Space Explorations by Legendary Former Coach Michael “Bear” Bryant: Part 1
Michael “Bear” Bryant is the current chair of the General Education Department at Sullivan University System. Bear once earned 4 first round at large bids to the NDT and was known as a prolific and powerful debater. He was also a highly successful at the college level where he coached multiple first rounds. I was once coached by Bear when I was a sophomore in college during which I spent a lot of time with him. I can honestly say that Bear is one of the most interesting people I have ever known. One of his many interests is the universe. This is a reposting of a bunch of Bear’s “Space Posts” from facebook. Thanks a lot Bear.
The spiky stars in the foreground of this sharp cosmic portrait are well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The two eye-catching galaxies lie far beyond the Milky Way, at a distance of over 300 million light-years. Their distorted appearance is due to gravitational tides as the pair engage in close encounters. Cataloged as Arp 273 (also… as UGC 1810), the galaxies do look peculiar, but interacting galaxies are now understood to be common in the universe. In fact, the nearby large spiral Andromeda Galaxy is known to be some 2 million light-years away and approaching the Milky Way. Arp 273 may offer an analog of their far future encounter. Repeated galaxy encounters on a cosmic timescale can ultimately result in a merger into a single galaxy of stars. From our perspective, the bright cores of the Arp 273 galaxies are separated by only a little over 100,000 light-years. The release of this stunning vista celebrates the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit.
In Memory of Yuri Gagarin: On April 12th, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin became the first human in space. His remotely controlled Vostok 1 spacecraft lofted him to an altitude of 200 miles and carried him once around planet Earth. Commenting on the first view from space he reported, “The sky is very dark; the Earth i…s bluish. Everything is seen very clearly”. His view could have resembled this image taken in 2003 from the International Space Station. Alan Shepard, the first US astronaut, would not be launched until almost a month later and then on a comparatively short suborbital flight. Born on March 9, 1934, Gagarin was a military pilot before being chosen for the first group of cosmonauts in 1960. As a result of his historic flight he became an international hero and legend. Killed when his MIG jet crashed during a training flight in 1968, Gagarin was given a hero’s funeral, his ashes interred in the Kremlin Wall. Twenty years later, on yet another April 12th, in 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle.
I’ve spent this vacation week delving into several books from Alastair Reynolds” “Revelation Space” universe. Imagine my shock when I read the article below and realized that fiction is quickly becoming fact.
