Last year did you have your name put on the CD which will be on the spacecraft to Pluto? The rocket is due to take off today http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4617202.stm It will take nine years to get there so some of us including me probably won't be around when it arrives at its destination.

Heck Noreen,we may get there before it does,who knows.

LilJoe

Yes, but just to be safe I went down there and wrote my name on it with a Sharpie too.

Shelly

What's a Sharpie?

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LilJoe

As illustrated, a fine point felt tipped pen that many of us use to write on our burned CD's and DVD's.

Shelly

Mine's on there.

My name is part of that mission also.

In a few billion years or so, our sun will begin to die. The sun will expand in the process, to a size that will encompass the orbits of our planets, including Earth.

Before the sun grows to the point it subsumes our orbit, all the water on Earth will vaporize.
As the swollen sun slowly approaches, Earth will begin to melt, become a molten mass.
Before long, the sun's heat will literally vaporize the molten rock once called Earth. Somewhere along the way, we will be blasted back out into space where we all, our long dead bones vaporized, then disassembled, will rejoin the Cosmos-atom by atom.

That CD?
Vaporized; just like us.

"Before the sun grows to the point it subsumes our orbit, all the water on Earth will vaporize.
As the swollen sun slowly approaches, Earth will begin to melt, become a molten mass.
Before long, the sun's heat will literally vaporize the molten rock once called Earth."

I had better change the battery in my smoke detector to be prepared.
And then buy some shares of DuPont, with everyone wearing Nomex their stock will go through the roof.

Gads Ed! You have been in a dark and depressed funk.

Yes, the Sun will become a red giant and subsume all the inner planets, but that will be in 4 billion years! We all have time for a good meal, a bottle of fine wine, and a pleasant holiday before then.

In 4 billion years if there is still a remnant left of what was once humanity (doubtful), it will have long since left its ancestral home and be scattered among the stars. Long before Earth becomes a cinder, it will have ceased to even have been a memory for any that could trace their origins to this cosmic address. If we can survive our own lunacy, our future is far from here. Cheer up! In a hundred years you will look back and laugh.

Shelly

Actually, I was thinking how futile the personal expression would be. What would I gain when whatever I, Ed, single human, did in regards to Pluto? Certainly the spirit of adventure by joining in would be there (for some at least), but my corporeal body won't ever make the trip, while my thoughts on space and space travel have been there and back, a much more satisfying option.

“Oh”? And who is going to pay for that trip? Only we adventurous Europeans have that utopian view of the world or eternity.
I do try not to be cryptic when I write, but I also expect that most people are on the same page as me. Explaining every word or phrase is at least tiring when the written nuances are lost on readers who are not where I am.
Frankly, your own thoughts as expressed here surprise me. I would have thought you of all people would not have swallowed that "the future for humanity is in the stars" BS.
Why "BS"? Because the future (immediate or long term) for humanity is not in the stars, but in saving what we have here on Earth.
Even the “environmental” paradigm is too expensive for most human civilizations. The same goes for “Recycling”. Until we solve those problems, “space travel” will of necessity be put on the back burner by this future governments.
And if the bleakness of your "escapist" view of humanity holds true, those who cannot afford to leave the Earth are doomed in any case.

Precisely the point of my observation. What you also missed was the reality that what is corporeal humanity will eventually rejoin the Cosmos in any case.

Anyone who cares to, can read my 1997 copyrighted story, “Symbiosis: a love story” dealing with this very topic.
Reading “Symbiosis” will reveal that your own halcyon view of the future exactly mirror mine, less the corporeal, “escapist" view.
If you’d like, I’ll send you an author’s copy of “Symbiosis”.

Once again ,a thought provoking thread being turned into a negative by none other than Mr ED " I would bet that if Mr Ed were ask the time , he would respond by telling you how to build a clock.

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256K L2 Cache
533Mhz FSB-60 GB HD

>

Why is it when someone disagrees with an "easy" conclusion to a problem or answer, you and others say that their opinion is "negative"?
Does it ever occur to many there are opinions which are "more correct" than the obvious answer or opinion?
Or that there exists the possibility of a "parallax" view?
Google "parallax"

Each issue in your or my life has more than one answer, especially so if your brain can think of all the alternatives:
1. The obvious answer.
2. What you want to hear/see as the answer,
3. What is.
4. What the best result would be.
5. What the more expedient answer is.
6. The wrong answer.
7. The more correct (than incorrect) answer.

If a person’s own mind insists there is only right/wrong/, black/white answers to questions on politics, or economics, sex, even the best Bar-B-Q sauce questions, I can understand now why so many threads get hijacked by and pure unintelligible rhetoric.

Empty heads still rattle, heads full of uninformed choices rattle more... and louder.

You can debate politics, economics, or sex, but leave Bar-B-Q sauce alone!

Shelly

Now who is flustered ?

Empty heads still rattle, heads full of uninformed choices rattle more... and louder.

And of course yours doesen't rattle, because it is so full of egotistical .

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Shelly

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Done. On the way.

Would reading it help me understand your apparent dire view on todays events and W. ?

81 Newbee

>Would reading it help me understand your apparent dire view on todays events and W. ?

No; not on W in that his Presidency is dire news to us all.

And no, if you are not a science fiction afficianado from way back with a hint of science and the near future in your thoughts.

And yes, if you can forget who wrote it. It's a romp and a warning-at once.

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Actually, I was
>thinking how futile the personal expression would be. What
>would I gain when whatever I, Ed, single human, did in regards
>to Pluto?>

Aw comeon Ed. Haven't you ever done anything just for fun? Remember the days before interstate freeways when we traveled on two lane roads? Remember those signs advertising "Just ahead three headed snake and a merman skeleton. 2 miles ahead"? Even though you knew there was no merman, didn't you ever stop, just for fun, or did you tell your kids "we're not stopping to see something that doesn't exist. All they want is our money and there's nothing for me to gain by stopping"?

I think we all know that nothing will ever come from having our names on the Pluto bound spacecraft but it's kind of fun to think that my name is flying around in the outer reaches of our galaxy and maybe beyond. And just maybe, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, some alien being might find it and wonder what I was like. I have nothing to gain by sending my name along but it was just some goofy thing to do.

Les

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Nice thought for remembering your brother,Noreen.I wonder how much the guy who charges to "name a star after xxxx" has made after years of doing it.I personally think it is a rip off but a lot of people use it.The name in space has a much nicer ring to it

81 Newbee

I once thought I'd like to have me or my name in space. Then I saw this formation via Hubble: M_16 Pillars: think of this "space travel": the two formations inside the left "Pillar" are light years apart.
I then thought: how long would it take (in light years) to get from the right edge of the left "Pillar" to the left edge of the center "Pillar"?

Then I contemplated traveling from the star in the lower center of the "Cone" to the star nearest the center.

A quick calculation left this question: what sentient being would "create" that chaos? (Google: Chaos). And for what purpose? For us to develop, then develop Hubble, just so we could see its "work"?

To what end? Once you've done Hubble and understand the distances (time) involved, Pluto is no more (and no further away) than the tiniest grain of sand caught in the welt of your shoe.

Before I die, science will announce they've found the edge of the universe. My mind can't wait, though it knows my butt won't make the trip...except in my head...

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I find Space study fascinating and remember as a kid waiting to see the wonders that were predicted we would learn about the beginning of the universe once we completed the grinding(It was taking oh so long because the "body heat of the workers " might cause defects"of the huge mirrors for larger telescopes.We learned a lot about things but along came Hubble and we learned more.Then we caught dust from a comet and we are Going to learn about the "Beginning of the universe".
It seems the more we learn the more the mystery deepens.We know more but obviously have much more to learn.Fascinating stuff, beautiful pictures amd more exciting knowledge.I don't think they will find the end in my lifetime ,nor in yours.I believe that there are no boundries to space .Space Warp.???FASCINATING!!

81 Newbee

Actually there is no edge to the universe. The universe is expanding and has been since the moment of the Big Bang. Here's where it gets a little mind bending, as we look further out in space, we actually are seeing further back in time ever closer to the Big Bang, which is the beginning of the universe. We found the microwave background radiation left behind by the Big Bang back in 1996.

In accordance with Einstein's General Theory, mass curves the fabric of space-time, so the mass of the universe causes something attempting to travel in a straight line to follow a curved path around a gravitational mass. That's what causes the planets travel around the Sun. If you could reach the edge of the universe you would not pass beyond it, but would follow a path around it.

Since we have recently (in 2004) discovered the existence of dark matter and dark energy, there now be enough mass to make the universe finite. At some point the universe will stop expanding and will begin a reversal of the Big Bang ending eventually in the singularity from which it began, and start the whole cycle again. But if the total mass is not enough, the universe will continue to expand, and following the Second Law of Thermodynamics, will continue to cool, and eventually the last stars will wink out, and all molecular motion will cease as the universe reaches the temperature of absolute zero. Then we will indeed have reached the end of the universe.

Shelly