A geek at the peak, in a world at the peak
Scientists have found what appear to be fossils resembling plankton inside of a meteorite that landed in Sri Lanka in 2012. It’s certainly not conclusive, as there’s even the possibility this meteorite was ejected from this planet in some larger impact long ago and just now fell back…but it’s an intriguing possibility. I think we’ll need many, many more examples of this before it starts to gain scientific credibility.
(via Extremetech)
SpaceX showed off a video of a recent test of their ‘grasshopper’ rocket, one that has the ability to land vertically (it takes off vertically too, but that’s kinda taken for granted with a rocket, ya know?). This is fantastic technology for it may lead to truly reusable rockets, which should dramatically lower the costs of getting into orbit, or even landing on the Moon or Mars. Check out the video below. It’s impressive, for the rocket gained some significant altitude for a test like this (~300′?) before coming back down for a landing.
Look to the west at sunset and you might be able to see a comet in the evening sky! It sounds like the best day for viewing will be March 13th; look for it next to the crescent moon. There’s a cool animation over at phys.org showing its predicted path.
Artist/photographer Thierry Cohen has created some really cool images which show what several major cities worldwide would look like if there was no artificial lights (nor moonlight) masking the starry skies. The result is really cool and can be viewed at his website. He did this by shooting images of the night sky in places with similar latitude but no city lights, then overlaid them onto darkened photos of the cities themselves. Very cool.
What would it cost to fly to, and live on, Mars? Check out this cool infographic from SmartPlanet for the answer. The bottom line is it’s a lot of money, but is feasible, especially if you send more than one person (economies of scale kick in). It’s pretty cool to think that I might see this in my lifetime.
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