centrality in the cosmos

This gold aluminum cover was designed to protect the Voyager 1 and 2 “Sounds of Earth” gold-plated records from micrometeorite bombardment, but also serves a double purpose in providing the finder a key to playing the record.
The explanatory diagram appears on both the inner and outer surfaces of the cover, as the outer diagram will be eroded in time. Flying aboard Voyagers 1 and 2 are identical “golden” records, carrying the story of Earth far into deep space. The 12 inch gold-plated copper discs contain greetings in 60 languages, samples of music from different cultures and eras, and natural and man-made sounds from Earth. They also contain electronic information that an advanced technological civilization could convert into diagrams and photographs. Currently, both Voyager probes are sailing adrift in the black sea of interplanetary space, having left our solar system years ago.

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”              Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, biologist, author (1941-2002)

“The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief … that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.”

Walter Lippman, (1889-1974)

“For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. … That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. ”                           Carl Sagan, (1934-1996)

The great tragedy of science–the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Thomas Huxley, (1825-1895)

http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001978.html

Nasa

To see a total solar eclipse, you have to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time—inside the moon’s shadow as the earth, moon, and sun align.

This map shows the paths of totality of upcoming total eclipses. To see one in person during the next few years,  you can wait until :

• July 22, 2009: Visible across central India and Nepal to Bhutan, Burma, and China

• July 11, 2010: Cruise to Tahiti or watch from Easter Island, Chile, or Argentina

• November 13, 2012: Visible from north central Australia to the Great Barrier Reef

• March 9, 2016: Crosses Indonesia—Sumatra, Borneo, Sulawesi, and Halmahera

• August 21, 2017: Sweeps a 70-mile-wide path across the United States, moving across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina

Eclipse map courtesy of Fred Espenak – NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.
For more information on solar and lunar eclipses, see Fred Espenak’s Eclipse Web Site

see links: blogroll -science – nasa and nasa “decade 2001″