Bits & Pieces

Amazing video showing the full known universe, to scale. Click through the video to see it full size in HD.

This is amazing. Click the video while playing to watch a larger view and try it in HD as well. Credits here.

Check out this picture taken from space showing the shadow from the recent eclipse. Amazing.

The battle for truth continues:

NSFW: Click here. (h/t Kottke on page with much, much more.)

(h/t William Gibson)

I often joke with friends that the Apollo 11 moon landings were faked in a TV studio just outside Phoenix. Of course, I don’t believe it for a minute. But now comes CNN giving unnecessary coverage to those claiming the entire program was a fraud. I assume these are the same type of folks who believe that the US government planned the 9/11 attacks, that Obama was not born in the US and that the CIA killed JFK. Why sully the remembrance of the heroic astronauts 40 years ago with any focus on the conspiracy “theorists”?

Mythbusters took these claims head on some time ago, and you can watch the results:

One of the most notorious of the conspiracy nuts is Bart Sibrel, who ambushed Buzz Aldrin and got a well-deserved punch in the face for it:

Update: And now, a celebrity has joined fantasy land. Whoopi Golberg, talking on the view, promotes the conspiracy lies and questions whether we actually landed on the moon.

Q. Turning to your flight, what is your strongest memory of Apollo 11?

A. Looking back at Earth from a great distance.

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied. Small, shiny, serene, blue and white, FRAGILE.

Q. That was 40 years ago. Would it look the same today?

A. Yes, from the moon, but appearances can be deceiving. It’s certainly not serene, but definitely fragile, and growing more so. When we flew to the moon, our population was 3 billion; today it has more than doubled and is headed for 8 billion, the experts say. I do not think this growth is sustainable or healthy. The loss of habitat, the trashing of oceans, the accumulation of waste products – this is no way to treat a planet.

- Mike Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module pilot. (via Quotation of the Day mailing list)

A very cool new website launched today in honor of the anniversary of the Apollo 11 movie landing forty (!) years ago this month. The site is called We Choose the Moon, and it was produced by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.  The site recreates the entire mission, minute by minute. As I write this just over 63 hours to launch. You can follow the real-time mission on Twitter here.

The site’s name is based on President Kennedy’s speech from 1969 calling on the United States to put a man on the moon.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because the challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win.

(h/t The Register)

I haven’t seen this before. It is video of a recent launch of the shuttle taken by camera on the outboard engines. Great launch views and also views of the spent engines falling back to earth.

This is an amazing video. It was shot in HD by a Japanese satellite orbiting the moon. The satellite’s orbit is decaying and it will soon crash into the moon. (h/t Boing Boing)