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NASA Releases First Clear Images of Distant Kuiper Belt Object (engadget.com)
NASA's New Horizons team has released the promised first images from its history-making flyby of (486958) 2014 MU69. "The snapshots, captured from as close at 17,000 miles away, show that the 21-mile-long Kuiper Belt object is a 'contract binary' where two spheres slowly collided and fused with each other," reports Engadget. "The two may have linked up '99 percent of the way' to the start of the Solar System, Johns Hopkins University APL said." From the report: Capturing a true representation of 2014 MU69 is difficult, at least with the initial batch of pictures. There's a visible light camera onboard the New Horizons Probe (shown on the left), but the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (center) is much sharper. To create an accurate image (on the right), scientists had to produce a composite. Higher-resolution pictures and additional scientific data will keep flowing over the "next weeks and months," the New Horizons team said.
Not without fully airbrushing it first, or outright simply fabricating it. Another picture that looks like some teenage cropped it in MSpaint.
Fuck NASA
is Trump's brain. Soon to be EOLed. Republicans are stupid.
originally named it Ultima Thule because the term infers that it's "beyond the limits of the known world." In practice, though, it also carries racist connotations.
Where are the scientists who named the object and what shirts are they wearing?! It's time for another public shaming and apology, right? Good grief...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Is this some sort of asteroid wedding, or business agreement, or something??!!!
The mainstream media, everyone.
New Horizons Scientists Double Down on 'Ultima Thule' Nickname Despite Nazi Associations
The excitement around NASA's New Horizons spacecraft arriving at its latest target, an oddly shaped object called (486958) 2014 MU69, has dredged up a fact that often goes unstatedâ"the object's nickname, "Ultima Thule," carries links to Nazism.
Though most people haven't heard of the term's unsavory use by the Nazis, the New Horizons team was aware of it and went with the name anyway, science reporter Meghan Bartels reported for Newsweek in March 2018. The New Horizons team continues to defend the term today.
But just looking at the Wikipedia page for "Thule" reveals that according to far-right German mythology, this place was the original origin of the "Aryan race." According to Bartels' reporting, the term acquired this connotation in the 19th century and was used by the Nazi party. NASA and the New Horizons team considered the alternate meaning and included it in the vote anyway, since this wasn't the "primary association," Mark Showalter, an astronomer on the New Horizons team, told Bartels. The name didn't get the most votes from the public, but NASA decided that it was the best fit for the object.
He did not address why the team decided on the name despite already knowing about the negative connotations. Plenty of symbols, like eagles and lighting bolts, have gained secondary, nefarious meanings due to Nazi associations - but "Ultima Thule" was selected despite the secondary meaning still used today by neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right, and at a time where Nazism is on the rise in the United States.
More from Newsweek: NASA NAMED ITS NEXT NEW HORIZONS TARGET ULTIMA THULE, A MYTHICAL LAND WITH A NAZI CONNECTION
On Tuesday, NASA announced their temporary nickname for the New Horizon missionâ(TM)s current target: Ultima Thule. The spacecraft is due to fly past on January 1, 2019, and the team was getting tired of using its official designation, 2014 MU69. Thereâ(TM)s just one issue: the name has some unsavory connotations. It was adopted by the forerunners to the Nazi party, and the term remains in use by modern so-called alt-right groups.
"The Nazis were fascinated by space and rocketships and things like that," Kurlander said. (During the 1940s and beyond, NASA thrived by hiring noted German rocket engineer Wernher Von Braun and other scientists who had worked for the Nazi regime.)
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Looks like BB-8 to me.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
They wasted how much money for this?
Earth to NASA - there a plenty of rocks you can photograph right here on this planet!
From the Engadget article:
Scientists named originally named it Ultima Thule because the term infers that it's "beyond the limits of the known world." In practice, though, it also carries racist connotations. Nazis and other white supremacists use the term to refer to a mythological homeland for their culture. NASA and the New Horizons team told Newsweek that they'd kept the name because of its more innocent meaning, but it's hard to shake that stigma.
That's in your mind. Thule and Ultima Thule are names with mythological origin and have been used by explorers for centuries. Ultima doesn't mean "beyond" btw., just last, farthest, and that's how the name is usually used. Ultima Thule is "the edge of the world" or "the most distant land". If your first association is "Nazis use this name", then your mind has become tainted.
The words or their meanings are not racist. Only a few knuckleheads interpretations, one of which appears to write for Slashdot.
Quit injecting racism into everything.
Imagine if we could get a sample of this thing and study it in a lab. And not just collecting a spray of dust but sending someone/something with a shovel to get a solid piece. A relic of the early solar system.
Just a pawn in their game.
Happy Investigation Day, asshole!!
Now go fuck yourself in the typical fashion that you always do.
Looks like the Mandelbrot set in 3D!
We found a rock!
And the thing they talk about most in the linked article is how the current name of the object might be offensive to some people. I wonder how much further along we would be as a society if we were more concerned about science and real progress instead of spending so much time on useless shit like 'who might be offended'?
The planet of the first part duly hear by agrees to rest against the planet of the second part and tumble if space until acted upon by a planet of the third part.
I see the same display floating every day ... in my toilet bowl.
What they are implying, is that all of north-European pre-Christian mythology is racist by definition.
Which is funny, because
1. that makes *them* prejudiced and hateful against other cultures, and
2. racism was coined as the name for the ideology of thinking there is such a thing as races! (Biology has no such concept, dear Americans. And neither does the rest of the world, especially us Germans.)
It's simply their ancient mythological name for some nirvana/heaven-like place.
That the Nazis were nostalgically fascinated by that like hipsters are in ugly 50s furniture today, does not taint it, unless you really are deliberately looking for something to pull out of your ass to hate/shame/bully people with, and have a "guilty by association" mindset like the Nazis.
"Prejudiced asshole!"
Or just go bonkers, and loudly yell "SOP RAPING CHILDREN, YOU SICK FUCK!". :)
And stay completely serious, like they just offered you to rape their dungeon children. Commit all the way, and only double down, as confidently as Trump. ^^
If they can invent bullshit accusations, they have now met their masters.
Stop defending yourselves (or worse, flopping over, and agreeing, like you did) when they haven't validated their hate speech in the first place!
SJWs are actually the most prejudiced and hateful of all.
They are like Gestapo/DHS officers. Always "finding" something to terrorize you or deport you if they can.
Just that SJWs were powerless weakling losers before they realized they could simply command the masses, by triggering thought-terminating clichees that create peer pressure and shaming, and then act like they are *the victims*.
Is "reverse bullying" an already known term?
just call it Groundnut, as per shape
Here's a better article, that doesn't prattle about Nazis: http://www.astronomy.com/news/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The most important finding we could get from this flyby is information about composition of the object. Are these spaceballs a mixture of rock and volatiles, like scoops of Rocky Road ice cream with real rocks? That could explain why when two of them come into slow contact, they squash together and remain in contact, rather than breaking into smaller pieces. This could tell us a lot about planetary formation.
YHBT. If you want to get "further along as a society" (I guess that means you think people are becoming less easy to manipulate, as opposed to more easy? (*)) then the right move would be to not have replied to the troll.
You know, the oldest and the only known-successful way for dealing with trolls, that anyone has ever thought of. The one thing where, if you're not doing it, then you're helping the troll. You basically approved the made-up racism that was being claimed. Good job.
(*) IMHO you couldn't be wronger about that. I think that as we get further along as a society, we'll be fighting more, saying stupid things to troll each other more, and self-imprisoning ourselves more.
Yeah, most Germans were not Nazi either... even though they did their part to support it. Especially when it all fell down... See "I was not a Nazi Polka" then check out "Your Friendly Liberal Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan."
The smart side of the stupid republicans now are "independent" again and back to saying "both sides are corrupt." Like they were at the end of the Bush years! It is a false equivalence that can't be left alone so they go into hiding without learning anything until their next horrible mistake pushes them into denial again. Not being in touch with reality is how this stuff repeats and it has been getting worse each cycle. Their defense reactions keep them from learning from their own history, let alone recorded history.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
It is a "contact binary", not "contract".
This means two bodies that touch or attach to each other.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
shot with a potato camera thank you NADA
Oh my. I'm sure saying two spheres bumped together raises the shackles of flat-earthers. They would probably exclaim that it's actually two flat disks that sit next to each other. (rolls eyes)
None at all, as probes tend to travel at uniform speed in a uniform direction unless acted on by a force, and NASA's employees were in the office that day anyway.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If some person is, I don't give shit what they call themselves, they've nothing to do with justice, social or otherwise.
Secondly, none of the fuss was stirred up by anyone who actually believed it. It wss a troll, like any other, seeking to cause trouble. If anyone gets killed, well, the author will be that much happier.
You don't do that if you think you have a point. If you've evidence, you present it (they skip on that, a common trait of trolls) and you remain a dispassionate observer. You report the facts and only the facts.
If you don't, you're a "yellow paper" troll. And if they lined the oceanic trenches with such trolls, I wouldn't shed a tear. Except for the Hoff crab they squished.
None of the claims are factual, based remotely on justice or society, and are certainly not dispassionate.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The probe was already there and the NASA crew were already working.
Total spent: $0
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nothing in the article implied PC. It was all factless trolling, conspuracy theories and malicious troublemaking.
It wasn't political, never mind correct. It was a deliberate attempt to get NASA engineers attacked or killed for the sport.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Get the hell off of your daddy's 6-digit /. account and take your bullshit disney garbage with you!