KIC 12557548 History of detection[edit] The existence of the planet was first evidenced in data collected by the Kepler spacecraft. However, the light curve of the star, a graph of its stellar flux versus time, showed that while there were regular drops in stellar flux approximately every 15 hours, the amount of light being blocked covered a wide range, from 0.2% to 1.3% of the starlight being blocked.[2] Rappaport et al. (2012) proposed various possible phenomena which may have caused the anomalies in the light curve, including two planets orbiting each other,[6] and an eclipsing binary orbiting the star in a larger triple-star system.[2] However, the authors found the hypothetical binary planet system to be unstable[2] and the latter scenario to be poorly supported by the data collected by Kepler.[2] Planetary system[edit] References[edit] ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Basic data: 2MASS J19235189+5130170 -- Infra-Red source". Brogi, M.; Keller, C. Notes[edit] External links[edit]
Future - Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives. This article is part of a new BBC Future series about the long view of humanity, which aims to stand back from the daily news cycle and widen the lens of our current place in time. Modern society is suffering from “temporal exhaustion”, the sociologist Elise Boulding once said. “If one is mentally out of breath all the time from dealing with the present, there is no energy left for imagining the future,” she wrote. That’s why the Deep Civilisation season will explore what really matters in the broader arc of human history and what it means for us and our descendants. So concluded the historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. He was right in some respects: civilisations are often responsible for their own decline. The Roman Empire, for example, was the victim of many ills including overexpansion, climatic change, environmental degradation and poor leadership. You might also like:
Musiikkia avaruusolioille -Voyager kuljettaa ehkä ihmiskunnan viimeistä tervehdystä | Yle Tiede Prisma Studion aikakapselin kokoamisen yhteydessä kerrottiin myös Voyager -luotainten mukana lähetetystä ihmiskunnan tervehdyksestä vieraille siviilisaatioille. Tämä on jutun käsikirjoitus hieman muokattuna. Kuva: NASA/JPL-Caltech Aurinkokunnan ulkorajalla kiitää tällä hetkellä ihmisen toistaiseksi pisimmälle lähettämä laite. Kun tämä 800-kiloinen kapistus joskus tömähtää jonkun avaruusolennon takapihalle, mitä hän löytää sen sisältä? Tähtitieteilijä Carl Saganin kokoaman levyn kuunteluun tarvitaan vinyylisoitin. Mitä levyllä sitten on? Ensimmäisenä kuuluu, kun presidentti Jimmy Carter tervehtii avaruuden asukkeja. Ääneen pääsee myös YK:n pääsihteeri Kurt Waldheim. Seuraavana mukana on tervehdys 55 maan kielellä, muinaisesta sumerinkielestä nykykiinaan. Tallennettuna on myös luonnon ääniä maapallolta, ukkosta ja tuulen suhinaa, sateen ropinaa ja valtamerten kohinaa. Avaruusoliot saavat ihmeteltäväkseen myös toistasataa valokuvaa maasta, maisemia, kuvia naapuriplaneetoista ja maan asukeista.
Boltzmann brain A bust of Ludwig Boltzmann, for whom Boltzmann brains are named A Boltzmann brain is a hypothesized self aware entity which arises due to random fluctuations out of a state of chaos. The idea is named for the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906), who advanced an idea that the universe is observed to be in a highly improbable non-equilibrium state because only when such states randomly occur can brains exist to be aware of the universe. The Boltzmann brains concept is often stated as a physical paradox. Boltzmann brain paradox[edit] Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world are a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe. The Boltzmann brain paradox is that any observers (self-aware brains with memories like we have, which includes our brains) are therefore far more likely to be Boltzmann brains than evolved brains, thereby at the same time also refuting the selection-bias argument. See also[edit] Notes[edit] References[edit]
History of the Earth The history of the Earth concerns the development of the planet Earth from its formation to the present day.[1][2] Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to the understanding of the main events of the Earth's past. The age of Earth is approximately one-third of the age of the universe. An immense amount of biological and geological change has occurred in that time span. The first life forms appeared between 3.8 and 3.5 billion years ago. Geological change has been constantly occurring on our planet since the time of its formation and biological change since the first appearance of life. Geological time, condensed in a diagram displaying the relative lengths of the eons of Earth's history Geologic time scale[edit] The history of the Earth is organized chronologically in a table known as the geologic time scale, which is split into intervals based on stratigraphic analysis.[2][6] A full-time scale can be found at the main article. Millions of Years Formation of the Moon[edit]
How to Think Like a Futurist: DevLearn 2017 Closing Keynote DevLearn 2017 wrapped up with a thought-provoking closing keynote, “How to Think Like a Futurist,” by Jane McGonigal, PhD, director of games research and development at the Institute for the Future. She helped us level up our powers of creativity and imagination for thinking about the future. First-person thinking McGonigal compared two ways to imagine the future: using impersonal facts or thinking in the first person. One example of possible future facts: “In the future, there will be a climate change. By 2050, sea levels may rise by as much as 9 feet and 750 million people may be displaced.” First-person thinking connects you to your future self because the brain fires up faster, with more flexibility, making more connections (Figure 1). Don’t be a stranger to your future self Something else to keep in mind is that when we try to imagine ourselves far into the future, we are likely to see a stranger. Questions to ask about possible futures Creative foresight and recognizing signals
Art vs. Science, Part Four: Gas giants scare the crap out of me – bioephemera Okay, I knew that planets are big, intellectually, but a well-done graphic is worth a thousand words, and a pretty HD video is even better. Brad Goodspeed made this video to suggest what other planets would look like, if they orbited Earth at the same distance as the Moon does. I’ve embedded it, but you should seriously watch it in HD, full-screen for maximum effect. Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo. I have nightmares like that. In addition to being full-on creepy, Brad’s video produced a fascinating discussion in the comments and on various sites linking to his blog. Brad explained that what he was actually trying to capture was a sector of the night sky – what we tend to “see” in our field of view when we look at the moon: Had I represented my moon as being only half a degree on the screen, it would have appeared as a tiny circle of light, which is not how the moon ‘feels’ to us when we look at it. I’m no Astronomer. (I added the emphases). I think Brad has a very good point.
Can hot water freeze faster than cold water? [Physics FAQ] - [Copyright] Written Nov, 1998 by Monwhea Jeng (Momo), Department of Physics, University of California Yes — a general explanation History of the Mpemba Effect More-detailed explanations References Yes — a general explanation Hot water can in fact freeze faster than cold water for a wide range of experimental conditions. The phenomenon that hot water may freeze faster than cold is often called the Mpemba effect. This seems impossible, right? What's wrong with this proof is that it implicitly assumes that the water is characterized solely by a single number — its average temperature. It is still not known exactly why this happens. Why hasn't modern science answered this seemingly simple question about cooling water? So with the limited number of experiments done, often under very different conditions, none of the proposed mechanisms can be confidently proclaimed as "the" mechanism. Finally, supercooling may be important to the effect. History of the Mpemba Effect Evaporation
Future of the Earth Conjectured illustration of the scorched Earth after the Sun has entered the red giant phase, 7 billion years from now.[1] During the next four billion years, the luminosity of the Sun will steadily increase, resulting in a rise in the solar radiation reaching the Earth. This will cause a higher rate of weathering of silicate minerals, which will cause a decrease in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In about 600 million years, the level of CO 2 will fall below the level needed to sustain C3 carbon fixation photosynthesis used by trees. In about 1.1 billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. Human influence[edit] There are multiple scenarios for known risks that can have a global impact on the planet. Should the human race become extinct, then the various features assembled by humanity will begin to decay. Random events[edit] A supernova is a cataclysmic explosion of a star. Orbit and rotation[edit] Glaciation[edit] Obliquity[edit]
the shock of the anthropocene In 2003 the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined the term solastalgia to mean a “form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change”. Albrecht was studying the effects of long-term drought and large-scale mining activity on communities in New South Wales, when he realised that no word existed to describe the unhappiness of people whose landscapes were being transformed about them by forces beyond their control. He proposed his new term to describe this distinctive kind of homesickness. Where the pain of nostalgia arises from moving away, the pain of solastalgia arises from staying put. Where the pain of nostalgia can be mitigated by return, the pain of solastalgia tends to be irreversible. Solastalgia is not a malady specific to the present – we might think of John Clare as a solastalgic poet, witnessing his native Northamptonshire countryside disrupted by enclosure in the 1810s – but it has flourished recently. The group’s report is due within months.