@TidalFlats @DismalManorGang @ai6yr You can simulate the impact using this tool. Try varying the size, approach angle, material composition, speed, just for fun
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11 results for “AsteroidOS”
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https://www.europesays.com/uk/1260149/ NASA’s SpaceX launch lights up the sky with a giant glowing jellyfish #CometsAndMeteors;Astronomy #Science #Space #SpaceExploration;NASA;SpaceMissions;SpaceProbes;SolarSystem;Asteroids #UK #UnitedKingdom
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NASA’s SpaceX launch lights up the sky with a giant glowing jellyfish
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket transformed the early morning sky into a spectacular display of light on October…
#NewsBeep #News #Space #CometsandMeteors;Astronomy #Science #SpaceExploration;NASA;SpaceMissions;SpaceProbes;SolarSystem;Asteroids #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/806254/ -
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope exceeds expectations by nearly 30%
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is performing even better than scientists anticipated after engineers completed an extensive…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Science #CometsandMeteors;SpaceProbes #DarkMatter;SpaceExploration;NASA;Cosmology;SpaceTelescopes;ExtrasolarPlanets;Asteroids
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/885986/ -
Economist Robin Hanson did not invent the Great Filter
Humanity seems to have a bright future, i.e., a non-trivial chance of expanding to fill the universe with lasting life. But the fact that space near us seems dead now tells us that any given piece of dead matter faces an astronomically low chance of begating (sic) such a future. There thus exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?
Robin Hanson, 1996 or 1998During the Cold War, it was a commonplace that we might make ourselves extinct or end industrial civilization. After all, humans were lighting navigable rivers on fire, producing mountains of waste with no good plans to dispose of it, and putting weapons more terrible than the Sun into hands with the self-control of an ornery chimpanzee. It seemed very plausible that the Third World War might start, some junior officer would drop a nuclear warhead on an armoured division in Bavaria or Thuringia, and a few days later there would be mushroom clouds over every city in the Northern Hemisphere with more than 10,000 people. The main thing to debate was whether some remote parts of the world might survive more or less intact to repopulate the Northern Hemisphere (Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand were among the more realistic choices). Science fiction fans extended this idea to other hypothetical civilizations and suggested that any species like humans would be in danger of starting devastating wars just as it became capable of reaching space. Let’s look at some examples:
- In 1963, Fred Saberhagen wrote the first story featuring the Berserkers, self-reproducing artificial intelligences programmed to destroy all life. The Berserkers have eliminated all intelligent life in the Milky Way which they have encountered (including their creators) until they encounter humanity. The very next story in the same issue of Worlds of If has a throwaway paragraph about “A galaxywide game, played for planets, using local cultures. And always according to the rules. No new technologies. No new weapons. Use what you have at hand. Play it fair. Because if you do not, neither will we — and together we will eliminate the universe.” (Gary Wright, “Captain of the Kali,” Worlds of If (January 1963), p. 113 archive.org / isfdb). The main debate among worldbuilders at the time was whether the future would be cyclical rises and falls (Asimov’s Foundation, Piper’s Future History) or a choice between galactic expansion and destruction. In Saberhagen’s setting, almost all spacefaring civilizations are annihilated by Berserkers, but not every civilization builds its own Berserkers.
- In 1972, Freeman Dyson gave a talk at the Institute for Advanced Study where he warned that unleashing robotic von Neumann probes or comets laden with trees (!) across the galaxy could end badly. Reporters recorded part of it as follows: “I have a feeling we’re going to discover things that are not so pleasant, particularly since the activities we’re likely to discover first are highly technological activities. We’re more likely to discover first the species in which technology has gone out of control, a technological cancer spreading throughout the galaxy. We should be suitably scared if we discover it, and take our precautions.” (Israel Shenkers, Will Galaxy Reveal a Technological Cancer? A Physicist Wonders, The New York Times 27 Nov 1972 p. 37) Dyson did not say that this was the most likely outcome, but that humans were more likely to notice alien technology which was reproducing out of control than technology which quietly grabbed a few small asteroids or comets and scooped some gas from Saturn. This talk was alluded to by futurists interested in John von Neumann’s robotic probes.1
- Carl Sagan’s Cosmos (1980 TV series with accompanying book) contains a rhapsody imagining aliens receiving radio transmissions from Earth. “There was our region of the galaxy; there was our world. I had found the entry for earth: HUMANITY: THIRD FROM THE SUN. They had heard our television broadcasts and thought them an application for cosmic citizenship. Our technology had been growing enormously (they got that right). Two hundred nation states, about six global powers, the potential to become one planet. Probability of survival over a century — here, also, less than one percent.” Sagan postulated that if a species developed nuclear weapons, it would probably wipe itself out, and imagined alien scientists estimating humanity’s chance of survival based on observing many civilizations.2
With more time I could add many more examples of science fiction which uses aliens to talk about the Cold War and the possibility that humanity or industrialized civilization would annihilate itself, such as Piper’s First Cycle from around 1960 or Murray Leinster’s “Second Landing” from 1954. Most of these do not explicitly say that destruction is the most likely outcome, because they were written for people who understand subtext and can generalize. A science-fiction story is not an academic treatise, but ideas flow back and forth between science fiction and academic futurism.
In 1996 or 19983 a PhD student named Robin Hanson called this the Great Filter. He acknowledged that this idea was not new:
A devastation scenario is implicit in the usual formulation of the Drake equation. For prior evolutionary steps the equation asks for the probability that the system will reach the next step, but at our level of evolution, the equation asks for the expected time until the civilization disappears, and once gone it is assumed to never return.
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I personally think that most of the Great Filter is most likely to be explained by the steps I think we understand the least about: the steps in the biological evolution of life and intelligence. However, many physical scientists focus on explaining the filter via the area they seem to think we understand the least: social science.
Astronomers Sagan and Newman, for example, claim that either we will destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons, or learn to “live with other groups in mutual respect” by losing “our own predispositions to territoriality and aggression. … This adaptation must apply … with very high precision, to … every individual within the civilization”, so that we become the “least likely to engage in aggressive galactic imperialism” [Sagan & Newman].
Similarly, Papagiannis claims that “those that manage to overcome their innate tendencies toward continuous material growth and replace them with non-material goals will be the only ones to survive this crisis,” implying a galaxy “populated by stable highly ethical and spiritual civilizations” [Papagiannis 84]. And Stephenson claims that “for a truly advanced intelligence the drive for quality rather than redundant quantity would be paramount” [Stephenson 82].
The early Internet was scholarly, and it was hard not to know in 1996 that many educated people thought humanity had almost extinguished itself or civilization had almost ended itself. So Robin Hanson naturally cited earlier versions of his idea. However, time passed, and people got distracted from nuclear war by other dangers. Hanson and his friends like Eric Drexler and Toby Ord are still around and promoting themselves, while writers from the 1960s and 1970s are not. And so I meet people online, and read Wikipedia pages, which say things like “The concept originates in Robin Hanson’s argument …”
This is clearly incorrect. The idea that a civilization able to build radios and travel into space would likely destroy itself was common in the 1960s and 1970s, and featured in an extremely popular TV series in 1980. Therefore, the idea existed long before Robin Hanson gave it a catchy name in 1996 or 1998.
I am not as amusing as those old science-fiction writers and futurists, and I would much prefer to be writing about ancient roads and medieval doublets. But someone was wrong on the internet, and dreams of yesterday’s tomorrows seem more important than zombie ideas about ancient Greek cleavers. If you can, please support this site. If not, continue as I point to some other context for Hanson’s ideas.
What we have forgotten and what we have learned
Hanson’s post has some curious ideas, like the idea that a “bright future” for humanity requires filling the universe with life, and perhaps disassembling Jupiter or Sol for spare parts. When he shared it, I think most readers ignored them and went back to arguing about whether Captain Picard could beat Darth Vader or which operating system to use. This was a mistake, just as the magazine article a few years earlier which called some similar ideas the California Ideology. His ideas came from places much older than California, and some of them could first be found in monasteries not think-tanks.
Sagan and Hanson and Hanson’s disciples like to contrast light with darkness. That is theological language out of Zoroastrianism via Jewish and Christian thought. If you tell yourself that all that matters is whether eternity is filled with life and light or death and darkness, you can screw yourself to the sticking point and do terrible things to actually existing human beings today. Elsewhere Hanson envisions a future of countless simulated humans working themselves to exhaustion for a bare minimum subsistence while biological humans live in luxury (The Age of Em, 2016), and in 2023 he was still concerned about fertility decline even though the world population was the highest it had ever been and still growing.4 The same righteousness that comes out of dualistic theology is the righteousness that might let someone launch the A-bombs or unleash the Berserkers. Words have power and these are dangerous visions.
I am a scholar of ancient Iran, not of apocalyptic religions. I don’t want to explore all the places that Hanson’s ‘s ideas come from here. But for now, I will leave you with two questions. If you think that expanding across the universe is the most sacred of all causes, and machines seem better suited to doing that than humans, do you really love life? And what if the interests of life as we know it clash with what would be required to launch that first von Neumann probe? Bertolt Brecht saw what happens when men who love ideas more than people find that the ideas lose their stark beauty when human beings are ordered to carry them out.
Wäre es da / Nicht doch einfacher, der Philosoph / Löste Menschheit auf und / Schäfte etwas neues?
Further Reading
Charlie Stross, We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus, speech at Next Frontiers Applied Fiction Day, Stuttgart (2023)
And did you notice that I wrote this post as a truth sandwich?
(scheduled 18 October 2026)
- Robert A. Freitas Jr., A Self-Reproducing Interstellar Probe, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 33 (1980), pp. 251-264 ↩︎
- Next time I visit a library I will check the printed version of Cosmos but i am posting this on Sunday between two elections. ↩︎
- Hanson’s own page says 1998 at the top and 1996 at the bottom. Perhaps he posted several versions at different dates, or perhaps he lost track since he was busy with a PhD at the time and soon got a tenure-track job. ↩︎
- Or the fertility of specific people who can “ensure the continuation of something like our dominant world culture.” Hanson is an economist, so shouldn’t he ask whether a declining population would make it more beneficial to have children, as people saw that their neighbours’ children could easily get good jobs and homes? Economics is about costs and benefits and dynamic equilibria. ↩︎
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En Asteroid Miner para #Atari2600 en lugar de limitarnos a pilotar una nave y disparar contra todo lo que se mueve,se nos invita a bajar al terreno, explorar un entorno hostil y regresar sanos y salvos con los bolsillos llenos de minerales
👉 https://pulsayjuega.es/2026/10/16/asteroid-miner-buscando-fortuna-en-los-confines-del-espacio-con-la-atari-2600/ 🕹️ #retrogaming -
One half of a famous 90s asteroid head-to-head with Armageddon. Watched it again recently and, despite some gung-ho moments, it's easily the more grounded and interesting of the two. Still very enjoyable.
#AdmitOneDaily #DeepImpact #1990sMovies #TicketStub #Cinema #FilmHistory #MovieTickets
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Don’t blink and you’ll still miss it - meet 10199 Chariklo. A 250km wide asteroid with rings hanging out in the vast nothingness between Saturn and Uranus a cool 2.6 billion kilometers away.
It has been in the astronomy news recently because its rings are apparently changing, and relatively quickly too. One of them is getting a bit denser over time, the other less so.
I thought I’d try my hand and see if I could catch it. Turns out: yes, if the gear stares forming enough.
30 x 120s with a RedCat 62 and ASI 294MC Pro camera.
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SPACE MOSQUITOES 🦟
42/2026🟢 RECENT CLOSEST BUZZ (Past 7 Days)
- Object: 2026 TN77
- Date & Time (UTC): 2026-Oct-12 15:25
- Distance: 55,416 km (0.14 LD) 🚨
- Diameter: ~9-17 m
- Velocity: 15.3 km/s🔴 UPCOMING CLOSEST BUZZ (Next 7 Days)
- Object: 2026 TS
- Date & Time (UTC): 2026-Oct-18 06:16
- Distance: 906,902 km (2.36 LD)
- Diameter: ~39-72 m
- Velocity: 10.3 km/s -
Some news from Spain, part CLXXVI !!!
This is yours truly with another episode of some news from Spain !!! Lots of things going on This is Spain, let me tell you my latest news chosen by yours truly, By the way CLXXV is old Roman numeral for 176, Therefore, here is my take on some news from Spain, part CLXXVI !!! Hope you enjoy this post as I.
Hidden among vineyards and stately streets in La Rioja lies a town that is home to one of the most unique monasteries in Spain, one inaugurated by Pope Adrian VI in the 16C. Its history is also marked by a mysterious legend involving Juana la Loca or Joanna the Mad. This place is Casalarreina, a town in La Rioja Alta located just a few kms from Haro, which houses the Monastery of Nuestra Señora de la Piedad, the only monastery in Spain to have been inaugurated by a pope. Its origins date back to the 16C, when Juan Fernández de Velasco, Bishop of Calahorra and La Calzada, obtained authorization from Pope Julius II in 1509 to build the convent. Construction began in 1514, but the event that truly distinguished this monument occurred in 1522, when Pope Adrian VI visited during his journey to Rome and presided over the monastery’s inauguration. Its primary attraction is the spectacular Plateresque-style portal, designed like an elaborate stone altarpiece and adorned with religious sculptures, botanical motifs, and intricate reliefs. The monastery blends the elegance of the late Gothic period with early Renaissance elements, while the interior features a striking two-story cloister, star-vaulted ceilings, and 16C Plateresque choir stalls. For those traveling by car, the town is conveniently served by the AP-68 highway/motorway, which provides quick connections to Bilbao, Burgos, Madrid, Logroño, Zaragoza, and Barcelona. Additionally, the N-124 highway runs through the area, and the N-232 is also nearby. These routes offer fast access to several other nearby towns of great tourist interest, such as Haro, Briones ,and San Vicente de la Sonsierra. Also the LR-111, which connects to Haro, Santo Domingo de la Calzada, and Ezcaray, and the N-120, which runs parallel to the Camino de Santiago. The official Casalarreina on the monastery : https://www.casalarreina.es/lugar-de-interes/monasterio-de-nuestra-senora-de-la-piedad/
The Castilla-La Mancha region hides one of the most striking geological landscapes in Spain. In the province of Guadalajara, a UNESCO-recognized geopark brings together impressive canyons, lagoons, waterfalls, and rock formations that offer a glimpse into millions of years of Earth’s history. This is the Molina-Alto Tajo Geopark, spans over 4,200 square kilometers approximately one-third of the province of Guadalajara encompasses more than 70 villages/towns. Over millennia, the Tagus river, with its characteristic emerald-green waters, has carved out deep canyons and gorges. Notable sites include the canyons of the Tagus and Gallo rivers, the Mesa Valley, the high plateaus of Maranchón and Aragoncillo, the Taravilla lagoon,Honda and La Salobreja lagoons, and waterfalls such as the Salto de Poveda and La Escaleruela. Also featured are the unique rock formations of Chequilla and Peñalén, which showcase the region’s extraordinary geological diversity. Within its boundaries lie the Alto Tajo Natural Park and the Sierra de Caldereros Natural Monument, along with various other protected areas. The Castilla La Mancha region tourist office on the Molina-Alto Tajo Geopark : https://www.turismocastillalamancha.es/es/naturaleza/monumentos-naturales/geoparque-de-la-comarca-de-molina-alto-tajo
At no, 96 Calle de Alcalá formerly no, 102, on the corner of Calle de Narváez and next to Plaza Felipe II, stands the building where Federico García Lorca lived until July 1936. Many memorials this year marking the 90 anniversary of his assassination, See my post about him in my blog,
The Museo Sorolla Museum has expanded into a former car workshop in the heart of the Chamberí neighborhood, at 68 Calle Zurbano. Designed as a continuation of the historic property, this expansion provides the museum with temporary exhibition halls and an auditorium, as well as additional areas and facilities for the handling, storage, and management of its collections. The result is a complex comprising two buildings, one dating from the early 20C and the other from the early 21C, that together form the present-day Sorolla Museum.(see post)
Tracing the path of Goya: from Fuendetodos to Madrid, via Zaragoza. We find ourselves in the Campo de Belchite ,province of Zaragoza, in the very same humble house built of adobe, wood, and stone, with tiny bedrooms where Goya was born on March 30, 1746. It was from here that he would have traveled back and forth to the Church of the Assumption in Plaza de las Reliquias, where the genius painted one of his earliest works on wooden doors. Nearby lies the Engraving Museum at 3 Calle Zuloaga, established following an auction of works by various painters, organized to bring prints by the Aragonese master to his hometown. Goya’s printed work engravings he initially began as a pastime to master the techniques of Velázquez is now regarded as a kind of intimate diary. In Zaragoza, 50 km from Fuendetodos, one is struck by the vastness of the blue sky which turns pink at sunset arching over the Goya Museum, which reopens this past Friday, October 9 2026. A few meters away, in the Basilica of the Pilar,(see post) the master’s personality is strikingly evident in every brushstroke of his two great frescoes works that also reveal a contrast between two distinct periods of his life. In 1772, having just returned from his apprenticeship in Italy, he created *The Adoration of the Name of God*. Nine years later, he painted *Regina Martyrum* in a style characterized by brushwork intended to be viewed from a distance, a technique not well understood at the time. Madrid itself serves as a museum dedicated to Goya to his life and work, his contradictions and his convictions. Key sites include (see posts) ,the Royal Tapestry Factory, where he once worked; the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande, featuring a dome painted by the master; the Royal Academy of San Fernando which he eventually directed, despite an initial rejection where more than ten of his works are housed; the Prado Museum; the Lázaro Galdiano Museum; and the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida. (see posts), Together, these locations allow the traveler to explore the shifting perspectives and evolution of Goya’s vision, and it is here, too, that the genius lies buried. Of the estate and house where he lived during his final period in Madrid are known as the Quinta del Sordo or Villa of the Deaf Man before departing for exile in Bordeaux in 1824, almost nothing remains, save for an inscription noting that it was here he created his *Black Paintings*. Having lived through war, endured illness, and retreated into the silence of deafness, Goya was a changed man. Following the *Trienio Liberal* (the three-year liberal period), Ferdinand VII imposed authoritarian rule, restored absolutism, and brought in French troops. Goya sought refuge in Bordeaux among intellectual friends. In 1827, a year before his death, he painted *The Milkmaid of Bordeaux*; the young woman, seated on a mule and carrying a jug of milk, appears beneath an immense sky tinged with the same shades of blue he knew in his childhood. Today, the painting can be seen at the Prado Museum.A sanctuary for Hollywood stars on the Gran Vía, (see post) letters from Christopher Columbus at the Liria Palace, (see post) and a lost portrait of George Washington at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts are all part of a tour through 12 locations in the city that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States. If there was one Madrid phone number that Frank Sinatra knew by heart, it was that of Museo Chicote, (see post) the legendary cocktail bar on the Gran Vía where Hollywood royalty drank during the 1950s. Among them was Ava Gardner; the singer of “My Way”, and her husband at the time would call in the early hours of the morning to find out where his famous wife was. A staff member at what Luis Buñuel dubbed the “Sistine Chapel of martinis” would pass the message along to the actress and, if necessary, help hide a lover. This establishment also housed the first American-style bar in Europe. Another record-breaking venue, Botín, the oldest restaurant in the world is also featured on the route; it was frequented by figures such as Charlton Heston, Jacqueline Kennedy, Woody Allen, and Bruce Springsteen. It also served as an inspiration for Ernest Hemingway, who mentioned it in his novel *The Sun Also Rises* , and always sat at the same table on the second floor. George Washington is another key figure featured in the 60,000 maps illustrated by artist Ana Rojo that will be distributed at hotels and tourist spots throughout the city, and which will also be available online. This is because the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts houses one of the few existing portraits of the first U.S. president located outside of his home country. The portrait was painted by the Italian artist Josef Perovani in 1796, commissioned by the Spanish ambassador in Philadelphia as a gift for Mariano Godoy, Secretary of State to King Charles IV. Washington also appears in an enamel miniature by the London-born artist William Russell Birch, a master of the technique which is on display at the Lázaro Galdiano Museum.(see post), Next, we head to the Liria Palace, (see post) built around the same time as the American Revolution. It houses an important collection of letters by Christopher Columbus, as well as various coats of arms granted to explorers and newly founded cities in the New World ; fundamental documents for understanding the history of the Americas and the cultural impact across continents. The collection also includes a previously unknown portrait of Philip III, attributed to Diego Velázquez, which had been lost for centuries until it was discovered by Nashville-based historian and philanthropist William B. Jordan, who donated it to the Prado Museum in 2016. Meanwhile, the Naval Museum (see post) holds the 1500 *Carta Universal* by Juan de la Cosa, the first world map to feature a depiction of the Americas. The Geominero Museum (IGME-CSIC) showcases remarkable fossils and minerals discovered on U.S. soil, including a replica of the skull of “Stan” the *Tyrannosaurus rex* from South Dakota, and beetle specimens preserved in tar from the Rancho La Brea site in California. We then move on to the Royal Botanical Garden, (see post), which is home to Carolina allspice, American persimmons, and orange trees associated with the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, among many other trees and plants native to the United States. We also visit one of the most intriguing sites on our route: the 19C *Beti Jai* frontón, a Basque pelota court. One of the oldest of its kind in Europe, the building served as a factory for Studebaker vehicles and a Harley-Davidson dealership after it ceased hosting Basque pelota matches in 1919. Our final stops are the Casa de la Moneda or Royal Mint (see post), which has released a commemorative series highlighting the Spanish contribution to American independence,and the International Institute, established in 1892 by Boston-born educator Alice Gordon Gulick, it was modeled after women’s colleges on the East Coast. Between 1944 and 1950, it also served as the site of the U.S. Embassy.
From Aranjuez to Chinchón by bike: two historic towns connected by pedal power on the first stage of the Gran Tour de Madrid. This is the opening leg of the CiclaMadrid “Gran Tour”, a 432 km circular route divided into 17 sections that allow cyclists to explore the four major regions of the Comunidad de Madrid region, that is Sierra Norte, Sierra de Guadarrama, Sierra Oeste, and the Las Vegas/Alcarria area. We depart from Aranjuez (see posts), along the right bank of the Tagus river, cycling until we reach a turnoff toward Villaconejos. Along this stretch, it is well worth visiting the striking charca rosa or pink pond known as Laguna Seca or Dry Lagoon, which remains waterless for most of the year. You can also visit the Melon Museum ;the only one of its kind in the world, and the Cueva del Fraile or Friar’s Cave, a 300-year-old cellar carved into a small hill; inside, there are nineteen alcoves where friars of the Discalced Carmelite Order once stored their large wine jars. Leaving Villaconejos, we take the path next to the Hermitage of Santa Ana to begin the ascent toward Chinchón.(see posts) A visit to its world-famous Plaza Mayor is a must; it is considered one of the most beautiful squares in the world and, in 2008, was named the “Fourth Wonder of the Community of Madrid.” After all, who could forget Cantinflas (famous Mexican actor/comedian) practicing his bullfighting passes there in the film Around the World in 80 Days, After the effort of cycling this first leg of the “Grand Tour”, and, while we’re at it, try to recall some of the many other films shot here. These include Orson Welles’s The Immortal Story, which through the magic of cinema transformed Chinchón into Macao; Circus World, which brought John Wayne and Rita Hayworth to a Plaza Mayor reimagined as the American West; and, more recently, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. It’s a cinematic conclusion to an engaging and leisurely bike ride between two of Madrid’s region historic towns. The official ClicaMadrid Gran Tour : https://cyclemadrid.com/fr/gran-tour-ciclamadrid/
There you go folks, another dandy tour of my dear Spain. It is time to enjoy my some news from Spain once again, Remember,Spain is everything under the Sun ! A very special post, always remember where it all begin, it is you ! Again, hope you enjoy the post on some news from Spain, part CLXXVI !!! as I.
And remember ,happy travels, good health, and many cheers to all !!!
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