It’s Unicron.
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Ultima Thule sounds like a weapon or spell from Final Fantasy.
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“Dr. May, we appreciate your input on the propulsion system but frankly we don’t believe ’Gunpowder, gelatin, dynamite with a laser beam, guaranteed to blow your mind’ would be feasible for this particular mission.”
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New family crest: sorted.
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“But ‘travelling at the speed of light!!’”
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May is also known for his unorthodox theories regarding orbital mechanics in which he asserts that it’s actually fat-bottomed girls that make the rockin’ world go round.
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The B side of that theory is that we live in a bi-cycle universe.
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It is largely the case that science is not the problem down here. Unless you count political science. (I don’t)
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I just watched a video about that. They were looking for a new opportunity for the Pluto probe and they found it with some difficulty as it is tiny and in front of a busy region of space, the galactic core. So they had to look for motion of a tiny speck consistent with not being a distant star.
I’ll look for the video. It involved convincing the Hubble people that time on it would be well spent locating a new target beyond Pluto.
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Yeah; I’m convinced that we have the science; it’s the political and economic will that’s needed to apply that science…
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You cannot explore much of the universe if you go extinct too early.
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seems that he was extremely lucky that
a) his original research work was still original
More than 250 scans of both morning and evening Zodiacal Light were obtained, in two observing periods – September-October 1971, and April 1972.
and
b) somehow newly relevant after decades.
Other researches on the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, before, during, and after my observations, are reviewed, including recent insights into its structure, orientation, and evolution, up to the present day, and my observations are evaluated in this context. Period of study, 1970-2007.
…
The writing of my thesis was virtually complete in 1974, but the submission was deferred due to various pressures. Having returned to the work in 2006, I am happy to submit a complete and substantially updated thesis in 2007, in which I am now able to offer many new perspectives, because of the research which has taken place between 1974 and the present day.
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I hope they didn’t store the distance from the sun counter in a 32 bit integer.
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Shaped like a bowling pin? They should have named it ‘Big Lebowski’.
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Simply amazing. Hope that NASA is better funded in the future.
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Oh no. Are we about to discover the Ophiuchi Hotline?
Unfortunately it looks like New Horizons is well and truly over the line. This isn’t Nam. There are rules.
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Yes it is amazing. Before New Horizons launched, I registered my daughter’s name with NASA. The name “Marina Lawire” is now on a disk on a spacecraft beyond the solar system which is encountering a body call Ultima Thule. “Cool” doesn’t even come near this
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NASA and their smeggin’ teaser advertising! 
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Doesn’t that just mean that the Interstellar Litter Patrol are going to be coming after your daughter for her part of the 10,000thung fine?
@xlurker I’ve got my fingers crossed that this event will finally allow we to learn how to pronounce Thule. I used to call it, “Thool”, like “tool” with a “h”. But I’ve heard it pronounced “Too-leh” and “Too-lah”.
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