Animated video of the asteroid Vesta, with added color to show surface contrasts, taken from still frames from NASA’s Dawn space probe.

http://phys.org/news/2012-06-dawn-mission-video-vesta-coat.html

Fascinating, Bruce. Looks like some old spinning potato. Rich in iron and probably lots of other metals and useful minerals. On another thread here recently there was talk of mining astroids. Vesta is not that much further out than Mars so who knows… But what I find fascintaing is that we can find all this stuff out and that science has allowed us to send probes and see in great detail something that was virtually invisible to the unaided eye. It’s this sort of stuff that gives me hope for our species. If we can get ourselves into space surely we can solve political and social probelms among ourselves. Think what we could do united. Ad astra!

Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 10 June 2012 03:57 AM

Fascinating, Bruce. Looks like some old spinning potato. Rich in iron and probably lots of other metals and useful minerals. On another thread here recently there was talk of mining astroids. Vesta is not that much further out than Mars so who knows… But what I find fascintaing is that we can find all this stuff out and that science has allowed us to send probes and see in great detail something that was virtually invisible to the unaided eye. It’s this sort of stuff that gives me hope for our species. If we can get ourselves into space surely we can solve political and social probelms among ourselves. Think what we could do united. Ad astra!

There is literally nothing that we could not do united. Even your favorite book, the Bible, says this.  Genesis 11:6 “And the Lord said, ‘Indeed, the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do: now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.’”  The idea was that unity was unacceptable because it led to “evil” works.  So in the story languages were mixed up so that people couldn’t communicate.

We still have the same problem. Unity would be wonderful if we all purposed to do good like exploring space and promoting the general welfare. Problem is, that doesn’t happen. You still have dictators. So division is necessary to prevent evil from taking over everything.

But here’s hoping. If we could exorcise all our demons, we could literally conquer the universe, eventually.  Probably even achieve eternal life. In that sense, the goals of science wouldn’t be that different from the goals of religion.

Right now, we seem to exercise our demons more than we exorcise them, however.

Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (Rob) - 10 June 2012 03:57 AM

Fascinating, Bruce. Looks like some old spinning potato. Rich in iron and probably lots of other metals and useful minerals.

Funny that, potatoes contain..
Potassium - 926 mg
Phosphorus - 121 mg
Magnesium - 48 mg
Calcium - 26 mg
Iron - 1.87 mg
Sodium - 17 mg
Zinc - 0.62 mg
Copper - 0.204 mg
Manganese - 0.379 mg
Selenium - 0.7 mcg
Also contains small amounts of other minerals. 

This old spinner will have much more than this I guess…harder to peel too..

‘You still have dictators. So division is necessary to prevent evil from taking over everything.’

We have dictators because of division, not because we need division to prevent them.

Duh.

Avogadro’s number - 12 June 2012 10:27 AM

‘You still have dictators. So division is necessary to prevent evil from taking over everything.’

We have dictators because of division, not because we need division to prevent them.

Duh.

No, you have dictators because some social situations allow evil people to rise to the top.  That is generally not capable of happening for long in democracies.  We do not have dictators because of division.  If we were capable of having a one-world government that was not going to be taken over by evil, we would have it. We are not capable. We need division to keep evil from taking over everything.