Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait…
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unravelling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!

“Since the dawn of man” is really not that long,
As every galaxy was formed in less time than it takes to sing this song.
A fraction of a second and the elements were made.
The bipeds stood up straight,
The dinosaurs all met their fate,
They tried to leap but they were late
And they all died (they froze their asses off)
The oceans and pangea
See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya
Set in motion by the same big bang!

It all started with the big BANG!

It’s expanding ever outward but one day
It will cause the stars to go the other way,
Collapsing ever inward, we won’t be here, it won’t be heard
Our best and brightest figure that it’ll make an even bigger bang!

Australopithecus would really have been sick of us
Debating how we’re here, they’re catching deer (we’re catching viruses)
Religion or astronomy, Encarta, Deuteronomy
It all started with the big bang!

Music and mythology, Einstein and astrology
It all started with the big bang!
It all started with the big BANG!

Barenaked Ladies – “History of Everything”

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

[...]

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” – Carl Sagan

All 13 Episodes of Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ series are now available for viewing at hulu.

http://www.hulu.com/cosmos

Woot!

A conversation from a few nights ago:

Steve: Guess what! I’m taking a kayaking class to fill the PE credit for my online degree.

My Lovely Wife (MLW): Oh, that sounds like fun.

Steve: Yeah, although I wonder what kind of grading scale they use for something like that.  You think they’ll fail me if I drown?

MLW (without missing a beat): Ooooh, if you do, do you think they’ll give me an honorary degree since I’m your roommate?

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says “You’re all idiots”, and pours two beers.

http://derdritte.soup.io/post/6961628/An-infinite-number-of-mathematicians-walk-into

Wakka wakka!

Ha! These are extremely cool!  If anybody asks, I’ll just say that I ordered it for the kid. =)

Check out these new pictures of Mercury taken yesterday by the Messenger spacecraft on its second flyby of the planet.  These are amazing!  These are the first “close up” pictures we have gotten of Mercury in over 30 years.  THIRTY YEARS!  We have never seen such detailed pictures of the Sun’s closest planet.  In a couple more years, and after another flyby in 2009, Messenger will become the first spacecraft to go into orbit around Mercury.

This stuff is really incredible. Messenger was launched in 2004. Since then, it has performed 2 flybys of Venus, 2 flybys of Mercury, is set to perform another flyby of Mercury, and will then go into orbit around the planet.

It’s really mind-boggling. We, as in ‘intelligent humans’, myself not included, can launch an object into space, swirl it around the solar system a few times, and put it into orbit around a planet 57 MILLION miles away.  And all of this with only a few course corrections along the way.  The precision and timing required for projects like this would melt my brain into a puddle of goo.

Here is a link to Messenger’s timeline.

And a link to The Bad Astronomer who explains this stuff a whole lot better than I can.

So,  I guess I’ll try this blogging thing and see where it goes.  Entirely possible that I’ll get bored with it and never post here again, but what the heck.  Let’s see what happens.