• Trapped In America@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    Being a fan of The Expanse this is really cool. It really puts the size of a lot of the moons and dwarf planets from the series into perspective. Ganymede for example, was used by pregnant mothers in the outer-system because it was large enough to still have an active core and thus a magnetosphere. Shielding the surface from a lot of radiation. Their main food crops were grown there for the same reason.

    Io, Callisto, Europa, Eris, Titan, Ceres, and a few others all make appearances too. It’s an amazing series, for those who haven’t read/seen it, whether you read the books or watch the show.

    • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      It’s generally a great series but it reminds me of Wheel of Time, in that some of the main characters are incredibly stupid and don’t seem to get any better. James Holden in particular is one whose stupidity is hard to withstand sometimes. I ended up not being able to finish both of those because of that.

      • Trapped In America@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        Yeah, most of James’ issues are just him trying to do the right thing. He tends to jump in head first at that point.

        spoiler

        Like him walking into a clearly radioactive room, despite warning signs being everywhere and a literal siren going off. All because he saw some injured/sick people lying on the ground and he didn’t hesitate to help.

        Or flying the ship into a pile of ruble looking for the hybrid (that doesn’t happen in the book).

        • leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          Holden’s favourite book, if I recall correctly, is Don Quixote… but instead of seeing it as a satire of sixteenth century Spain and chivalric tradition he sees the antics of the evidently senile and deranged protagonist as a manual of how to act.

          The whole series is Holden tilting at windmills.

          They’re quite well written and engaging windmills, though, and there’s a lot of great Sancho Panzas to accompany and provide a contrast to our knight errand, so it’s still a great series.

  • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I guess it’s easy to forget just how much smaller Mars is until comparisons like this help put it in perspective.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      mars’ surface area is approximately as big as earth’s land surface area, i.e. everything excluding oceans. since oceans cover a large part of earth’s surface, there’s that.

    • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I can’t readily recall the Earth’s actual sq. km surface area, and can’t remember ever having heard the figure for Mars. Time to drop into Wikipedia and take a gander, I think.

      EDIT: I’ll be damned, TIL that the Earth has an area of 510.06 10^6 km², but Mars’ is only 144.37 10^6 km², only about 1⁄3 the size (28.3%).

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        3 days ago

        The circumference is roughly 40,000 kilometers. The original definition for a meter was such that 10,000 kilometers was the distance from the equator to the poles (so a quarter of the circumference). They got the math slightly wrong and didn’t want to people to think the process was wrong so they didn’t correct it. I forget the actual circumference but that is close enough for very rough estimates.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Hard to say with the irregular shape, but they’re close.

      What really gets me is how small Mars is relative to Earth and Venus.

      • Nailbar@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        The picture got me curious, so I went to check on Wikipedia. It’s just bonkers that moons are bigger than planets.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Kinda shows how useless the fantasy of living on Mars really is. Not only is this a barren wasteland, it’s also a tiny barren wasteland.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I mean, I wouldn’t call it “useless”. There’s almost certainly a benefit to the science and technology that can move people to Mars safely and transform it into a habitable place.

          But “We’re going to Mars!” as a mission is a fantasy. “We’re going to keep investing in blue sky research until we have advanced enough technology to make Mars a feasible destination” is where the money is at.

  • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Thank you! It looked very XKCD to me, so I was surprised when the source link wasn’t to that.

    Edit: oops… Meant to reply to the comment with the xkcd link.

  • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    I guess fact it’s mostly gas means I don’t have to ask, “where’s Uranus?”

    But if we’re counting the liquid parts of Earth, shouldn’t we include the squashy centers of Uranus and Jupiter?

    • rarWars@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 days ago

      The “liquid parts” of earth are just a thin puddle over basically the same solid shell covering the rest of the planet, relatively speaking. Uranus does have a small rocky core (so probably should have been included tbh), but Jupiter’s core is just liquid and doesn’t even have a clear boundary between the gas and the core.

    • BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Yes, I was wondering the same question. Jupiter surface would definitely dwarf anything else

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Jupiter has no surface, just a gradually increasing density. When you sink in the ocean, you eventually reach the ocean floor. On Jupiter you just keep sinking until your surroundings match your density.

  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    Why does this look like bootleg Tamriel sans the high elf island I can’t remember the name of fuck off Sheogorath it is not the Shivering Isles.