Ingens Reverto

On May 13, 2009, Space Shuttle Atlantis "grappled" the Hubble Space telescope (translation: hugged) for one final shuttle-Hubble lovefest in space.

This happened 600km above the Earth at a speed of 7km/s, or 25,000 km/hr. The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,000,000 km. So, during this momentus spacehug, Atlantis and Hubble were approximately 148,999,400 km from the Sun.

So, naturally, some guy in Florida did a bunch of math and calculatin' and all that stuff and then pointed his telescope at the sun and took a bunch of photos of the space shuttle and the Hubble passing in front of the sun over the course of 0.8 seconds. Twice! All of this through a small 5 inch telescope.

"Oh man," says the Space Shuttle. "It's hot bein' 148,999,400 km from the Sun. Lonely too."

Shuttle and Hubble together: BFF Friends Forever.

Huger, Awesomer photos on dude's website.

OK FINE

Do you know what? I have no Idea.

OK Fine and I guess this too

The Internets call this a "Huge Fish Finger."

Don't ask. I'm going home.

nathan where are you & important medical conference LIVEBLOG

Srsly. After much ado about my (brief) departure from regularly updating Huge Awesome Things, and that wonderful post about terrifying tentacled cephalopods, my dearest blog co-writer has failed to uphold his end of the bargain: UPDATING HUGE AWESOME THINGS, HIMSELF.

Therefore, he has left me no choice but to senselessly berate him, in the way that he has HUMILIATED me on the INTERNET. That is the worst kind of humiliation. On the internet.

Also, you should know, NATHAN, that I am updating this blog, that I love so much, from a Big Important Medical Conference, in a Big City, away from Home. If I can step away from my exhibition booth duties and the schmoozing of foreign Medical Professionals to update Huge Awesome Things from this Cyber Cafe for Doctors, Nathan, I'm pretty sure you can stop refreshing Wonkette for five minutes at your desk and write something.

Look at this smug bastard.He is so very pleased to be Advocating and Awarenessing about our Terrible Disease. What a jerk, caring about people. He should be writing about Orbital Processing Facilities, the Baikonov Cosmodrome, or the largest boar testicles. We all suffer when you slack off, Nathan.

I hope you're happy.

Oh, and here's a fun bonus! I will liveblog this Important Medical Conference!

2:45 pm: the Medical Professional at the desk across from me is apparently doing some diagnostic activities, with his finger, in his nasal cavities.
2:48: The topless boys from the Sonic Scan booth just walked by. They are not wearing shirts so that they may demonstrate Scientific Chest-Scanning Tools. I think I may need to exam them, later, in my hotel room.
2:50: NOT HOT. The booth down the aisle is broadcasting, on their 42" HDTeeVee, a taped endoscopic procedure. This involves Internal Organs, in great detail.
2:55: My booth partner is sending me unsatisfed looks. I may have spent too much time in this here Cyber Cafe. Back to foisting brochures and scanning badges. NATHAN UPDATE THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW.

Bye!

Update from Nathan! Holy crap Sarah, you're TERRIBLE at blog post layout. I had to fix your shits. They were everywhere. Also, that photo of me was lame. It's differnt now.

Look at THAT Handsome Bastard!

I'm Not Dead, Just Lazy. Also, Colossal Squid, and Overzealous Capitalization of Titles

Well, well, well. It would appear that public humiliation is a significant motivator! Okay. I will take time out of my "busy" day of reading the same blogs, over and over and over again, until it is time to go home, to write you people a post. And you will like it.

Let's see. Where's our Huge Awesome Things Action Item Tracking Sheet? Can I even remember my Google Docs login? Hmm. Okay, I'm in. What do we have here? Cluster ballooning... nope, biggest RC plane... I'll pass, Hugest Boar Testicles? Jesus, Nathan, what the hell kind of sick action items are these? You can take care of the porcine gonads, thanks. Oh, here we go. I can do this. Let's talk about cephalopods, my most favorite class of mollusca!

As this blog is specifically about Huge and Awesome things, I'll have to pass on the discussion of the emminently adorable cuttlefish (look! he just wants a hug)


And skip straight to COLOSSAL SQUID.

Colossal Squid are the largest known invertabrate. They can grow to 46 feet in length and can weigh half a ton; large enough to take out sperm whales, and even your mom. Here's one of those handy charts I like so much (sorry it is in Socialist Metric and doesn't feature Your Mom):


In New Zealand, some fishermen managed to snag a colossal squid and drag its carcass home for SCIENCE. These men are heroes.


So, what did science find out about the largest squid ever captured? Oh, you know, nothing special.

JUST HUNDREDS OF SUCKERS ON EACH TENTACLE EQUIPPED WITH TOOTH-LIKE HOOKS. THAT SWIVEL, FOR OPTIMAL ATTACHMENT, TO YOUR FACE.

WHAT THE FUCK NATURE.

Also, this thing:


Scientists call this the squid's "beak" which might evoke images of cute sparrows or toucans or other such harmless feathered friends. In this case, "beak" refers to a part of the squid's body that is, you know, dedicated to rending flesh from bone. I mean, no biggie, right? Definitely not a problem when it's stripping the meat off your own thorax.

So, pretty much everything about the Colossal Squid is fundamentally huge, and horrifying. Therefore perfectly suitable to future warfare! When the revolution comes and you're up against the wall, I'll be wearing a Colossal Squid suit, with swivel-hook equipped tentacles and a beak the size of your face. Who's IN CHARGE NOW, BITCHES?

...

Oh hey, this whole post-writing thing is actually easier than I remember it being... hmm, guess I could do this more often, yes?

"It's all my fault--please intervene!"

"Hi Friends! My name is Sarah and I've gradumated from college! Look at me, with my gradumation costume and my silly hat and my flowers all wrapped in plastic and my fake smile for the camera because mom NEEDS MORE PHOTOS YOU'LL ONLY GRADUMATE ONCE!

With such a fancy hat and plastics an flowers and forced smiles an a COLLEGE DERGREE, you'd think that I'd be a responsible adult-type that does not neglect a blog that needs love and care and thingS that are awesome and things that are huge.

I must confess a moral failing. It is my turn to update the blog but it's been THREE WEEKS since it's seen any action because I've been 'busy.' I don't have to tell you what that means because I'm sure that you already know. I'd also like to apologize to Nathan, whose heart has been broken by Hugeawesomethings' pitiful cries for help as I have left even the Hugeawesomethings Action Item Tracking Sheet without an update for nearly a month.

I beg the Hugeawesomethings Community to forgive me. And if you have my email address, or my phone number or we're Facebook 'friends' or you're checking out my profile on OkCupid, please GOD call me/message me/do whatever it is that OkCupid-ers do and scold me for my ineptitude and demand an update!

Only then will I have the balls to show my smart-ass gradumated face to the literally TENS of eagerly awaiting Hugeawesomethings fans who have suffered these long weeks.

The only thing that will save us is the Matrix of Leadership

(Editor's Note: Guest Blogger! "SHUT UP CECI!")







Sometimes I get nauseous when I think about anything bigger than a house. My biggest fears consist of, but are not limited to: the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid, simply because their sheer size is so overwhelming I think these things will eat me.

So, along the line of being eaten by massive(ly awesome) things, I must be the bearer of bad news. The hugest, most awesome thing in existence might not be located in our universe. Good for my piece of mind, bad for anyone who gets off on potentially being swallowed alive by things like the Marianas Trench, Jupiter, and Colossal Squid (ew).

To understand what just went down at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, we must start at the beginning.

OF TIME.

Scientists "know" the age of our universe to be 13.7 billion years old, so the farthest light could ever get from us is 13.7 billion light years away. This is called the "observable universe." We don't really know how big our universe is, we just can't see further than the age of it. To this cosmic big bang soup we add a little theory called inflation. Among many things, it includes the idea of a BUBBLEVERSE, or multiverse. For the sake of making this whole thing less scary, I'll stick with bubbleverse. This theory posits that there are multiple universes beyond the horizon of our own. After the Big Bang, there were these huge fluctuations in energy that caused rapid expansions in space-time (whatever the fuck that means), creating "bubble universes." This theory is totally LEGIT--Brian Greene says so.

To make a long story short, there are a fuckton of galaxy clusters being sucked out of our observable universe. Meaning, OUT OF OUR BUBBLE. According to space.com:

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

This movement is not the same movement causing our universe to expand--and its speed doesn't decrease over time. WTF. Plus, it's being sucked out to a specific spot--between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela (or that pink spot of death in the map of the cosmic microwave background above). And nothing in our universe has the gravitational strength to cause it. So whatever is causing the flow must be located outside the observable universe. Basically, there is a river of star stuff being STOLEN FROM US. By what, you ask? Again, space.com:

It could include giant, massive structures much larger than anything in our own observable universe. These structures are what researchers suspect are tugging on the galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

GIANT!

MASSIVE!

STRUCTURES!

Eating OUR galaxies!

My friends, your childhood nightmares have returned. Unicron is REAL.

Jules Verne is Dead....Again!

Ok ok. It's time to get this blog back on track. Now, I know that I promised yesterday that we would start the recovery process by focusing on non-earthly things, but I was browsing the Youtubes today and decided to settle on a compromise.

I give to you: The controlled deorbit of the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne!!



(do not be fooled by how lame this video appears in the first 25 seconds, please, K THNX)

The Automated Transver Vehicle (ATV) Jules Verne is an unmanned expendable resupply spacecraft that was launched on March 9, 2008 to supply the International Space Station with propellant, water, air and dry cargo (says the WikiGod). And look at how commodious!!

During its six-odd-month mission, the ATV also fired its rockets to raise the ISS orbit by 4.5 kilometers. Can you do that? I cannot either. More on this (with excellent animation).

More ATVs are being built, and the program schedule calls for a similar re-supply mission to the ISS every 17 months. After its mission is complete, the ATV is destroyed in a controlled deorbit over an "unpopulated" area of the Pacific. So every year and a half the International-nauts on the communist/capitalist/politically neutral space station get food staples and other necessities (along with a sweet new pad...I wonder who gets dibs) and we here on Earth get to forget our temporal woes for three minutes and watch a symbol of technological triumph and international collaboration come to a spectacular, fiery end.

Oh wait this video explains everything. MISISON ACCOMPLISHED.