Welcome to Indie Darkness of The Cosmos! An astronomy blog.
Above is the first of the liminal space photography posts that I made on Instagram. I felt it pertained since on this blog we will be delving into the ultimate liminal space.
Inspired by The Backrooms subreddit.
Hello ASTR 2110 class! My name is Kathryn, and I’m a senior majoring in Biomedical Engineering. I wasn’t quite able to fit an Astronomy minor into my schedule, but I’ve always loved learning about space (fun fact: I wrote my college admission essay about the Fermi Paradox), so I’ve tried to pick up astronomy courses whenever I could over the past four years.
One thing about me is that I’m involved in Vanderbilt’s chapter of Camp Kesem, a nationwide organization that supports kids through and beyond a parent’s cancer. In Kesem, all the kids and counselors have code names to protect our identities and contribute to camp magic, and mine is Europa. Since this is an astronomy course, I figured I’d build my blog around this nickname!
I’m looking forward to learning more about the Solar System with everyone this semester!
– Kathryn/Europa
The image above are two characters called Lulu and Lolo. They are tiny twin bears. Lulu and Lolo resonate with me to a great extent because I am also a twin that is relatively short in height.
I have a strong passion for dancing, and am involved in two dance teams on campus. There is a video uploaded on YouTube of my most recent showcase performed last semester. There are more upcoming showcases and performances this semester so I would love to have more people come watch!
Hello, and welcome to my blog! In the subsequent posts, I will document selected portions of my ever-continuing astronomy journey. But first, I’ll share a little about myself. I love learning about astronomy, especially about the historical and mythological significance of the cosmos and specific astronomical objects, events, etc. I also love to travel, especially with my family! I took the above photo with a sibling while on a trip to the Grand Canyon. (The star gazing at the Grand Canyon, a designated International Dark Sky Park, is phenomenal!) Finally, when I’m not working or studying, I can almost always be found with a cup of coffee and spending time with friends and family.
People seeing an astroid hit the Moon! This is an article from a pretty cool (and legit) astronomer – Dr. Phil Plait. An asteroid impacted the moon during the lunar eclipse!
Europa’s colorful cracks maybe tholins but totally maybe aren’t! I liked this article by a non-scientist – it’s well-written and researched (and they make a great point about what’s available to read at the end ;) ). The Colors of Europa: What’s That Red Stuff on Europa’s Surface? I also found this cool article from the European Space Agency: Blood-red scars and veins on Europa
If you’re in my 2023 Solar System class, please put a comment here showing that you’ve found my blog and that you’re following it :) Please include your first name. Note that you MUST be logged in to your own WordPress blog when commenting or else you’re doing it wrong!
Also make sure you have bookmarked the big class blog aggregator: Astro2110 – The Solar System. From there, you can follow everyone or specific classmates if you like (when I post them).
This is my first blog post. I’m excited to get to work this semester!
This is a picture of my brother (left) and I at a Patriots playoff game against the Titans; the recap of the game can be found on ESPN.
In 2001, right near the world’s largest radio telescope in England, a strange phenomenon was observed. The crops near the telescope formed into an interesting formation:
This formation from above convincingly resembled a face. Scientists were baffled, and what’s even more interesting is what came next. so in 1974, Carl Sagan sent out the Arecibo Message, which was a coded message meant to talk to aliens and tell them about us. We described where we live, what we are made of, our calculation system, chemical substances on earth, and what a human looks like. Long after this, in 2001, we saw a strikingly similar pattern left in a field. Here is a picture comparing the two
The ‘message’/pattern we received seemingly came from an extraterrestrial civilization in response to our message. If the pattern really did come from aliens, they would be telling us that they also use a decimal system, that their life forms are silicon-based instead of carbon, are about 4 feet tall with large heads, and that they inhabit 3 planets in their solar system. They also described their much more complex radio telescope technology. Do you think this is really from another civilization? If not, what is it?
Europa, Jupiter’s 4th largest and 2nd closest Galilean moon, is thought to have a large saltwater ocean covered by a layer of ice. An article from Nasa details the evidence for the existence of this ocean. The first piece of evidence is the matching zig-zagging cracks on the surface that indicate that the surface was split and a “dark icy material” flowed up to the surface. The second piece of evidence is the lack of impact craters indicating a lot of surface activity. Scientists modeled the fractures on the surface and found that they fit much better if the outer layer of ice could move freely and independently from the underlying layers of the planet. Finally, the most compelling piece of evidence is that Europa has magnetic effects that imply that there is a large saltwater ocean on the planet acting as an inductor.
The article also goes on to talk about a possible future mission – Europa Clipper. This mission is set to launch October 2024 and would set out to send a probe to investigate Europa further to see if it has habitable conditions for life.
Fermi’s paradox is that based on the number of stars in our galaxy and estimates on the likelihood of intelligent, space-faring civilizations to develop in a star system, we should expect to see some signs of alien life in our galaxy. Some possible solutions to the paradox are that
According to the textbook, some of the possible explanations for scenario two are that interstellar travel is too hard or expensive, there is little desire to explore the galaxy for other civilizations, or that all other civilizations have destroyed themselves before they get the chance to explore the galaxy.
Another interesting solution exists to Fermi’s Paradox – The dark forest theory. The idea of the dark forest is that there are many civilizations out there, but they do not want to reveal themselves. Any civilization that reveals itself to the greater galaxy, could be targeted and wiped out by another civilization. The reasoning to wipe out an alien world would be to take care of the threat before they have the chance to take you out. Often in human history, when two different groups of people make first contact, this leads to war and the wiping out of one population, and other intelligent alien civilizations may have similar histories. The dark forest theory gets its name from the image of a dark forest at night with many different species who stay hidden in order to survive.
I think the dark forest idea is the most interesting and should make us question how much broadcasting we are doing to the outside world and whether or not that’s a good idea.
