If they were random splotches they wouldn’t fit well to the expected patterns.

I don’t know, the paper has some pretty compelling data. Certainly not a slam dunk—I’d like to see the symbols interpreted/recorded by someone not directly associated with the study to remove possible bias from that process, for example—but solid enough to be worth getting more eyes on it.

Probably xentopsy or xenotopsy following your logic, although I suspect in practice we'd just say autopsy.

Excellent context. Thanks!

I think the “Persephone is cool with it” angle tends to be a somewhat more modern take on the myth.

I've seen one article attributing it to the formation of a new black hole but I'm not sure how certain that interpretation is at this point.

And the answer you're overwhelmingly getting and keep trying to argue against is: because it's a very inefficient way to deal with garbage and there are better options that are far more feasible.

By the time we can launch magical non-polluting rockets every ten seconds nonstop we'll probably have much easier ways of dealing with garbage.

In addition to it actually being very difficult to launch things toward Venus, which others have covered well, materially reducing the amount of garbage on Earth would require an untenable launch cadence--something on the order of launching a rocket every ten seconds.

And if we could manage that we would very quickly turn Earth into Venus with all of the greenhouse gases emitted by the launches.

> So then wth is time … ? How do we even define time then?

Welcome to the giant mindfuck that is modern physics. We don’t know! We have hints that time isn’t the logical and linear progression of causes and effects that we observe it to be, and we’re very early in understanding what that actually means.

We don’t even know what “now” is.

As near as I can parse your hypothetical scenario, you would experience 24 hours of time and watch all of the Universe around you (including the black hole) rapidly decay into heat death. Although it gets slightly more complicated because as the black hole evaporates that’ll effect the magnitude of time dilation you experience.

I typically think of it this way: use a colon when the second clause clarifies or adds context to the first clause; use a semicolon when the two clauses are related but one isn’t modifying the meaning of the other. To me that’s really the key: the choice depends on how you want to adjust the relationship between the two clauses. It’s a bit like putting different colored lenses over an image to adjust its mood or something.

(Note that I’m talking specifically about using colons and semicolons to join two independent clauses here. There’s lots of other uses for both marks. I also acknowledge that employing some of those other users here is potentially confusing and I apologize for that. It’s just the way I talk. I can’t help it.)

Yup. Colons, semicolons, and commas have a lot of overlap. There aren’t rigid divisions between their use and a lot of situations where some or all of them are valid.

I mean… their main goal was to make it past max Q because it was the rocket’s first-ever flight and they got all the way to stage separation before the second stage engine failed… All told it was a pretty successful flight.

I would actually consider wearing those. I’d need them to order more than message notifications though.

Their last Super Bowl trip was just before the first Falcon Heavy launch. Destined to always be overshadowed by SpaceX!

To answer the question a very specific subset of readers here are wondering: no, not ice 9.

No one’s going to talk about how it got across the large body of water on the way, eh? Put the bus on a boat, I assume?

There has to be some sort of prize for these at the annual holiday party.

It was called the Buran.

For those who, like me, generally require a bit more context before clicking:

• identifying that the Dead Sea Scrolls in many collections around the world are, in fact, forgeries
• picking through recycled pottery sherds to learn about daily life in ancient Mesopotamia
• a possible non-Biblical reference to King David, potentially establishing him as an actual historical figure

It's neat stuff.

The Gateway Process stuff was a bunch of hooey. The CIA report on it is simply someone summarizing what the process purported to be and not immediately dismissing it. Neither that nor Douglas Adams should be taken as anything more than amusement (and prefer Douglas Adams for that purpose, he was much better at it).

My suspicion is that the user wouldn’t have any way to recover it but Google could if they had some reason to (like, say, a nice letter from the FBI). So it depends a lot on what exactly you’re trying to avoid.

The YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast has a good rundown of this too.

As far as I’m aware the only regulatory framework governing space is the Outer Space Treaty, which is more concerned with preventing military activities in space and preventing individual nations from claiming ownership of extraterrestrial territory. There’s currently no mechanism for other countries to tell NASA they can’t punch a space rock in the face.

I think there’s probably an argument to be made that some kind of international council should be established as more and more countries are starting to get into the game, but that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think any of them would’ve objected to DART anyway.

Welcome to existential dread. Take two Camus and call me in the morning.