So today I woke up and knew that it was time to get some of that spring cleaning done that's been sitting around staring me in the face. The best part, though, is that I am no longer sicker than a dog with a cold, so that might actually be possible. So with a few things checked off my list for today, I figured it was time to put on the music and get my butt in gear with today's blog.
As if the trend of selfies wasn't bad enough, Merriam-Webster has added it and several other words to their collegiate dictionary this year; although, I must admit that two of my favorite new words are "steampunk" and "turducken". You can check out the new words for yourselves here. (I'm also amused that "derp" and "woot" have been added as well.)
Something that caught my eye today has to do with NASA's MMS program, and while I could try to explain it to you myself, I'm going to go ahead and let NASA do it for me--far better than I could. The first video looks like an awesome movie trailer--as in, I feel like I'd want to watch this if this were a movie. It's what Cyanide and Happiness would call the "nice behind" of science.
Okay...so that was neat, right? But what exactly is all the hype about? Here's another video from NASA that does a better job of explaining it.
So, essentially we're taking pictures of plasma flares--or magnetic reconnection--or something like that. The neat part about this expedition is that while it mirrors a current expedition by the European Space Agency in its four spaceship format, it will be collecting different data about the earth's magnetosphere.
The current ESA program that is mapping our magnetosphere is called Cluster. Cluster was designed to make a map of the patterns of our magnetosphere and how it reacts to the solar winds, solar storms, and other space stuff.
But what's the point of all of this? Why is it important? Well, understanding how our planet reacts with the sun is useful in a lot of ways. It may help us better understand our own atmospheric weather, understand dynamic "weather systems", and it may help us better understand how our ozone layer works--by understanding how the sun's energy interacts with our planet's magnetic field. It will also help us to build spacecraft that is better suited to what's going on out in space, and will inevitably give us more clues on how we keep people safe on interplanetary expeditions to places like Mars (and hopefully beyond). Understanding the magnetosphere and how particles interact with it may also help us to better understand how to harness that kind of power--and may prove an invaluable source of fuel or even propulsion for spacecraft in the future. That said, this is all just conjecture on my part as everything I've read so far doesn't seem to have much in the way of practical applications for the information that's being gathered. But as the saying goes: Knowledge is power. And I have a pretty good feeling that in the next ten to twenty years, the information we learn from these space programs is going to help us in ways we never expected.
And...I just found this out. Thanks to this article over on the Mary Sue, I now know my future. It might, maybe have something to do with Sailor Moon.
Sailor Moon:: Birthday Gift by Hiroy-Drigo on deviantART
Check it out!
Hope the beginning of your week started out just the way you wanted, and I hope you have a great rest of your week!
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