Life can be stranger than fiction, but reality is utterly mundane.
I hadn’t heard of that company before but there are so many now that it’s impossible to keep track. It’s pretty remarkable to me that there are dozens of different private launch service providers out there when it seems unlikely that the vast majority could ever achieve profitability. I understand the idea of different governments wanting to promote competition and have backup options, but still…
Ah yes. It turns out the signal was merely the result of a star whose dying core was crushed past the point where atoms, which everything we encounter are made from, can exist and instead the electrons are slurped up to basically give a single giant nucleus with a density of around 1017 kg/m3. This spins around in less than a second and has an unimaginably powerful magnetic field, which happened to light up a vast cloud of interstellar gas while it was pointed at us. So all completely mundane stuff, instead of it being made the way people like us would have done it.
…Maybe we have different definitions of mundane? It comes from Latin mundanus, to do with our familiar world.
Yes. Mundane. As in: this sort of thing happens all the time across the universe.
It’s just that we can only observe a teensy weensy bit of something incomprehensible vast, both in space and time, so we miss a lot of interesting things.
I reacted with 
just because I was hoping for aliens (lower case ‘a’, of course).
We’re not going to hear anything any time soon, though, I’m guessing we’ve probably been in quarantine since we started tossing nuclear bombs around. 
Space is big enough that everything happens all the time across it though, except configurations with incredibly high information content. Yes, life is that, and what we have here on earth is amazing and special. But I don’t know, it feels weird to look outside earth and then be sad you’re not seeing the same thing as here.
I guess maybe I’m just still frustrated that half the coverage of exoplanets is not what we are learning about our universe, just looking for places we could settle, trade goods, and aliens, like the whole point of astronomy is just to find the new West Indies. It’s setting ourselves up to be disappointed amid wonders.
[…]
Isaacman said that Polaris Dawn would be the first of three Polaris missions. Polaris II will build upon the lessons of Polaris Dawn, and Polaris III will be the first human spaceflight using SpaceX’s Starship.
Isaacman said Starship “could very well be the 737 for human spaceflight someday, but it’ll certainly be the vehicle that will return humans to the Moon.”
He could be right.
ahhh, yes…no.
and pigs could fly.
Whooosh…
First of ESA’s Cluster satellites prepares for fiery finale over South Pacific
[…]
There are four Cluster satellites: Rumba, Salsa, Samba, and Tango. Salsa will be the first to take a dive, with the rest following during 2025 and 2026. Unlike recent uncontrolled re-entries, controllers have carefully targeted Salsa so that any surviving fragments do not impact populated regions.
[…]
from the article:
“and the placing of India’s first man on the Moon as “cornerstone projects” of the nation’s space program.”
i had to go read their actual press release. they’re planning for “the first indian” on the moon. glad for that, though not the register’s regressive gendering.
You could take this up with the author of the article; El Reg does bylines.
