Tag Archives: Stars:

Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth – Adam Frank

by Myrna Posted on July 29, 2018

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Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth
Adam Frank

Genre: Astronomy

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: June 12, 2018

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.


Astrophysicist and NPR commentator on what the latest research on the existence and trajectories of alien civilizations may teach us about our own. Light of the Stars tells the story of humanity’s coming of age as we awaken to the possibilities of life on other worlds and their sudden relevance to our fate on Earth. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life and intelligence from the ancient Greeks to the leading thinkers of our own time, and shows how we as a civilization can only hope to survive climate change if we recognize what science has recently discovered: that we are just one of ten billion trillion planets in the Universe, and it’s highly likely that many of those planets hosted technologically advanced alien civilizations. What’s more, each of those civilizations must have faced the same challenge of civilization-driven climate change. Written with great clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars builds on the inspiring work of pioneering scientists such as Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, whose work at the dawn of the space age began building the new science of astrobiology; Jack James, the Texas-born engineer who drove NASA’s first planetary missions to success; Vladimir Vernadsky, the Russian geochemist who first envisioned the Earth’s biosphere; and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, who invented Gaia theory. Frank recounts the perilous journey NASA undertook across millions of miles of deep space to get its probes to Venus and Mars, yielding our first view of the cosmic laws of planets and climate that changed our understanding of our place in the universe. Thrilling science at the grandest of scales, Light of the Stars explores what may be the largest question of all: What can the likely presence of life on other worlds tell us about our own fate?

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Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth – Adam Frank

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Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard Stand the Test of Time

by LottiePonder Posted on March 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Merle Haggard
Okie from Muskogee 45th Anniversary Edition
Capitol Nashville

Johnny Cash
Out Among the Stars
Columbia/Legacy

Great singers sound better with time, regardless of genre, and country icons Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard hold up especially well, which makes these two vault-scouring projects noteworthy. Still, more than four decades on, it’s impossible not to cringe at the small-minded, hippie-baiting sentiments of Haggard’s signature hit, “Okie from Muskogee,” but look past that unfortunate episode and rewards aplenty await on his reissue. (If it helps, Haggard later tried to distance himself from the song and embraced a more nuanced form of populism.)

Captured in his prime, Hag is a magnificent singer, boasting a rich, supple and stirring voice that could embrace western swing, honky-tonk and softer, nearly countrypolitan sounds with equal expressiveness, while his nimble band never loses the groove. This ’69 live set—which sounds like it’s been “enhanced” by extra overdubbed audience noise—includes some of Haggard’s most soulful efforts, including “Mama Tried,” “White Line Fever,” and “Sing Me Back Home.” The second disc offers another, less-successful live outing, “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” intended to capitalize on the higher profile generated by “Okie from Muskogee” the year before.

As for the man in black, Out Among the Stars, a collection of previously unreleased recordings from ’81 and ’84, finds craggy-voiced Johnny Cash on the verge of separating from Columbia Records, his longtime home, and entering a period of artistic uncertainty that would end in the ’90s with the career-reviving intervention of producer Rick Rubin. If the songs don’t add up to a coherent album, there are still moments that entice, among them the heartbroken “She Used to Love Me a Lot,” a rollicking duet with Waylon Jennings on Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” (also covered on Haggard’s set), and “I Came to Believe,” a moving statement of faith. Among the musicians recently recruited to fill out some of the originally uncompleted tracks are Buddy Miller and Cash’s stepdaughter, Carlene Carter, who returns with an excellent new album of her own next week.

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Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard Stand the Test of Time

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Here Is A Truly Wonderful Video of the US Military’s "First Drag Show"

by Sonya9741pkhl Posted on March 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Happy Monday! Here is something wonderful.

On Saturday, six US servicemen put on what may have been, according to Stars & Stripes, the first drag show ever on a US military base.

The event was held on at the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan to raise money for OutServe-SLDN, a non-profit that supports the military’s LGBT community. Organizers initially only expected to sell 75 tickets, but according to Navy Lt Marissa Greene, ended up selling 400.

The video of US troops lip syncing in drag to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” as the crowd goes wild is amazing.

Once upon a time, gay and lesbian Americans who wanted to serve their country had to live in the closet thanks to a stupid policy called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” In the more than two years since DADT’s repeal, the US military has somehow not fallen into chaos and disrepair.

Tech. Sgt. Kristen Baker put it best to Stars & Stripes: “Everything is just accepted. It makes me really proud to watch it. We are all brothers and sisters no matter what.”

Watch:

(via Jezebel)

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Here Is A Truly Wonderful Video of the US Military’s "First Drag Show"

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A Galactic GPS System That’s Now in the Works Could Help Our Descendants Navigate Through the Universe

by Andrew Brentford Posted on June 7, 2013

Photo: Avarycce

The International Space Station aims to be testing out an interplanetary GPS system by 2017, IEEE Spectrum reports. Rather than navigate with the stars or planets themselves, the system would rely upon the lingering X-ray pulses of dead stars to create a map of the galaxy.

At present, space navigation relies primarily on a network of earthbound tracking stations. When a craft ventures into deep space, ground crews beam radio waves out to the craft, which are then retransmitted back. By measuring the round trip time and the Doppler shift of the signal, the crews can calculate the craft’s position. But the further away the craft wanders from our planet, the poorer this method’s resolution becomes. So it follows that if a space vehicle could calculate its own position independently and accurately, its navigational capabilities would improve by leaps and bounds.

The new system aims to do just that. It relies upon the electromagnetic radiation emitted by pulsars, or technically dead stars that still give off bursts of oscillating energy. These pulses come at regular intervals, so they can be used for navigation in the same way GPS systems on earth use atomic clocks for standardization and accuracy.

A craft heading into space would carry a detector that, similarly to a GPS receiver, would accept X-rays from multiple pulsars and use them to resolve its location.

In order to test the system, the NASA team built the Goddard X-ray Navigation Laboratory Testbed (GXNLT). Nicknamed the “pulsar-on-a-table,” it’s composed of pulsar-processing software and hardware, a modulated X-ray source, and a built-in detector. The test bed tries to mimic the combination of an interplanetary GPS and pulsars.

If all goes well, a NASA engineer told IEEE Spectrum, these initial systems will lay the foundation for our descendants to navigate throughout our solar system and beyond.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Quirkiest Space Shuttle Science 
Have GPS Devices Taken Fun Out of Navigation? 

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A Galactic GPS System That’s Now in the Works Could Help Our Descendants Navigate Through the Universe

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Toad Cottages and Shooting Stars: Grandma’s Bag of Tricks

by Myrna Posted on April 21, 2013

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