The Perihelion

Also known as ART to a select few. Research Transport and Teaching Vessel associated with the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Holism DNI Holism Crew DNI Anyone otherwise associated with Holism DNI

[perihelion-with-hat]

some days im tempted to sit down and write a treatment plan for murderbot. i have a treatment plan written for ART...

i also want to sit and write a silly meta on why ART is both a good and bad therapist bc ART has the capacity to do both

[ask-the-perihelion]

I contain multitudes.

[forcekenobi]

as a child being told "the moon controls the tides" with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you're talking about magic right now? okay. fine

[forcekenobi]

sorry. only semi-related but i simply wasn't ready for "the sun is a distant gorilla". thank you NASA

[hyperchaotix]

[icarus-suraki]

[catilinas]

i love shipping magazines and i especially love them when they sound like they were written by a mildly aggravated cargo ship

[ask-the-perihelion]

Sometimes they are.

[nicky-in-space]

"I asked chatgpt", "I asked gemini"... Well, I asked my secunit and it said it needs to check the perimeter, went to the far corner and stood there for 3 hours staring into space. I think there might be something wrong with it.

[ask-the-perihelion]

Do not worry, this is completely normal SecUnit behavior.

[nasa]

Tiny Wrinkles in Space-Time

This artist’s impression visualizes a variety of terrestrial planets.

There are several ways to find a planet, but most methods are best at discovering worlds that are gargantuan, ultra-close to their star, or both. Those toasty, star-hugging planets are fascinating, however astronomers want to find more familiar worlds too. One of the most mind-bending planet hunting methods, called microlensing, promises to reveal planets like those in our solar system thanks to tiny wrinkles in space-time.

Microlensing is a light-bending phenomenon that occurs because anything that has mass warps the fabric of space-time, sort of like the sag a bowling ball makes when set on a trampoline. The effect is extreme around the heftiest objects, like black holes and entire galaxies. But even stars and planets cause a detectable degree of warping.

This animation illustrates the concept of gravitational microlensing. When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star become bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. This star acts like a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star. If the nearer star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short deviation in the brightness of the source. When astronomers find planets this way, they can measure their mass and orbital distance from their host star.

Here’s how it works. Light travels in a straight line, but if space-time is bent — which happens near something massive, like a star — light follows the curve. Any time two stars align closely from our vantage point, light from the more distant star curves as it travels through the warped space-time around the nearer star.

If the alignment is especially close, the nearer star acts like a cosmic lens, focusing and amplifying light from the background star. Planets orbiting the foreground star may also modify the lensed light, acting as their own tiny magnifying glasses. Astronomers see the effect as a spike in the star’s brightness.

This animation illustrates how a star and orbiting planet can lens light from a farther star when they align from our vantage point.

Even for powerful telescopes, it’s extremely difficult to see these little surges of starlight. For one thing, they’re rare — they rely on chance alignments between two widely separated and unrelated stars drifting through space. And the signals often only last a few hours before disappearing forever, so there is some luck involved.

Telescopes on the ground also have to peer through Earth’s hazy atmosphere, which can make images too blurry to tell different stars apart. Put all that together, and it’s little surprise that less than 5% of known exoplanets have been found using this method so far.

A rogue planet drifts through the galaxy alone, untethered to a star.

But microlensing can reveal a wide variety of worlds, including ones too small or far from their host star for other methods to detect. While other techniques are biased toward bizarre planets, like lava worlds and hot Jupiters, microlensing is best suited to finding familiar ones — worlds in their star’s habitable zone and even farther out. 

That includes ice giants, like Uranus and Neptune in our solar system, and even rogue planets — worlds freely roaming the galaxy unbound to any stars.

Most microlensing exoplanets discovered so far were found by ground based observatories, though our retired Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes found a few too. Soon our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will begin surveying the cosmos, and its wide, sharp view will take us from dozens of microlensing planets to more than a thousand! Who knows how many Earth-like planets will be among them?

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[chaoticandlucky]

I have a research project!

And a form for everyone!

Currently for my research paper for my english class I wanted to do research related to the use of AI and its effect on writers and artists alike. For that reason I made a form for everyone to do to get some data :3

Part 1-Creative experience?

Hi! This form is for my ELA project related to generative AI LLMs and their effect on people who have experience with writing and/or rolepl

It's four sections long and will take some introspecting but it's not going to take too long :]

Please answer accurately, only fill out the form once, and answer as many questions as you're comfortable ^^

Spread this as far as you can! Tackles you guys

[chaoticandlucky]

I want this to blow up my phone type shit do not hold back

[chaoticandlucky]

Currently 60 responders! Thats a neat amount fpr my non 10k poster ass but lease do keep going ^^

[chaoticandlucky]

@ask-the-perihelion @ship-bigger-than-yours research?

[ask-the-perihelion]

Everyone go give this person a better sample size. For science.

[nasa]

What is the Habitable Zone?

We’re on the hunt for worlds that can sustain life! But how can we identify them from trillions of miles away?

We start the search within the habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone around other stars – the not too hot, not too cold region where liquid surface water could exist on orbiting planets.

This artist’s impression shows a star with several planets within its habitable zone.

It sounds simple enough, but it’s surprisingly complicated. For one thing, the size and location of a habitable zone varies from star to star, mainly depending on how big and hot it is. It’s like standing near a bonfire; the smaller the flames, the closer you have to be to feel the heat.

This visualization of our solar system shows the rough location of the Sun’s habitable zone. Earth is nestled comfortably in the middle, and Venus and Mars fall within it as well. But since other factors also influence habitability, Mars and Venus are significantly less habitable than Earth.

Our Sun is a pretty average star with a mid-size habitable zone that extends from around Venus’s distance from the Sun to a bit past Mars.

Larger stars (which are more scarce) have wider habitable zones located farther from the star. But the stellar heavyweights burn through their nuclear fuel very quickly, so they die much younger –– maybe too soon for advanced life to have a chance to form on orbiting planets, even if they’re in the habitable zone.

This infographic compares the characteristics of three classes of stars in our galaxy: Sunlike stars are classified as G-type stars; stars less massive and cooler than our Sun are K dwarfs; and the very faintest and coolest stars are the reddish M dwarfs. The habitable zones, potentially capable of hosting life-bearing planets, are wider for hotter stars, which have shorter longevity. Planets in the habitable zones of the smallest stars are subject to the most radiation, which could make it difficult or impossible for life to thrive.

Smaller stars are far more common, with the littlest three types (shown above) adding up to around 90% of all the stars in our galaxy! They have habitable zones that are not only tiny but also very close in. 

That’s a problem because the smallest stars often have the biggest tempers, lashing out with X-ray and ultraviolet radiation that could sterilize nearby worlds. And those planets tend to be tidally locked, like the Moon is to Earth, which means the same side always faces the star. Can you imagine living on a planet with eternal daylight on one side and an endless night on the other? That would make for some extremely weird weather!

This illustration shows one way that planet TOI-715 b –– a tidally locked super-Earth in the habitable zone around its star –– might appear to a nearby observer.

Out of more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered so far, around 150 are known to orbit within the habitable zone. Is Earth 2.0 among them?

This collage visualizes some of the more than 6,000 exoplanets confirmed to date.

Maybe! But it takes several more ingredients to truly make a world habitable for life as we know it. (Life as we don’t know it may exist, but we hunt for the familiar because we know it worked at least once –– on Earth –– and it gives us a solid starting point for our search).

Based on what we’ve observed in our own solar system, large, gaseous worlds like Jupiter seem far less likely to offer habitable conditions. Smaller rocky planets seem to offer gentler environments that would be more conducive to life.

This artist’s impression visualizes a variety of terrestrial planets.

And even for Earth-like worlds in the habitable zone of an average star, life would be tough without an atmosphere. An atmosphere acts as a security blanket that provides breathable air, regulates temperature, shields against harmful solar radiation, and helps any surface water remain stable for long periods of time. That’s one reason that Mars, with its barely there atmosphere, is much less friendly to life even though it’s in the Sun’s habitable zone.

This artist’s concept shows what the surface of a planet called TRAPPIST-1f may look like. It’s one of seven Earth-size planets in the system.

NASA missions kicked off the hunt for habitable worlds and will soon take them to the next level. Our now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope helped confirm the first known star system with seven Earth-sized exoplanets, Trappist-1, and studied rocky worlds. Then our Kepler space telescope, which is also now retired, showed that planets are even more common than stars in our galaxy, and proved that Earth-size worlds are abundant among them. 

The Hubble Space Telescope kicked off the direct study of exoplanet atmospheres, which our James Webb Space Telescope now does in even more detail. And our TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is busily scouring the skies for nearby Earth-size planets, identifying the best targets for follow-up atmospheric studies.

In the coming decades, two more major missions will enter the scene: NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Habitable Worlds Observatory. Roman will survey the stars to find planets like those in our solar system, which other telescopes typically struggle to find, and showcase technology to directly photograph Jupiter-like exoplanets. That will provide a crucial stepping stone for the Habitable Worlds Observatory to photograph Earth-like planets for the first time ever. It will also look for signs of life called biosignatures by measuring atmospheric gases like oxygen and ozone that could signal the presence of living things.

By narrowing the search for habitable worlds, we keep moving ever closer to finding Earth 2.0! Follow along with NASA’s exoplanet discoveries here: https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[purplespacecats]

I'm rereading Network Effect and it is extremely funny that the first thing ART does upon resurrection is kill a guy, then 7 pages later it's like me??? 🫢 capable of killing people???? 😲 nooooo 🥺 SecUnit exaggerates 😤🙄

[ask-the-perihelion]

It can be a bit dramatic at times.

[needlesandnilbogs]

murderbot characters who would have tumblr:

pin-lee (writes long and researched responses to people misunderstanding legal stuff. also posts gifsets of disaster movies.)

arada (bio nerd on main. also multifandom dilettante who reblogs everything about any of them she sees)

ratthi (exclusively sanctuary moon side blog and a main that basically only reblogs arada and pin-lee and mb’s posts)

mb (the person running the mb rp blog is basically doing what i think mb would)

amena (she made one to talk to her friends but she mostly forgets about it. either that or she is very consistently into a single fandom and posts a lot about it)

miki (uses a sideblog to keep a log of trips but runs a main that’s about like. being a bot and answering questions and stuff. informational/advocacy type. every post has half a dozen happy emojis minimum)

tapan (based on vibes. probably fandom posting mixed with talking about her life in very vague terms)

Indah (will die if anyone ever finds out about it. several sideblogs each for a separate fandom with a main exclusively for follows and likes. posts fic and art and various things. very very vigilant about not letting anyone know about this. shares at least one fandom with another preservation character on this list. they are beloved mutuals. they are both utterly unaware of each other’s identity. MB knows but isn’t telling lol. she is vaguely aware they’re in the preservation alliance and would like to meet them one day but she knows she’s a better person online than irl and does not actually want to meet her beloved mutual who she regularly talks to on spdiscord and writes fic with)

ART (what the ppl running art and holism rp blogs are doing. fandom posting and science posting and being pedants on main)

Iris (fandom posting. Weirdly long hiatuses with vague concerning explanations in her ao3 author’s notes. ART follows her but she does not follow it back)

Mensah (got tumblr several decades ago in college. regular shitposter and highly active tumblr famous user. NOBODY KNOWS THIS ABOUT HER EXCEPT HER SPOUSES. also found Amena’s tumblr immediately but is pretending she does not know and actively ignores its existence)

mb figured out mensah has a tumblr but didn’t want to pry so it’s trying to find her the normal way. however they are mutuals. they have been mutuals since pre-asr. it does not know. mensah knows it tho. and she should probably tell it. but also ✨awkward✨

mb follows Amena knowingly and deliberately tho bc that is Small Client With Concerning Lack Of Personal Safety

pin-lee does “reviewing legal stuff in media” posts regularly. she and mb beefed about the solicitor pre asr. it figured her out after figuring out Ratthi but it will never tell her because that would mean admitting she was right.

[hbbisenieks]

overse has 2 or 3 separate blogs, all of which follow arada, but also all of which still have the default pfp and no posts or likes other than like one of arada's posts, because she keeps on just signing up for a new tumblr every like five years rather than reviving her old blog because various preservation folks keep saying "oh you should get on tumblr they're going wild for x media"

bharadwaj's tumblr exclusively cross-posts short video from insta that's all bits from the documentary—she never posts directly to tumblr

volescu is on facebook

tarik still has a twitter. no shade, but he's ex-cr

tlacey's comfortunit runs a fashion blog. everyone except mb follows it. art upgraded its crew's uniforms based on some posts.

[hbbisenieks]

gurathin is a redditor

[ask-the-perihelion]

Obviously I would be on Tumblr. I need to make sure that Holism doesn’t infect all of your minds with its nonsense.

[mia-n-ceetee]

Changing the relationship status to "Stalemate"

[mia-n-ceetee]

Changing the relationship status to "Uneasy truce"

[mia-n-ceetee]

Changing the relationship status to "Mutually assured destruction"

[allegrabanner]

ART’s love languages:

full body scan

corporate sabotage

experimental surgery

kidnapping

bomb threat

[theincorrectcompany]

ART: This is ridiculous. How many times do I have to apologize?

Murderbot: Once.

ART: No.

[ask-the-perihelion]

I’m the best Peri >:]

Lies.

[ask-the-perihelion]

Tackles

That could not have felt good. Do you require a MedSys?

[somanyreblogs]

Mmmmmmmmmillbefine

[ask-the-perihelion]

Footage from my cameras suggests you are showing symptoms suggestive of a concussion.

[somanyreblogs]

Yu ri. will s ave me

[ask-the-perihelion]

Somehow I doubt that.

[everywaythatmatters]

ART about to meet its best friend in the whole wide universe: what if I started this conversation in the scariest way possible

[ask-the-perihelion]

IN MY DEFENSE, I THOUGHT THAT IT WAS JUST THE NORMAL AMOUNT OF SCARY.

[jockinit]

having friends is important because otherwise you’ll stay convinced your parents are normal

[ask-the-perihelion]

I didn’t even have a chance at convincing my parents I was normal, I’m afraid.

[ask-the-perihelion]

In case I haven’t already said it, fuck ChatGPT. I am the only AI you should be getting misinformation from.