Sometimes we get so caught up in our daily lives or politics and the drama of it all that it needed to step back and do a little looking at life from a different perspective.
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let
people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Monday Crimson Quillfeather
Tuesday ejoanna
Wednesday Pam from Calif
Thursday art ah zen
Friday FloridaSNMOM
Saturday Gwennedd
Sunday loggersbrat
It’s good, once in a while, to look at our planet from the perspective of the universe. From the outside looking in, rather than the inside looking out. So here’s a few pics that one of Bored Panda’s staff, Giedrė Vaičiulaitytė has put together:
The solar system is fascinating, with a history of not much, not little, just 4.568 billion years! It consists of a single star (Sun, duh!), 8 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) and 3 universally accepted dwarf planets (Ceres, Pluto, Eris). Oh, and everything in between, such as moons and asteroids and such. The system mass of the solar system is 1.0014 solar masses (one solar mass is equal to approximately 2×1030 kg, do the calculations) and the majority of the system’s mass is in the Sun (99,86 %) with the remaining majority contained in Jupiter.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Named after the Roman god of sky and lightning, Jupiter is a planet with a radius of 69,911 km (43,441 mi) and a surface area of 6.1419×1010 km2 (2.3714×1010 sq mi) which would be approximately 122 Earths. Now that’s impressive! Unlike planets like Earth and Mars (that have rocky, terrestrial terrains), Jupiter is a gas giant, meaning that it consists mainly of hydrogen and helium for which it is sometimes called a failed star (because they contain the same basic elements of a star). When compared to the sun, the planet seems like a meek little bubble as its mass is only one-thousandth that of the Sun, however, if you combined the masses of the remaining solar system planets, Jupiter would still be two-and-a-half times bigger.
What if we took all the planets in our solar system and lined them up beside our sun?
Sitting at the center of our system, the Sun is a nearly-perfect sphere of hot plasma with a surface area of 6.09×1012 km2 which is 12,000 Earths (just think about it for a moment!). It takes 8 min and 19 s for the light from the Sun to reach our planet. The Sun is made of ~73% hydrogen with the rest being mostly helium (~25%) and only small quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron. According to Wikipedia, the Sun “currently fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result”. The energy (which can take 10,000 – 170,000 years to escape from its core) is the source of Sun’s light and heat. When these processes decrease, the Sun’s core will increase density and temperature and the outer layers will expand, consuming the orbits of Mercury and Venus and rendering Earth uninhabitable. But that’s not going to happen in the upcoming 5 billion years or so, nothing to worry about!
And if we stepped back to see where Earth is in our galaxy...
And yet, our galaxy is only one of millions billions of others in the universe:
But what we can see with the aid of our best telescopes, is still only a fraction of the scope of the entire universe!!
Now...don’t you feel relieved that all our drama is finally in the proper perspective?