An alien planet 63 light years away seen in true color! (thank you mr. hubble)
The exoplanet's weather is less than ideal. Its atmosphere is more than 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) and the planet rains glass sideways in 4,350 mile per hour (7,000 km/h) winds, according to Hubble officials.
An alien planet 63 light years away seen in true color! (thank you mr. hubble)
The exoplanet's weather is less than ideal. Its atmosphere is more than 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) and the planet rains glass sideways in 4,350 mile per hour (7,000 km/h) winds, according to Hubble officials.
August 20th full moon.... ( I'm a few days late ) :P
This month's full moon, which rises on Tuesday (Aug. 20), is not just a Blue Moon — it's also the Full Sturgeon Moon, the Full Red Moon, the Green Corn Moon and the Grain Moon.
The annual August full moon has come to be known as the Full Sturgeon Moon, because the large fish called sturgeon can most easily be caught at this time of year. The name came from tribes who caught this fish in bodies of water such as the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
Another name for this month's full moon is the Full Red Moon, because the weather and atmospheric conditions during this season can often make the moon look reddish when it rises through a haze.
And finally, because crops grow tall at this time of year, this month's moon is sometimes called the Green Corn Moon or the Grain Moon.
hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
It is now coming on 9pm here.
Where is the moon?
Show me the moon!
(sorry, I just caught "The Cafe" episode of Seinfeld )
The other evening though, I was listening to Let it Be, and happened to catch the moon rising in its huge orange fullness, right when Paul sang "and when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me".
It was a very sweet (and surprisingly personal / emotional) moment.
They are two galaxies colliding to form a massive galaxy ... something the Milky Way will do some day with the Andromeda galaxy.
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Voyager 1 becomes first human-made object to leave solar system
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
updated 4:44 PM EDT, Thu September 12, 2013
(CNN) -- At the edge of the heliosphere, you wouldn't know by looking whether you left the cradle of humanity behind and floated out into interstellar space. You would just see unfathomably empty space, no matter which side of the invisible line you were on.
But scientists now have strong evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 probe has crossed this important border, making history as the first human-made object to leave the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary separating the solar system's sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy.
"In leaving the heliosphere and setting sail on the cosmic seas between the stars, Voyager has joined other historic journeys of exploration: The first circumnavigation of the Earth, the first steps on the Moon," said Ed Stone, chief scientist on the Voyager mission. "That's the kind of event this is, as we leave behind our solar bubble."
A new study in the journal Science suggests that the probe entered the interstellar medium around August 25, 2012. You may have heard other reports that Voyager 1 has made the historic crossing before, but Thursday was the first time NASA announced it.
Thetwin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, 16 days apart. As of Thursday, according to NASA's real-time odometer, Voyager 1 is 18.8 billion kilometers (11.7 billion miles) from Earth. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is 15.3 billion (9.5 billion) kilometers from our planet.
Technically, if you include the distant comets that orbit the sun, then Voyager 1 has not left "the solar system," Stone said. For that, we'll have to wait another 30,000 years.
Another milestone for long after we're gone: The probe will fly near a star in about 40,000 years, Stone said. How do we know?
Voyager, currently traveling at more than 38,000 miles per hour, never sent a postcard saying "Greetings from interstellar space!" So whether it has made the historic crossing or not is a matter of controversy.
"The spacecraft itself really doesn't know," Stone said. "It's only instruments that can tell us whether we're inside or outside."
Further complicating matters, the device aboard Voyager 1 that measures plasma -- a state of matter with charged particles -- broke in 1980.
To get around that, scientists detected waves in the plasma around the spacecraft and used that information to calculate density. Vibrations in the plasma came from a large coronal mass ejection from the sun in 2012, resulting in what Stone called a "solar wind tsunami." These vibrations reached the area around Voyager this spring.
Measurements taken between April 9 and May 22 of this year show that Voyager 1 was, at that time, located in an area with an electron density of about 0.08 per cubic centimeter.
In the interstellar medium, the density of electrons is thought to be between 0.05 and 0.22 per cubic centimeter. The particles of interstellar plasma were created by the explosions of giant stars, and carry the magnetic field of the galaxy, scientists said.
Last year, between October 23 and November 27, researchers calculate that Voyager 1 was in an area with an electron density of 0.06 per cubic centimeter. That's still within the interstellar space range, and it means that over time the spacecraft passed through plasma with increasing electron density.
The study suggests that the plasma density is about 30 times higher in the interstellar medium than in the heliosphere, which is close to what scientists thought based on other kinds of measurements. The boundary is called the heliopause. Voyager mission timeline: When did it happen?
Scientists have been using several kinds of measurements to figure out if and when Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium.
Evidence from particle data had already pointed toward the conclusion that the probe succeeded. In late July and early August of 2012, scientists saw dips in the concentration of particles made in the solar system, and peaks in particles made outside.
"If you just looked at that data, you'd think it's pretty clear that we've actually crossed a boundary. We're no longer in the place where the solar system particles are being made, and we're actually out in the interstellar medium," said Marc Swisdak, associate research scientist in the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland. Swisdak was not involved in the new study, but has worked with Voyager data.
Magnetic field measurements suggested otherwise. Researchers had expected to see stark changes in magnetic field direction when the probe crossed out of the heliosphere, but that wasn't supported by measurements from the probe.
Swisdak and colleagues published a modeling study suggesting that the particle data is more relevant, and that the magnetic field might not change as much as people thought. They proposed a crossing-over date of July 27 -- about a month sooner than the new study.
The specific date will likely be debated for some time, Swisdak said. One possible explanation is that if the heliosphere is analogous to an air-conditioned room, Voyager stepped through the doorway into a hot room on July 27. For a month it was in a metaphorical room with a mixture of hot and cold air, and finally entered the truly hot part on August 25.
Puzzles still surround the magnetic field at the edge of the heliosphere, Stone said, and "We're going to be prepared to have more surprises." NASA sends unmanned rocket to the moon What else is out there?
Voyager 1 has only 68 KB of memory on board -- far less than a smartphone, said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager. Scientists communicate with the spacecraft every day.
"It's the little spacecraft that could," she said in a NASA press conference.
The probe now has a totally new mission, Stone said.
"We're now on the first mission to explore interstellar space," he said. "We will now look and learn in detail how the wind which is outside, that came from these other stars, is deflected around the heliosphere."
Wind -- made of particles -- from these other stars has to go around the heliosphere the way a water in a stream flows around a rock, Stone said. Scientists are interested in learning more about the interaction between our solar wind and wind from other stars.
Natural radioactive decay provides heat that generates enough electricity to help Voyager 1 communicate with Earth. The first science instrument will be turned off in 2020, and the last one will be shut down in 2025, Stone said.
Both Voyager probes carry time capsules known as "the golden record," a 12-inch, gold-plated copper disc with images and sounds so that extraterrestrials could learn about us. Let's hope they can build appropriate record players.
Voyager 2 will likely leave the heliosphere in about three to four years, Stone said.
Its plasma instrument is still working, Stone said, so scientists can directly measure the stellar wind's density, speed and temperature. That also means that when it crosses out of the heliosphere, Voyager 2 will send a clearer signal.
At that time, it will join its twin in the vast nothingness between stars that used to be beyond our reach. Rocket frog takes flying leap
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,122
It has finally got past the heliopause so it is out of the solar system proper, but it still has to get past the Oort cloud which the sun has a loose influence over. To get to the inner edge of could take 300 years and to fly beyond it could take 30,000 years. So in that case it's gonna be a while, but I wouldn't count that as truly part of the solar system so yeah in my opinion it's out.
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
It has finally got past the heliopause so it is out of the solar system proper, but it still has to get past the Oort cloud which the sun has a loose influence over. To get to the inner edge of could take 300 years and to fly beyond it could take 30,000 years. So in that case it's gonna be a while, but I wouldn't count that as truly part of the solar system so yeah in my opinion it's out.
Lollapalooza 92, Alpine Valley 11, De Luna 12, Wrigley/Pittsburgh/Dallas/OKC 13, Tulsa/Denver 14, Global 15, Wrigley 1/2 16
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Surfing The far side of THE Sombrero Galaxy Posts: 18,122
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
^^That's just beautiful and mesmerizing.
Hope my fellow moon-lovers have been digging the night skies lately
So i've been extra-dorking out on "the universe" lately. Been trying to follow an Electrical Engineering 110 course lecture series in order to get a basic hold on *what we THINK we know* about the atom, the electron, subatomic particles, and the functioning of the universe vis-a-vis electrical processes, the electric "field", and electromagnetism. I am thoroughly convinced that math has obscured what should now be an obvious fact -- the "fact" that the universe is entirely an electromagnetic phenomenon, that gravity is some sort of offshoot of this EM phenomenon, and that large parts of our current quantum theory of the universe are misguided by over-reliance on the numbers spit out by equations, and too little practical experimentation. (that was actually Tesla's position, in a nutshell).
ANYHOW.
Because I have my own particular opinions on QM, I have been going to Wikipedia every 10 minutes while watching this EE110 series, seeing what we REALLY know, and what we THINK we know, but is really simply inducted "fact" implied by numeric "evidence". I have some fundamental philosophic objections to a "nuclear strong force" and was looking up some stuff. I came across a web forum on it and some guy (alleged "crank") in his argumentation against the reality of a nuclear strong force said the following:
When there is a pair creation event where a high energy photon becomes converted into an electron-positron pair we don’t see any problem with a positron re-acquiring an electron...
I stared at this line over and over again. I scratched my head. I was taken a'back.
This statement of fact used as the preamble to buffer his actual argument should make anyone squirm.
It is down right esoteric, and made me think back to my readings thereof.
THEN I FIND THIS: Out Of Pure Light, Physicists Create Particles Of Matter from 1997.
See? A photon is a MASSless "particle" of LIGHT.
It is NOT matter (so we say). The forum authors assertion of an already-proven physics phenomenon is an unintentionally veiled admission of this - "a high energy photon (LIGHT!) becomes converted to an "electron positron pair" (an atom minus a proton)" - so i took that and googled it.
Low and behold.
:geek: :ugeek: :geek:
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
So i've been extra-dorking out on "the universe" lately. Been trying to follow an Electrical Engineering 110 course lecture series in order to get a basic hold on *what we THINK we know* about the atom, the electron, subatomic particles, and the functioning of the universe vis-a-vis electrical processes, the electric "field", and electromagnetism. I am thoroughly convinced that math has obscured what should now be an obvious fact -- the "fact" that the universe is entirely an electromagnetic phenomenon, that gravity is some sort of offshoot of this EM phenomenon, and that large parts of our current quantum theory of the universe are misguided by over-reliance on the numbers spit out by equations, and too little practical experimentation. (that was actually Tesla's position, in a nutshell).
ANYHOW.
Because I have my own particular opinions on QM, I have been going to Wikipedia every 10 minutes while watching this EE110 series, seeing what we REALLY know, and what we THINK we know, but is really simply inducted "fact" implied by numeric "evidence". I have some fundamental philosophic objections to a "nuclear strong force" and was looking up some stuff. I came across a web forum on it and some guy (alleged "crank") in his argumentation against the reality of a nuclear strong force said the following:
When there is a pair creation event where a high energy photon becomes converted into an electron-positron pair we don’t see any problem with a positron re-acquiring an electron...
I stared at this line over and over again. I scratched my head. I was taken a'back.
This statement of fact used as the preamble to buffer his actual argument should make anyone squirm.
It is down right esoteric, and made me think back to my readings thereof.
THEN I FIND THIS: Out Of Pure Light, Physicists Create Particles Of Matter from 1997.
See? A photon is a MASSless "particle" of LIGHT.
It is NOT matter (so we say). The forum authors assertion of an already-proven physics phenomenon is an unintentionally veiled admission of this - "a high energy photon (LIGHT!) becomes converted to an "electron positron pair" (an atom minus a proton)" - so i took that and googled it.
Low and behold.
:geek: :ugeek: :geek:
:shock: dude you're my new hero.....wow it's so cool to read about guys like you actually doing something with your mind and life, I salute you !
Comments
Very cool! isn't it also the summer solstice?
Yes, they did !
so, technically, tomorrow
Ah solstices- the best holidays for celebration!
The exoplanet's weather is less than ideal. Its atmosphere is more than 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) and the planet rains glass sideways in 4,350 mile per hour (7,000 km/h) winds, according to Hubble officials.
:shock:
http://news.yahoo.com/strange-blue-world-alien-planets-true-color-revealed-131704210.html
Whoa. Not an ideal place for a vacation ...
"Let's check Idaho."
So Be it!!
Nothing wrong with that ... nerds are some of the best people.
"Let's check Idaho."
No, this is not a gun thread! Stars: Do no harm!
http://news.yahoo.com/brilliant-meteor- ... 31447.html
I love me some perseids
"Let's check Idaho."
Mmm ... space ...
"Let's check Idaho."
We may all get to breathe in some space splendor! now that's funny.
Uuumm grilled meat
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-a- ... z2cdKonzn8
I don't think I'll ever stop being awed by the ability for us to SEE this sort of thing.
(also, there was one badass full moon last night - in the sky, that is :P )
This month's full moon, which rises on Tuesday (Aug. 20), is not just a Blue Moon — it's also the Full Sturgeon Moon, the Full Red Moon, the Green Corn Moon and the Grain Moon.
The annual August full moon has come to be known as the Full Sturgeon Moon, because the large fish called sturgeon can most easily be caught at this time of year. The name came from tribes who caught this fish in bodies of water such as the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
Another name for this month's full moon is the Full Red Moon, because the weather and atmospheric conditions during this season can often make the moon look reddish when it rises through a haze.
And finally, because crops grow tall at this time of year, this month's moon is sometimes called the Green Corn Moon or the Grain Moon.
Where is the moon?
Show me the moon!
(sorry, I just caught "The Cafe" episode of Seinfeld
The other evening though, I was listening to Let it Be, and happened to catch the moon rising in its huge orange fullness, right when Paul sang "and when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me".
It was a very sweet (and surprisingly personal / emotional) moment.
Yeah.
Shine until tomorrow
The Antennae Galaxies
They are two galaxies colliding to form a massive galaxy ... something the Milky Way will do some day with the Andromeda galaxy.
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
updated 4:44 PM EDT, Thu September 12, 2013
(CNN) -- At the edge of the heliosphere, you wouldn't know by looking whether you left the cradle of humanity behind and floated out into interstellar space. You would just see unfathomably empty space, no matter which side of the invisible line you were on.
But scientists now have strong evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 probe has crossed this important border, making history as the first human-made object to leave the heliosphere, the magnetic boundary separating the solar system's sun, planets and solar wind from the rest of the galaxy.
"In leaving the heliosphere and setting sail on the cosmic seas between the stars, Voyager has joined other historic journeys of exploration: The first circumnavigation of the Earth, the first steps on the Moon," said Ed Stone, chief scientist on the Voyager mission. "That's the kind of event this is, as we leave behind our solar bubble."
A new study in the journal Science suggests that the probe entered the interstellar medium around August 25, 2012. You may have heard other reports that Voyager 1 has made the historic crossing before, but Thursday was the first time NASA announced it.
Thetwin spacecraft Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, 16 days apart. As of Thursday, according to NASA's real-time odometer, Voyager 1 is 18.8 billion kilometers (11.7 billion miles) from Earth. Its sibling, Voyager 2, is 15.3 billion (9.5 billion) kilometers from our planet.
Technically, if you include the distant comets that orbit the sun, then Voyager 1 has not left "the solar system," Stone said. For that, we'll have to wait another 30,000 years.
Another milestone for long after we're gone: The probe will fly near a star in about 40,000 years, Stone said.
How do we know?
Voyager, currently traveling at more than 38,000 miles per hour, never sent a postcard saying "Greetings from interstellar space!" So whether it has made the historic crossing or not is a matter of controversy.
"The spacecraft itself really doesn't know," Stone said. "It's only instruments that can tell us whether we're inside or outside."
Further complicating matters, the device aboard Voyager 1 that measures plasma -- a state of matter with charged particles -- broke in 1980.
To get around that, scientists detected waves in the plasma around the spacecraft and used that information to calculate density. Vibrations in the plasma came from a large coronal mass ejection from the sun in 2012, resulting in what Stone called a "solar wind tsunami." These vibrations reached the area around Voyager this spring.
Measurements taken between April 9 and May 22 of this year show that Voyager 1 was, at that time, located in an area with an electron density of about 0.08 per cubic centimeter.
In the interstellar medium, the density of electrons is thought to be between 0.05 and 0.22 per cubic centimeter. The particles of interstellar plasma were created by the explosions of giant stars, and carry the magnetic field of the galaxy, scientists said.
Last year, between October 23 and November 27, researchers calculate that Voyager 1 was in an area with an electron density of 0.06 per cubic centimeter. That's still within the interstellar space range, and it means that over time the spacecraft passed through plasma with increasing electron density.
The study suggests that the plasma density is about 30 times higher in the interstellar medium than in the heliosphere, which is close to what scientists thought based on other kinds of measurements. The boundary is called the heliopause.
Voyager mission timeline:
When did it happen?
Scientists have been using several kinds of measurements to figure out if and when Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium.
Evidence from particle data had already pointed toward the conclusion that the probe succeeded. In late July and early August of 2012, scientists saw dips in the concentration of particles made in the solar system, and peaks in particles made outside.
"If you just looked at that data, you'd think it's pretty clear that we've actually crossed a boundary. We're no longer in the place where the solar system particles are being made, and we're actually out in the interstellar medium," said Marc Swisdak, associate research scientist in the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics at the University of Maryland. Swisdak was not involved in the new study, but has worked with Voyager data.
Magnetic field measurements suggested otherwise. Researchers had expected to see stark changes in magnetic field direction when the probe crossed out of the heliosphere, but that wasn't supported by measurements from the probe.
Swisdak and colleagues published a modeling study suggesting that the particle data is more relevant, and that the magnetic field might not change as much as people thought. They proposed a crossing-over date of July 27 -- about a month sooner than the new study.
The specific date will likely be debated for some time, Swisdak said. One possible explanation is that if the heliosphere is analogous to an air-conditioned room, Voyager stepped through the doorway into a hot room on July 27. For a month it was in a metaphorical room with a mixture of hot and cold air, and finally entered the truly hot part on August 25.
Puzzles still surround the magnetic field at the edge of the heliosphere, Stone said, and "We're going to be prepared to have more surprises."
NASA sends unmanned rocket to the moon
What else is out there?
Voyager 1 has only 68 KB of memory on board -- far less than a smartphone, said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager. Scientists communicate with the spacecraft every day.
"It's the little spacecraft that could," she said in a NASA press conference.
The probe now has a totally new mission, Stone said.
"We're now on the first mission to explore interstellar space," he said. "We will now look and learn in detail how the wind which is outside, that came from these other stars, is deflected around the heliosphere."
Wind -- made of particles -- from these other stars has to go around the heliosphere the way a water in a stream flows around a rock, Stone said. Scientists are interested in learning more about the interaction between our solar wind and wind from other stars.
Natural radioactive decay provides heat that generates enough electricity to help Voyager 1 communicate with Earth. The first science instrument will be turned off in 2020, and the last one will be shut down in 2025, Stone said.
Both Voyager probes carry time capsules known as "the golden record," a 12-inch, gold-plated copper disc with images and sounds so that extraterrestrials could learn about us. Let's hope they can build appropriate record players.
Voyager 2 will likely leave the heliosphere in about three to four years, Stone said.
Its plasma instrument is still working, Stone said, so scientists can directly measure the stellar wind's density, speed and temperature. That also means that when it crosses out of the heliosphere, Voyager 2 will send a clearer signal.
At that time, it will join its twin in the vast nothingness between stars that used to be beyond our reach.
Rocket frog takes flying leap
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Here's a map.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... larmap.png
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Cool Map!
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
Hope my fellow moon-lovers have been digging the night skies lately
Snowy Range, WY - Perseid Meteor Shower
ANYHOW.
Because I have my own particular opinions on QM, I have been going to Wikipedia every 10 minutes while watching this EE110 series, seeing what we REALLY know, and what we THINK we know, but is really simply inducted "fact" implied by numeric "evidence". I have some fundamental philosophic objections to a "nuclear strong force" and was looking up some stuff. I came across a web forum on it and some guy (alleged "crank") in his argumentation against the reality of a nuclear strong force said the following:
I stared at this line over and over again. I scratched my head. I was taken a'back.
This statement of fact used as the preamble to buffer his actual argument should make anyone squirm.
It is down right esoteric, and made me think back to my readings thereof.
THEN I FIND THIS:
Out Of Pure Light, Physicists Create Particles Of Matter from 1997.
See? A photon is a MASSless "particle" of LIGHT.
It is NOT matter (so we say). The forum authors assertion of an already-proven physics phenomenon is an unintentionally veiled admission of this - "a high energy photon (LIGHT!) becomes converted to an "electron positron pair" (an atom minus a proton)" - so i took that and googled it.
Low and behold.
:geek: :ugeek: :geek:
If I opened it now would you not understand?
:shock: dude you're my new hero.....wow it's so cool to read about guys like you actually doing something with your mind and life, I salute you !
Godfather.