In Echospace.

The name is Giorgio. Human being, student, energy engineer, music-devourer, science-lover and stuff. Here I'm going to post some things I like.

[fer1972]

Paintings by Valerio D’Ospina

[elonmulder]

There is no all seeing, all loving God who keeps us free from harm. Atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured for eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have and is an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life affirming in a way religion can never be.

Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say “There must be more than just this world, than just this life.” But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people that could be here in my place outnumber the sand grains of sahara.

If you think about all the different ways our genes could be permuted you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privilaged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world.

- Richard Dawkins

[spaceexp]

Blood Moon from Oahu

Source: rnakama_photos (flickr)

[ghostbcky-moved-blog]

→ Best of Legolas

[stupidtolkieniancomics]

this post is so important

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The countless emotions of Orlando Bloom

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Cover for Eric Holm's album Andøya: the album is a collection of recordings produced on the arctic island of Andøya, an outpost 300 kilometers north of the arctic circle, and it's developed entirely from a single contact mic recording from a remote telegraph pole that connects the island's array of military listening stations.

Image credit: Subtext Recordings

[giorigoinspace-blog]

The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, or S106 as seen from Hubble.

Credits to: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

[gameraboy]

Sons of the Empire. by JCMaziu

[giorigoinspace-blog]

At the end of the day, he drove me back to the bus station. The snow was falling harder. He wrote his phone number, his home phone number, on a scrap of paper. And he said, "If the bus can't get through, call me. Spend the night at my home, with my family."

I already knew I wanted to become a scientist, but that afternoon I learned from Carl the kind of person I wanted to become. He reached out to me and to countless others. Inspiring so many of us to study, teach, and do science. Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations.

(Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey)

I know many have already posted this, but this is probably the most moving quote about science I've never read/listened to.

[spaceexp]

This colorful collection of Hubble Space Telescope images of a portion of the Monkey Head Nebula reveals carved knots of gas and dust silhouetted against glowing gas.

[giorigoinspace-blog]

Sonic boom is the auditory phenomenon associated with shock waves created by an object which is travelling faster than the speed of sound.

An object, when flying through air, generates pressure waves in front and behind itself which propagate at the speed of sound (approx. 1225 km/h at sea level and 20°C). If the object is moving fast enough new pressure waves during the movement are generated, at a faster rate than the propagation speed of the previous waves, leading to a merging of the wave-fronts; eventually if the flying object moves faster than the speed of sound it will lead the advancing wave-front and the various pressure waves will merge in a single shockwave, creating a cone-like figure known as Mach Cone.

Someone who is observing an object flying faster than the speed of sound will therefore see first the object, and then will be "hit" by the shockwave - which he will experience as the sonic boom.

The most common - and awesome - examples of this phenomenon are supersonic jets, which generates Mach Cones when reach (and surpass) the speed of sound: the power (ie. the volume) of the shockwave depends on the quantity of air that is accelerated and compressed by the pressure waves - thus depending on the size and shape of the jet - while the grey cone you are going to see in the photos is actually formed by condensed water droplets, resulting from the shockwave shedding from the jet.

Photos explanation and credits:

Wavefront development for an object travelling faster than the speed of sound. Credits to Francisco Esquembre and Fu-Kwun Hwang;

Air Force F-22 Raptor executes a supersonic flyby over the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. Gulf of Alaska, 22/06/2009. U.S. Navy photo by Sonar Technician (Surface) 1st Class Ronald Dejarnett;

An F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Wildcats of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 131 breaks the sound barrier during an air power demonstration above the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mediterranean Sea, 9/07/2010. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Bradley Evans;

An F/A-18C Hornet, from the “Argonauts” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, breaks the sound barrier while making a high-speed pass close to the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. Pacific Ocean, 24/08/2007. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ron Reeves;

An F/A-18C Hornet assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 113 breaks the sound barrier during an air power demonstration over the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Pacific Ocean, 6/06/2011. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Travis K. Mendoza.

[giorigoinspace-blog]

[giorigoinspace-blog]

Sky Burial Site in Yerpa Valley (Tibet).

Sky Burial is a funerary practice in Tibet, Mongolia and other regions, wherein the human corpse is left on a mountaintop and exposed to elements and animals. As in Vajrayana Buddhism the corpse, after the transmigration of the soul, is just an empty shell, there's no need to preserve it; the human remains are therefore disposed in a generous way to feed animals and birds. The practice is also useful in those regions, where the ground is too hard and rocky to build a grave.

For Vajrayana Buddhists the practice is a symbol of the impermanence of life and an act of generosity on the deceased, since its corpse - no longer useful - is offered as food sustain other living beings.

Photo credits to John Hill.

[giorigoinspace-blog]

Cherry blossoms at the Tokyo Imperial Palace

[spaceexp]

Jupiter and Io, a a montage of New Horizons images taken during the spacecraft’s Jupiter flyby in 2007

[giorigoinspace-blog]

>mfw I listen to new interesting albums

[mortodisonno-deactivated2014062]

brb dying

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brb dying [2]

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Heart and Soul Nebulae in an infrared mosaic. Taken by NASA's WISE.

Credits to: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA