Confidemus

Morning space fans. I thought I'd give you a little comparison on the age of the Universe. If the whole 13.75 billion year life of the Universe could be condensed down to a 90 minute football game, humans would have been playing for the last 1/4 of a second of the match and the dinosaurs would have been sent off 25 seconds ago.

That really does look ball-grabbingly good. Was going to wait for next-gen to pick this up. Not sure if I can now.

Indeed. You have been guilty of the above on about 17 occasions.

This is a pretty decent CV...

Tell us more you scamp. How did you manage to bag a 33 year old?

Today is the start of 17 days off work for me. Yaldy!!

From the top - The Milky Way, Aurora Borealis and Iceland's Godafoss (Waterfall of the Gods). You can alse see Jupiter and the Andromeda Galaxy if you look close enough. An incredible, incredible picture.

Aw unlucky TC!! Take another jog along the towpath and give the correct boat a "coo-eeee!"

Scientists have discovered 3 "Super-Earths" orbiting nearby star Gliese 667C's habitable zone: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23032467 Scientists have identified three new planets around a star they already suspected hosted a trio of worlds. It means this relatively nearby star, Gliese 667C, now has three so-called super-Earths orbiting in its "habitable zone". This is the region where temperatures ought to allow for the possibility of liquid water, although no-one can say for sure what conditions are really like on these planets. Gliese 667C is 22 light-years away. Astronomers can see it on the sky in the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). Previous studies of Gliese 667C had established there were very probably three planets around it, with its habitable zone occupied by one super-Earth - an object slightly bigger than our home world, but very probably with a rocky surface. Now, a team of astronomers led by Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Göttingen, Germany, and Mikko Tuomi, of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has re-examined the system and raised the star's complement of planets. The researchers used a suite of telescopes including the 3.6m telescope at the Silla Observatory in Chile. This incorporates the high-precision Harps instrument. Harps employs an indirect method of detection that infers the existence of orbiting planets from the way their gravity makes a parent star appear to twitch in its motion across the sky. Full to bursting The planets' presence needs to be disentangled from this complex signal but the Harps instrument is recognised as having tremendous success in identifying smaller worlds. Gliese 667C is a low-luminosity "M-dwarf" star just over one-third the mass of our Sun. The Harps instrument has had great success at identifying super-Earths This means its habitable zone can be much closer in before temperatures make liquid water impossible. The team is now confident that three rocky worlds occupy this region at Gilese 667C. "Their estimated masses range from 2.7 to 3.8 that of the Earth's," Mikko Tuomi told BBC News. "However, we can only estimate the physical sizes by assuming certain compositions that is, well, only educated guessing. "Their orbital periods are 28, 39, and 62 days, which means that they all orbit the star closer to its surface than Mercury in our own system. Yet, the estimated surface temperatures enable the existence of liquid water on them because of the low luminosity and low mass of the star." These planets are said to completely fill the habitable zone. There are no more stable orbits in which to fit another planet. That said, the team has found tantalising evidence for what may be another rocky world on the inner-edge of the zone. Fruitful targets The planets would need an atmosphere to sustain liquid water on their surfaces, but at a distance of more than 200 trillion km, there are no means currently to determine what the precise conditions are like or whether life would have any chance of establishing itself. Nonetheless, Dr Tuomi believes M-dwarf stars are good candidates to go hunting for potentially habitable worlds. They are small enough that close-in rocky planets will show up well in the Harps Doppler spectroscopy data, but they are also dim enough that those close-orbiting worlds will not be roasted. "This discovery single-handedly demonstrates that low-mass stars can be hosts of several potentially habitable planets," explained Dr Tuomi. "In practice, it means that we might have to double or treble our estimates for the occurrence rate of habitable-zone planets around M-dwarf stars. "There might, in fact, be more habitable-zone planets in the Universe than there are stars, which makes it much easier for the future space missions to obtain images of these planets. "So, although only a rather simple discovery, its implications might force us to re-think how common habitable-zone planets are in the Universe."

My goodness, that is one fucking BARKING strip!

Then you should probably check out this. The Hubble replacement James Webb Space Telescope: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

Credit where credit's due, Ricardo. Here's a rather nifty picture of the milky way over crater lake. Explanation: How many different astronomical phenomena have come together to create the above vista? Several. First, in the foreground, is Crater Lake -- a caldera created by volcanism on planet Earth about 7,700 years ago. Next, inside the lake, is water. Although the origin of the water in the crater is melted snowfall, the origin of water on Earth more generally is unclear, but possibly related to ancient Earthly-impacts of icy bodies. Next, the green glow in the sky is airglow, light emitted by atoms high in the Earth's atmosphere as they recombine at night after being separated during the day by energetic sunlight. The many points of light in the sky are stars, glowing by nuclear fusion. They are far above the atmosphere but nearby to our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, the bright arch across the image is the central band of the Milky Way, much further away, on the average, than the nearby stars, and shaped mostly by gravity. Contrary to appearances, the Milky Way band glows by itself and is not illuminated by the airglow. The above image is a six-frame panorama taken during about two weeks ago in Oregon, USA.

Shiels would do a TERRIFIC job at QOS. Believe me. There's so much wrong with the above, I'm not sure where to start.

Here's what you're missing SJ. An upper deck and a fucking flume: Clunge. Magnet.

If only for the shits and giggles, I desperately hope so!

Magee wasn't married! Perhaps he'd convinced himself that the mop he'd propped up on a chair and covered in lipstick and perfume was his wife, but no one else!

# bucksfizzclassic # showingmyage

More tragic than a Shakesperean sonnet, is it not? The boy is a clusterfuck.

Posts #379, #380 and #381. P&B fucking royalty!!!

For the benefit of Bennet/ Vicky: http://bit.ly/17gNBOz

Do I hear the clang of a fast approaching banhammer?

Back on topic. SJC. Would you take Vicky the Viking belowdecks for a right good 21 gun salute?

Hiya Vicky, hiya pal!

Ooft, Benny's having a mare. A female alias? Sinister.