This Is The Smallest Sized EXOPLANET Discovered By NASA's TRANSITING EXOPLANET SURVEY SATELLITE So Far!

I Support The Use of Solar_Energy for The Generation of Electricity.

Donald Trump is trying to destroy solar energy in America.

As someone who has been using 100% solar energy to power everything but my apartment and car for nearly eight months, and frequently has too much energy and too little storage, I feel the need to comment on this.

So Trump put a 30% tariff on importing materials used to manufacture solar panels. More than 50% of the world’s silicon production (the element that best allows for the photovoltaic effect) is in China, whereas less than 5% of production is in the US. Not to mention other imported materials needed to make solar panels.

Before anyone says “then why don’t we just make this stuff in America,” we do, but in very small quantities, because the resources to create these materials are scarce in North America. It’s called GEOpolitics for a reason.

So, higher tariffs on imported materials required to manufacture solar panels means fewer American companies will be purchasing foreign materials, because foreign materials will be jump in cost to account for the tariffs. The countries trading the materials will also trade less material so as not to incur these tariffs at their own expense, which could stem the flow imported goods to a trickle. These same countries will begin trading with other countries that don’t have as high a tariff and whose governments actually encourage renewable energy and solar production (unlike, obviously, the shitty assholes in our government whose paychecks come from the Koch Brothers and Big Oil, all of who don’t give a damn, because only socialist countries use renewable energy, afterall).

More solar production in America = less cost to consumers (free energy for immediate purchasers and long-term users)

More production = overproduction

Overproduction = manufacturing and innovating better storage

Better storage = longer usage, more energy to drive more industry and innovation in technology

More industry and technology + cheap/free energy = more money in individual pockets, more job creation, boost in economy

Boost in economy + more money to individuals + high skill job creation = better education and rise in quality of life for lower and middle classes

Better education and rise in quality of life = better social values and more intelligent citizens entering workforce and entreprenurial sector.

So why discourage solar production? Why not lead the charge and prioritize solar production, instead of speaking out against it and making it more difficult to obtain solar in America? Why not make it more difficult to import oil to encourage a transition to cleaner, more reliable, and cheaper if not FREE energy? Why?

Transitioning to solar and renewable energy should absolutely be one of the highest priorities for our government, but it’s not. We have all these individual companies and cities saying they’ll phase out coal and oil and go all electric and renewable, and you’re going to see an increase in profits, an increase in the quality of life in those cities, better income, and more innovation. Oil companies know this is happening – and they are going to fight as brutally as a wounded animal, and they will fund campaigns of people who support coal and oil, even though they are dying.

Yes, oil isn’t just used as fuel. It’s in clothes, and soaps, and ink, and whatever else. Obviously. That’s completely beside the point. Because our transportation is the #1 source of our carbon emissions. We have heat islands in cities for a reason. You wouldn’t breathe in a tailpipe FOR A REASON. If we could completely eliminate transportation emissions in the next 10 years, and household and structure emissions in the next 20, why isn’t the government even voicing support for that? The government doesn’t have to regulate everything and lead the charge, but Trump and his cronies literally and forcefully OPPOSE renewable energy.

I have six solar panels and three large battery packs. I have been using these for eight months. Five hours of sunlight gives me more than a week’s worth of energy to use. If I had the resources to store ALL of the energy I could generate per day, I would be able to generate about two weeks of energy in a SINGLE DAY. In one week, I would have enough energy to use for more than six months. So don’t tell me solar doesn’t work. Don’t me it’s bad on a cloudy day, or during snowstorms, or at night, or when it’s raining. I have gone nearly two weeks without sunlight and been completely fine. Mine are just the small scale. I haven’t even used a wall plug for anything but my computer in eight months (and computer is just emergencies). But I don’t even put them out every day, because I just don’t have the storage capacity for the energy I *could* generate. Solar works. Solar is infinitely better than coal and oil ever will be. We need to be funding it. We need to be pushing ahead with it. We can’t be punishing it just to cling to some outdated way of thinking. If you claim to want a better America (let’s be real, Trump doesn’t give one single shit), you need to understand #1 that we NEED these materials and #2 they don’t magically appear in the ground where you put your shovel. The rest of the world, ESPECIALLY CHINA, for god’s sake, is pushing ahead with developing solar infrastructures. So why aren’t we even trying? And “because it’s not the government’s job” isn’t an excuse. Know why? Because the Donald Trump and the government is SUPPRESSING it.

Lanterns! (at Molly Woo's)

Spectroscopic Observations of The Atmospheres and possibly even The Surfaces of Extrasolar Planets and Extrasolar Satellites.

ESA’s next science mission to focus on nature of exoplanets

The nature of planets orbiting stars in other systems will be the focus for ESA’s fourth medium-class science mission, to be launched in mid 2028.

Ariel, the Atmospheric Remote‐sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large‐survey mission, was selected by ESA today as part of its Cosmic Vision plan.

The mission addresses one of the key themes of Cosmic Vision: What are the conditions for planet formation and the emergence of life?

Thousands of exoplanets have already been discovered with a huge range of masses, sizes and orbits, but there is no apparent pattern linking these characteristics to the nature of the parent star. In particular, there is a gap in our knowledge of how the planet’s chemistry is linked to the environment where it formed, or whether the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet’s evolution.

Ariel will address fundamental questions on what exoplanets are made of and how planetary systems form and evolve by investigating the atmospheres of hundreds of planets orbiting different types of stars, enabling the diversity of properties of both individual planets as well as within populations to be assessed.

Observations of these worlds will give insights into the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation, and their subsequent evolution, in turn contributing to put our own Solar System in context.

“Ariel is a logical next step in exoplanet science, allowing us to progress on key science questions regarding their formation and evolution, while also helping us to understand Earth’s place in the Universe,” says Günther Hasinger, ESA Director of Science.

“Ariel will allow European scientists to maintain competitiveness in this dynamic field. It will build on the experiences and knowledge gained from previous exoplanet missions.”

The mission will focus on warm and hot planets, ranging from super-Earths to gas giants orbiting close to their parent stars, taking advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres to decipher their bulk composition.

Ariel will measure the chemical fingerprints of the atmospheres as the planet crosses in front of its host star, observing the amount of dimming at a precision level of 10–100 parts per million relative to the star.

As well as detecting signs of well-known ingredients such as water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane, it will also be able to measure more exotic metallic compounds, putting the planet in context of the chemical environment of the host star.

For a select number of planets, Ariel will also perform a deep survey of their cloud systems and study seasonal and daily atmospheric variations.

Ariel’s metre-class telescope will operate at visible and infrared wavelengths. It will be launched on ESA’s new Ariane 6 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou in mid 2028. It will operate from an orbit around the second Lagrange point, L2, 1.5 million kilometres directly ‘behind’ Earth as viewed from the Sun, on an initial four-year mission.

Following its selection by ESA’s Science Programme Committee, the mission will continue into another round of detailed mission study to define the satellite’s design. This would lead to the ‘adoption’ of the mission – presently planned for 2020 – following which an industrial contractor will be selected to build it.

Ariel was chosen from three candidates, competing against the space plasma physics mission Thor (Turbulence Heating ObserveR) and the high-energy astrophysics mission Xipe (X-ray Imaging Polarimetry Explorer).

Solar Orbiter, Euclid and Plato have already been selected as medium-class missions.

Nice Cars to Look at.  

LA Auto Show 2015

CNET Car Tech brings you the latest news from the 2015 LA Auto Show with tons of galleries and the latest unveilings from all the major car companies.

The Science of Photosynthetic Lifeforms on Habitable Zone Worlds in other solar_systems.

I sure hope that I can get some certain iRobot Automated Household Cleaners someday!  

I sure could really use a Home_Computer with a 10 or 1,000 Core CPU and at least 8_GBs of Dual_Channel or Quad_Channel Random_Access Memory! 

I sure would like to see this new Propulsion Technology in use for Interplanetary Travel someday!  

Channeling Star Trek: Researchers to Begin Fusion Impulse Engine Experiments

by Michael Keller

Star Trek fans take note: Have a seat before you read the next sentence or prepare to swoon.

University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) aerospace engineers working with NASA, Boeing and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are investigating how to build fusion impulse rocket engines for extremely high-speed space travel.

“Star Trek fans love it, especially when we call the concept an impulse drive, which is what it is,” says team member Ross Cortez, an aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate at UAH’s Aerophysics Research Center.

Stay seated Trekkies, because there’s more.

Keep reading

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriations.”

— Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”