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Last night saw a rare, and spectacular, astronomical event: the transit of Venus across the Sun. There were many amazing pictures from this event, and Phil Plait provided some terrific coverage. The event reminded me, specifically, of a passage from a favorite book of mine, and one which I’ve been planning to dig out for a re-read soon: Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. This book constitutes a one-volume history of the human species’s discovery of its own roots in, and relation to, the Universe. In that respect, the book covers quite a bit of theDown the rabbit hole….

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Arrakis! Vulcan! Tatooine! Alderaan! Barsoom! Akir! Zeist! Veridian III! Hoth! Mustafar! Coruscant! Trantor! Krypton! All hail the Planet! Planets are everything. Without planets, we’ve got nothing, in SF. Without planets, we’ve got no place for stories to happen. Planets are where it’s at. Without a nifty planet, your space story isn’t going anywhere. Some planets are Earthlike in most ways. Others are inhospitable almost to the point where humans can’t live there…but only just. Some planets are gas giants, leaving us to hope for livable environments on the moons; other planets are tiny, cold, airless rocks. Planets give rise toDown the rabbit hole….

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By rights I should save this for next week’s Sunday Burst, but it’s too good for that. xkcd brings the infographic goodness to the depths of the large lakes and oceans. Note the depth of Lake Erie, relative to the other Great Lakes — that’s why Lake Erie usually freezes over during winter (although not so much the last couple of years, and in the future, who knows — thanks, Global Warming!). On a related note, I think that we may be living in the Golden Age of Infographics. I love losing myself in these things! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Someone on Reddit questions the technological amazingness of landing humans on the Moon. Someone else sets them straight (salty language alert): Oh no you fucking didn’t. You have no idea. The moon is 385,000 kilometers away, and spinning around us at roughly 1 kilometer per second. NASA engineers took a hunk of metal and explosions, stuck a few men in there, and managed to hit what is essentially a tiny moving target in the vast expanse of nothing that is space. They also managed to make all of the technological shit work and stay working outside of the protection ofDown the rabbit hole….

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Charles Pierce: I have to confess: The fact that N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civliization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civlizing Forces, proposed building a base on the moon by 2020, only to have the idea turned into a punchline and general ridicule, actually bothered the hell out of me. When did we become so quick to mock this kind of thing? When did our national imagination wither this way? When did exploration become just another “big government” program for pipsqueaks like Willard Romney to ridicule? I’m old enough to remember when the space program was something capable ofDown the rabbit hole….

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Some nonfiction notes: :: I’ve always had a soft spot for conspiracy theories. I’ve never actually believed in any of them, but I’ve always like them in a lot of ways. The best ones are wild and wooly and complex, demonstrating a lot of knowledge of history just to make them work. But I tended to like conspiracy theories more before 9-11-01 happened; since then, I find a great deal of conspiracy theory unconvincing and even depressing at times. Maybe it was because the prime conspiracist event of the late 20th century, the JFK assassination, happened before I was born;Down the rabbit hole….

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I was in fourth grade when Cosmos first aired. My teacher had a poster up about it in the classroom and encouraged us to watch it. I was quite the space geek at the time, and I expected the show to be about space and nothing else, so when it actually aired, I was baffled that it was about the entire history and breadth of science from a truly cosmic perspective. I didn’t understand much of the show, but I faithfully watched each episode. I remember to this day sitting in my living room, watching Carl Sagan standing on the cliffsDown the rabbit hole….

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I was reading an article recently (and I don’t remember where! but if I do, I’ll edit this post to put a link) about the star Canis Majoris. This is the largest star currently known to exist. How big is it? Well, this star is located in the constellation Canis Major (the Big Dog), if you want to see it for yourself. But according to what I’m reading, it is 1.7 billion miles in diameter. The problem with numbers like that, though, is that they’re just meaningless to the human brain. We can’t visualize distances of that magnitude, and remember, whenDown the rabbit hole….

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Politics, below the fold. Via PZ Myers, we have Ron Paul’s answer to the shocking question, “Do you believe in evolution?” (We’ll just set aside the notion that one can “believe in” evolution, kinda like how one “believes in” Santa Claus.) I’m not surprised at all to hear Paul say “I don’t accept it, it’s just a theory”. No surprise there whatsoever. But what did catch my ear is his opening, where he says that it’s inappropriate to even ask the question in the first place. Well, Mr. Paul, I like my Presidents to not be nitwits who disrespect science.Down the rabbit hole….