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Big Stars, Bigger Nothing

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Space is truly awe inspiring - and amazingly empty.  It's often hard for us to conceptualize both the immense size of planets, stars, and other bodies with the incredible amount of space between them.

To show the immense size,  introduced me to a fantastic YouTube video compared planet and star sizes. The video does a great job of showing relative size - once you think you're at the largest size possible, another body comes along and knocks it out of the park!

 

 

All of those wonderfully huge (and woefully undersized) bodies are faaaaaaaaaaaaaar part.  Check out this interactive scrolling game from Josh Worth (props to Steve Greenwood for linking me to this).  If you can scroll the entire way, I commend you.

 

This background knowledge helps to fully appreciate the Pluto news as covered by the latest This Week in NASA video - check it out!

After a nearly decade-long journey, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arrived at Pluto on July 14 - passing by at a mere 7,750 miles above the surface ... resulting in an absolutely breathtaking image - the closest ever of Pluto. Initial congratulations included a Twitter post from the White House ...



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Pluto is the Best Dwarf Ever

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Pluto is an odd duck.  It was known as the ninth planet until early in this millenium, when it was demoted to dwarf planet status.  All of this and we never even got a good luck at Pluto!

The current New Horizons mission is out to changed that. Launched almost a decade ago, it took a three billion mile journey to Pluto, and below are the pics to prove it!

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Sally Ride Rocks

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If you visit Google today, the awesome woman appearing on the Google Doodle is none other than the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Check out a Google "Behind the Doodle" video, which mentions other cool facts about Sally, such as the fact that she was a competitive college tennis player!

Animator friend of the team Nate Swinehart, and doodler Olivia Huynh team up to give you an inside look at the doodle process for Sally Ride.

Also, make sure to check out Janelle Monae's homage to Sally.

Text becomes clearer when watched in HD. Track No. 17 of The Electric Lady Song: Sally Ride Artist: Janelle Monáe All Rights Are to the Original Owner. I do not own this song. Follow Janelle Monae on Twitter @JanelleMonae

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White House Science Fair 2015

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It was awesome.

Don't believe me?

Just watch.


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Leonard Nimoy Influenced Us All

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As Spock, Leonard Nimoy played a pivotal role on the original Star Trek series and movies. Star Trek painted a picture of diversity - different races, cultures, and species working together to make things right in the universe.  It served as a great example of the power of science fiction, especially as a young African American geek that struggled to see diversity in other forms of media that I love. 

Sci-fi author Cerece Rennie Murphy had a great point about the power of sci=fi on the latest Black Girl Nerds podcast:

 "It's all about what it means to truly be human, or to truly be a part of a community. What it means to stand alone and stand together. It's all this stuff that we are grappling with - cut straight to the chase. There may be aliens and space chases, but that's all window dressing. Science fiction is all about who you are, discovering you are, finding a way to be who you are in a world that's telling you to be something else.

That's something that we can all identify with. It can be hard to truly find yourself .Nimoy's characters always excels at displaying that struggle, whether as Spock or William Bell.

Even modern astronauts are influenced by this, especially given the international cooperation required in projects such as the International Space Station.

NASA Astronaut Mike Fincke and ESA European Space Agency Astronaut Luca Parmitano reflect on the inspiration that actor Leonard Nimoy's character Mr. Spock in the television series Star Trek had on scientists, engineers, space explorers and fans around the globe. For a high-resolution version: https://archive.org/details/150227LeonardNiimoy720p

Check out some other great images shared on Twitter to celebrate the passing of Leonard Nimoy.