci-fi potential, but the regularly scheduled death rain is a bit of a turn off.

Edited by klarg1
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3 hours ago, CashWiley said:

We were also taught that the sun revolved around the Earth. Good science updates itself, no matter how we feel :)

 

Except for the fact that the earth actually DOES revolve around the sun. Defining what constitutes a planet isn't science; it's simply picking criteria. Plus, it's hardly "good science" when there are inherent flaws in the criteria. Pluto was demoted because of one failure: it hasn't "cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit." That would also eliminate Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune as they fail that criterion as well due to asteroids.

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27 minutes ago, ManvsMini said:

 

Except for the fact that the earth actually DOES revolve around the sun. Defining what constitutes a planet isn't science; it's simply picking criteria. Plus, it's hardly "good science" when there are inherent flaws in the criteria. Pluto was demoted because of one failure: it hasn't "cleared the neighborhood around it's orbit." That would also eliminate Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune as they fail that criterion as well due to asteroids.


The issue that opened up the Pluto debate was the discovery of other, similar-sized icy bodies in the outer solar system.

 

The flawed definition was at partially crafted to avoid having to count dozens, or even hundreds of icy rocks as planets. As I understand it, to arrive at a planetary system with exactly 9 planets would require one of the criteria to be to replace the “cleared orbit” rule with something like “meets the previous criteria, or is named Pluto”.

 

I’m with Cash: All hail Pluto! First of the plutoids!

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4 hours ago, CashWiley said:

We were also taught that the sun revolved around the Earth. Good science updates itself, no matter how we feel :)

And Pluto went from being the tiny little hunk of barely planet to king of a whole new class of celestial objects, the plutoids! A KING! I welcome the plutoid overlord.

All I’m saying is that things started going downhill real fast after we demoted Pluto... someone wasn’t too happy to have their namesake dishonored... 

 

Unpurple.

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What happens if they find something 12 times the mass of Earth, on a highly elliptical orbit, that has a period of ~25,000 years, that passes into the Oort Cloud ?

 

But it isn’t a Star. Are they not gonna call it a planet?

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37 minutes ago, TGP said:

What happens if they find something 12 times the mass of Earth, on a highly elliptical orbit, that has a period of ~25,000 years, that passes into the Oort Cloud ?

 

But it isn’t a Star. Are they not gonna call it a planet?

 

I think the IAU would throw up their collective hands and break for beers.

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2 hours ago, TGP said:

What happens if they find something 12 times the mass of Earth, on a highly elliptical orbit, that has a period of ~25,000 years, that passes into the Oort Cloud ?

 

But it isn’t a Star. Are they not gonna call it a planet?

They’re gonna call it a day! Harharhar!

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23 hours ago, TaleSpinner said:

October 9: Other than the one we are currently inhabiting, what's your favorite planet and why?

 

LV-14, it just seems like such a nice place to start up a colony :ph34r:

 

15 minutes ago, TaleSpinner said:

October 10: What was your best/favorite subject in school?

 

Art was my favourite, but I was slightly better at Biology and Physics. I nearly went to Art School, but that's a long and depressing story for another time :down:

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26 minutes ago, TaleSpinner said:

October 10: What was your best/favorite subject in school?

 

K-12 it was probably history or english. Not any kind of science or math field. Was terrible at STEM fields and was often told I was incapable of learning anything more complicated than beginners algebra. 

 

A decade later I went back to college and it turns out I just had a couple of bad teachers and needed to grow up a bit because I found I've got an aptitude for both math and biology. Good enough that the majority of my education was paid for by grants and scholarships offered to me. So I guess math and science is what I turned out to be best at.

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