The Cassini spacecraft detected warmth, water and organic chemicals, the basic ingredients for life on Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus, reinforcing scientists’ believe that our solar system has favorable conditions appropriate for living organisms to develop. full story

Shocking!

Amazing!

This solar system may actually have life in it!

I hear there is this place called Earth that they should check out.

The USSR launched Sputnik 50 years ago today, starting the space age.

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Gliese 581c brings up the tidal lock issue: if Gliese 581c is tidally locked to Gliese 581 then one side of the planet would be scorched while the other would be frozen, rendering the planet uninhabitable for water-dependant life. Most of the planets detected so far (including Gliese 581c) have been only detected through indirect measurements of their mass, we no nothing of the structure of that mass. It is possible at least some of these are double planets. Though perhaps unlikely — if Gliese 581c is a double planet, both planets might be tidally lock to each other instead of the star similar to the situation in Asimov's Nemesis, allowing for liquid water and possibly water-dependant life.

The possibility of life on Gliese 581c brings up something that has been a bit of a minor mental obsession of mine: life that has evolved vision is likely to evolve vision keyed to the spectra of light it most often encounters. Life evolving around a red dwarf would not likely see the same spectra of light we see. Blue would be of little use and their visual range would probably be shifted into the infrared. Something printed red-on-white or blue-on-black in our eyes might simply look like a blank page to such a life form and their chosen inks may be only visible in the near-infrared and be invisible to us. Perceptual differences such as that would serve to further complicate communications with intelligent extraterrestrial life. It is easy to assume our perception of light and sound and smell and feel is the default, because within humanity we consider anything outside of that default a disorder. Our bias is sample bias, and other intelligent life in the universe is likely to perceive things in vastly different ways than we can even imagine.

I've been thinking about the Hexagon of Saturn ever since I read about it on apod this morning. It looks almost solid in the time lapse movie. It seems the wind shear should rip such a fine shape to shreds on Saturn, but it has been there for over 20 years. The thing is huge, 3 earths wide. While there is a good chance that a natural explanation for this will be found (polygons have been know to appear in the eye walls of Earth hurricanes as well as in rapidly spinning buckets of water), it is still fantastic enough to spark my imagination in ways the "face" on Mars never did.

i saw a quiz in a friend's journal that said earth was a quiet, shy, and kind planet. earth is none of those things. earth is a rough, survival of the fittest kind of place that's been twisted up into a complex game run by money which is largely ill-gotten gains by the richest. outshing the sun in radio emissions, earth is hardly quiet or shy. do people really think of earth as a happy fun place where squirrel and deer live happy little lives? no, they're terrified. afraid of everything. because they have to be. even top predators have to worry about defending their territory and not starving to death as humans encroach more and more on their lands.

i choose to believe that life has sprouted elsewhere in the solar system. i believe life is probably commonplace. life arose quickly on earth after it cooled down enough to be hospitable. i think titan is still a good candidate for life. it wouldn't be life like we know it, but who knows what different chemical reactions could have occurred in it's cold organic slurry.

I only slept for 3 hours. But in those three hours I lived for a long time. I came upon a house inhabited by four children. The house was carved into the side of a cliff by the sea. The children were obviously troubled. I went into the house and spent time with them. They were insane. I tried to take care of them, but I didn't know where I had come from or exactly where I was. They worked in a pool of running water at the bottom floor of the four floor house, making items to sell to support themselves. I found out there parents had died in the house. As I stayed there trying to figure something out, things got more and more odd. I felt sanity slipping from me. I knew it had something to do with the house. I tried calling 911 to get help, but they wouldn't believe me that something was dreadfully wrong. After several weeks, an alien probe from a galaxy in the constellation of Orion failed to provide meaningful assistance as well. It messaged home for help, but came back with the answer the none would come. Many months later, looking at the rocks, I came to find they were made out of a strange material. A material that leached into the water that flowed through them. This material was the source of the children's and now my insanity. We all left the house in a raft, but we had no where to go. We ran into some friendly pirates who offered us desperately needed money for the top two levels of the house. I agreed to the deal. Having money meant the children didn't have to work in the water. They gained there sanity back. However, I knew that the money wouldn't last long, and the children would end up having to go back into the water. The children were itching to spend the money on everything. And I was busy clearing away the diseased rock. Being in contact with the rock kept me insane. In fact, I was going more and more insane. The world was beginning to melt away. I knew I would end up dead like their parents. I, however, had to clear the rock, while at the same time keeping the children from recklessly spending the money that they got from selling the top two floors of their house. I got electrocuted on some wires in the rock, but survived. I cleared and cleared, but there was so much rock. I knew I had to get rid of it all. But as the months past I lost more and more of my grip on any semblance of a stable reality. The world melted away as spaceships fought overhead. Everything began to change, and I floated out into the ocean. I ended up walking on letters. E for excellent. F for fail. Grades. I was in some strange school. The letters were huge and psychedelic. Purely a fantasy. Everything drifted away and I woke up. I only hope I got enough of the rock cleared and the children will be okay.

there are many kitties in my room behind me
the kitties like my room
there are also two humans in my room behind me
spider is suckling my coat
the legs or the table are cold
purpleglitter and merryperseis used to collect stickers
there is a rope
pulling through my head
the humans in the room are talking about alien aardvark babies
and going through my "toy drawer"
they want me off the computer
i must go

My internet connection is still down. I'm posting this from purpleglitter's apartment again.

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I had very strange half-dreams last night. It was as if I was on acid. The ceiling kept morphing into trip patterns. I couldn't move my body, I could just turn my head. The world kept fading in and out of dreaming. I remember aliens attacking, Saddam Hussein hiding out in purpleglitter's apartment, Santa's reindeer getting buried in the snow, and marching band practice. I don't think I need acid to go on a trip. I just need to try to get some sleep.

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I called iaregistry and left a nasty message. They still haven't responded, the bastards.