I never tire of watching these (as cool as the final frontier gets* **)

It is Friday. Nay, it is an excellent Friday. And what does one do on excellent Fridays? One watches youtube videos***. Duh.

I do have a predilection for videos of things that have been propelled, one way or another, into space, and then allowed to plummet back to Earth. Here are some of my favourites. Enjoy.

 

Do you have any recommendations?

* My opinion.

** I am aware that I have ended that title on a preposition. Apologies.

*** Not always. Please tell me I’m not the only one.

Food Diary – June 11, 2011

Today, I went out. Actually, I spent the largest chunk of the day on a muddy field, listening to shouty rock, and eating a kind festival food. It was awesome.

Non-toasted toasting waffles.

This clearly did not go for my breakfast. Which continues.

Cuppa tea and chocolate raisins. Mmm.

As a responsible student (yes, I insist), I wished to finished the day’s work before setting off for the concert, which of course meant not leaving enough time for lunch.

Tortilla wrap with German sausage, cheese and beetroot. Perhaps weird, but nice.

Of course, upon arriving at said field, it was raining lots of small mammals. So we did what geeks do best – go to the library, buy miscellaneous snack foods, smuggle them into the computer rooms, and watch funny youtube videos.

"Really Light" Ribena and a chocolate chip flapjack.

Then, the shouty rock began. I think I ate an olive somewhere in between that I forgot to photograph.

Beef burger in seeded bun, with fried onions, slice of melted cheese, fresh (surprised? I was) green leaves, firecracker sauce AND Thousand Island sauce. Living life on the edge me.

Hope you cottoned on to the sarcasm there – sometimes it does not get across very well on screen, and I come across as a pompous twat… well, you be the judge of that.

No day on the field complete without a dairy ice cream cone with a flake and chocolate sauce!

Now, imagine a picture of some Carling here. I would like to declare that I am not an overly big fan of beer, and not a massive fan of Carling within that bracket either. It was a confusing episode where somebody else was starting to get rather jolly, though had wandered off for a moment without their pint, and us others felt we should chip in and drink some so they would drink less. Yes. Morality bites.

Post night out (with amazing fireworks, of which I may share a clip later) food: I am as big a fan as the next girl or boy of the early morning kebab, but my voice felt spent from trying to talk over shouty rock and singing/rapping along, to Fresh Prince in Bel-Air no less, so this had to do.

Water count: ~2l. Did I mention shouty rock?

P.S. Since I mentioned youtube videos, try this on for size.

In-car discussion of the day – air transport for the masses

So, the family is in the car driving home from supermarket trip, when father and brother recall a conversation they previously have had – how to transport mahoossive numbers of people by air, but not by means already conceived and in use. (In short, aeroplanes.)

Their idea: a central control-hub, surrounded by people-carrying hubs, each of the same capacity as jumbojets. Propelled up into super-high altitudes like skittles. Then, the carrier-hubs will start to rotate about the vertical axis going through the central hub, acting like a fan that counter-acts gravity. Smaller ion-thrusters propel the craft through the much thinner atmosphere, and the whole thing ‘floats’ towards the destination.

Now, how on Earth (get it?) do we land this thing? Or will it get stolen by an astronomical baby-giant?

Terraformation

As the Sun swells into a Red Giant and engulfs rather a lot of the Solar system, we may want to start thinking about relocating – if the human race is still around, that is.

Where could we go? What do we need to survive?

Water. Oxygen. Essentially an atmospheric and climatic combination as close as possible to that which we are currently enjoying. Also, we need an energy source. With the Sun gone awol, that could be difficult. However, we shall not stress about that right now. Let us simply consider whether or not there are other places we can make as home.

There is a very small band of terrestrial habitability in each solar system which largely depends on how far away from the  star you plan to live, and the size of the star.

Size of star vs. distance from star. Habitability plotted in blue. (Image courtesy of Wikipedia's page on "Planetary habitability".)

Now that we have picked a location, we will need to create something something like our own planet on which to live. Preferably with a rocky interior, a thick atmosphere mainly made of oxygen and nitrogen, varying types of land and climates, plenty of energy, plasma powered jet-skis and LOTS of water. And free 3G/wi-fi for all.

That is not too much to ask for, is it?

The process is called “terraformation”, which essentially means “Earth-shaping”. It is engineering at an astronomical scale (no pun intended), and will cause more uproar than Jan Moir and her mishapen cranium (shame on you lady)!

The current favourites for proposed terraforming are Venus, Mars and the Moon, due to their proximity to us, and their rocky composition. The main concerns are still how we will introduce water and terrestrial flora to their surfaces, as well as giving them the atmosphere we so heavily depend on to protect us from radiation but still let through just enough of what we need.

Other problems include funding (I do not even want to go there), politics (who gets what – the Moon is currently international “property”, like the open seas) and ethics (is it right to change something Mother Nature created for our own benefit).

I shall leave you on that note, with an intriguing artists concept of what Mars would look like through the stages of terraformation

Going...going...grounded. Could we live on Mars? (Clickable! For Wiki site on terraforming - spiting Good Scientist Commandments there, but it is a good read!)

We are not alone…

… or are we?

Undoubtedly one of the questions that have mesmerised the people of Earth (okay, some of us) for considerable amounts of time, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence – assuming that it is needed for them to visit us – has paved the way for scientific research grants and cult-labelled entertainment serials alike a long way back.

Personally, I am open to whichever answer is settled on, but would prefer to think that there is something out there. Given the infinitesimal probabilities for any closed system to contain the exact right ingredients and be exposed to the right climate at the right time, the chances may seem slim. Yet in the vastness of our Universe, is there NO way at all the something similar took place in a crevice elsewhere?

In the media, other lifeforms are often portrayed as hostile beings wanting to take over Earth; but if this is really the only life that existed, would you not feel rather vulnerable and almost lonely at the thought that we are, indeed, alone?

Little Green Men? (Img courtesy of University of Wisconsin)