Remember Rosetta? That comet-chasing European Space Agency (ESA) probe that deployed (and accidentally bounced) its lander Philae on the surface of Comet 67P? This GIF is made up of images Rosetta beamed back to Earth, which have been freely available online for a while. But it took Twitter user landru79 processing and assembling them into this short, looped clip to reveal the drama they contained.
while the stuff in the foreground is dust/ice on the surface of the comet itself, the background is actually stars. i saw a stabilized video where you can really make it out, and it blew my mind.
here’s the stabilized clip, if anyone’s interested
I can’t get over the fact that this is real actual footage of the surface of a FUCKING COMET. like, it’s got the grainy old-timey look of a video of the alps from the late 1800’s but PSYCH! THIS IS FROM OUTER SPACE HOLY FUCK SCIENCE IS AMAZING
who was the fool who was tasked with naming the galaxy and the only adjective they could think of was ‘mmmmmmmmmmmmilky…’
scientist: (gazing up at space) scientist: ……….. it sure is a milky boy
NO
YOU DONT UNDERSTAND
ASTRONOMERS ARE THE SHITTIEST EVER AT NAMING THINGS I KID YOU NOT.
When it came time to name the two theoretical particle types that might be dark matter THEY INTENTIONALLY CHOSE THE NAMES SO THAT THE ACRONYMS WOULD SPELL “WIMPS” AND “MACHOS” I SHIT YOU NOT
THEY ARE FUCKING TERRIBLE AT NAMING ANYTHING
I just listened to a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson himself LAST NIGHT and he went on about this more than once.
“I’m walking down the street and I’m like ‘ooh pretty rock…’ and some Geologist is like ‘actually, that’s anorthosite feldspar’ and I’m like ‘Nevermind, I don’t want it anymore.’ Any biologists in the audience? [some clapping] Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The most important molecule in the human body, what did you name it? It has NINE SYLLABLES and it’s so long that even YOU GUYS abbreviate it as ‘DNA’!
But astrophysicists and astronomers? No, man, we call it like we see it. Star made of neutrons? NEUTRON STAR. Small white star? WHITE DWARF. You know that big red spot on Jupiter? Know what we called it? JUPITER’S RED SPOT.”
okay i’m glad you mentioned the biologist nonsense bc their naming methods are the bane of my existence
I see your astrophysicists-are-shit-at-names and raise you Marine-Biologists-Are-Fucking-Maniacs.
See this beautiful creature?
It’s a carnivorous deep-sea sponge that lives off of Easter Island and never sees the light of day, as it’s about 9000 feet down. Those delicate-looking orbs are covered in millions of tiny hooked spines, which latch onto anything unfortunate enough to bump into it, and hold it in place as it is digested alive by the sponge’s skin. Amazing, beautiful and profoundly creepy. They could have given it so many cool names. Could have drawn on mythology (I think Scylla would have been an appropriate reference), the region it was found in, the textured skin, PHAGOCYTOSIS, anything!
Stressed, Depressed, and Story Obsessed 