The asteroid belt.

So we've been to Mars, very impressive indeed. Next up is Jupiter, but there is a slight obstacle called the asteroid belt in the way. Actually we've already had unmanned space craft fly through it and nothing hit it, but that asteroid belt is still cool to talk about, hence today's blog.

The asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. While it's impressive to see a huge belt of rocks all floating around an orbit in our solar system, it is estimated that if you took all those rocks and combined them together, they wouldn't even come close to the size of our moon. Just a little pocket of space dust on the grand scheme of things.

The largest known asteroid in the asteroid belt is nearly 600 miles in diameter, it's basically called a dwarf planet. I'd say if that thing ever decided to hurl toward the earth we'd be slightly fucked.

It is believed that the asteroid belt is basically just a bunch or rocks that never quite made it to becoming part of a planet when our solar system was born. Not enough gravitational pull, not in the right orbit ... basically not in the right place at the right time. Our solar system was born in the area of this asteroid belt, in fact everything inside the belt is called the inner solar system, and everything outside the belt is called the outer solar system.

Here's an interesting asteroid factoid : The biggest asteroid to hit the Earth this century was in Siberia on June 30, 1908. The rock was about 100,000 tons and the size of a large house. It shattered in the air, while about four miles from the ground, creating an explosion 2,000 times stronger than an atomic bomb! It demolished thousands of square miles of forestation.

I guess one day two large asteroids could collide, sending one of them spiraling on a direct path to earth and wipe us out of existence. But since Mars and Jupiter are closer than we are, and they are both still around, I'd say it's safe to assume that when I wake up tomorrow, we'll all still be here.

Since I'm talking about asteroids .... HERE is a cool game that I've spent countless hours playing back in the good old days. High-tech electronic entertainment to say the least.

Cold is Hot

The other night is was minus 19 degrees out in this God forsakin' land I live in. But that doesn't stand a chance against outer space.

The temperature in outer space is a balmy minus 454 degrees! Yeah ... not only cold enough to make your balls suck up into your body, but your balls would just plain fall off.

Minus 459 degrees is absolute zero. It cannot get any colder than that by laws of science. So the universe is a mere 5 degrees away from that. Hell, the dark side of the moon is minus 260 degrees.

I don't get how anything works at those temps? How do satellites move their intricate little parts? How does the space shuttle function? How is the Hubble able to adjust it's solar panels with it's little electric motors in that type of temperature?

It's hard to imagine the incredible coldness of outer space while laying on your back in the yard on a nice warm summer night. You just look out and see darkness, and total peace and comfort. But in reality, the universe in one outrageously cold, and extremely violent place.

So next time you get a chill because there's is a little nip in the air, 'Shut Your Piehole' because there are people living in planet Querletarizarbary that are freezing to death!

Going to Mars

As you may know, we have successfully landed crafts on Mars to explore the planet. In fact between Russia and the USA, we've tried many, many times to get to Mars. We now have things up there testing the soil and rocks and such. But do everyday people really know just how far out we have gone.

Well, a good comparison is the moon. Everyone can go out and look at the moon, check it out in a telescope, follow it through the night sky. But how far is the moon? The moon is about 1/4 of a million miles away ... that's 250,000 MILES!! Kinda like circling the earth about 10 times over. It takes about 3 days just to get to the moon.

Mars, however, is about 40 million miles away, depending on where it is in it's orbit! That's like circling the earth around 1600 times over. It takes like 6 months to get there ... and that's going about 10,000 mph! It's insane!! How the hell can we do this shit??

Another, more simple way of grasping this distance is by measuring the AU's, or astronomical units. An AU is about the distance from earth to the sun, therefore the distance from the earth to the sun is 1AU. It's an easier way to look at distance and somehow get your head around it. So if we look at AU's, then the distance from the earth to the moon is about .00264 AU's. That's 2 hundreths of the distance from what it is to the sun. Now going to Mars is about 1.45 AU's in distance. that's like going to the sun and continuing halfway as long again. Imagine going to the sun, and when you get there, you still have about a third of the way to go yet.

I just can't believe what we are able to do as humans. I could spend my entire life devoted to making something spectacular and even if I had all the resources, all the money, all the time in the world, I probably would be lucky if I could build a craft that could fly for about 10 seconds before crashing back down to earth from its maximum altitude of 20 feet. And yet we've landed on the moon, made telescopes that are out in orbit right now viewing hundred of light years away, and we have stuff on Mars.

And somehow, someway, when you look at what man can do, and then pan out to see the whole earth, then the moon, then mars, then the solar system, the the local area, then the little arm of the milky way that we reside on, then the whole galaxy, and then the known universe ... to which there may be several universes. Suddenly you realize, we ain't done squat by going to Mars. If fact, you could take everything that every man has ever done in human history, and it don't mean squat. Anything and everything that we've done could be wiped out in a millisecond and not leave one trace of evidence that we even ever existed. We are navel lint ... at best!!

So all you out there just continue on your way climbing that corporate ladder, driving your new cars, and sipping on your Starbucks, while racking up unheard totals on your credit cards as you take your little princess to ballet class. I'll be here, like always, staring up at the sky, with My trusty dog by my side, getting in-tune with the fact that nothing really matters and wondering what in the hell are we doing here!!

The Journey continues.

As kind of a continuation of yesterdays topic, here is another video about just how tiny we are, and I'm not just talking about my private parts either. In fact this video is even better than yesterdays. I posted a link to it awhile back but for those of you who missed it OR were to lazy to go view it, this should make it easier.

So I don't have a lot of rambling about how small I feel, or how "in awe" I am of just how much is out there since I just did that yesterday. Just enjoy the video and hopefully you'll get blown away like I do, every time I watch it. It's the next best thing to smoking a doobie ! Enjoy.

P.S. - This video has a special bonus footage included an alien life form. See if you can spot it.






Todays RBV: Ezekiel 4:12 And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

I had no idea that cooking with human fecal matter was possible. In fact, I really didn't WANT to know it was possible, but with God, ALL things are possible.

How big are you?

What the hell are we doing here? How big are you in the big picture? Well I got a little video to show you just how small, pathetic, worthless, and tiny you really are.


I don't even mean that as an insult believe it or not. We ALL are tiny and worthless if you look at the big picture. After viewing this video, I think earth is just a grain of sand, and were all little micro ants on the grain of sand. I'm just waiting for some "giant" to come along and see us all down here and say "Gross! Look at all these little things crawling around", and then a huge NIKE logo will appear and we'll all be squashed in a heartbeat.





I find it just astoundingly amazing just how small we really are. I've always looked at spiders, ants, worms, ect ... and felt so much superior to them. But then I take a look at this video and get just a wee bit humbled at how incredibly tiny we are in the big picture. I just cannot believe all that is out there. I wanna turn time ahead a few hundred years and see what we know then DAMMIT! I'm guessing in a few hundred years we will know SO MUCH MORE .. and yet, somehow, still not know shit.

Is there a job where you can get paid to lay on your ass all night and just stare at the sky? If so, I'm there.

So, I guess in closing, I've got to end it the same way I started with a random thought that passes through my head on almost a daily basis. And that thought is "What the hell are we doing here?"

Well, if we don't get squished by a giant flyswatter or something, I only have 291 days until retirement.



Todays RBV: Psalms 8:3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;


Well there ya go, no need to wonder about anything. God made the universe with his fingers. And I thought it was way more complicated than that. Silly me!