Today’s posts bring two outer space topics. Earlier today I embedded a video from father-son team about their launch of a balloon and video camera about nineteen miles above the earth’s surface.
Over at Physics Buzz, from PhysicsCentral there is a recent post about a simulated alien’s eye view of our solar system. See, An alien’s eye view of the solar system (w/ video).
With help from a supercomputer capable of 67 trillion calculations per second, astronomers at NASA Goddard have determined what our solar system would look like to an alien astronomer. The simulations track the interactions of 75,000 dust grains in the Kuiper Belt, which is an icy region out beyond Neptune where millions of small bodies (including Pluto) orbit the sun.
Here’s what NASA scientists think extraterrestrials (if there are any) might see if they looked in our direction —