Houston, We Have A Fluid Dynamics Problem

Relationship drama? Meh. But losing a $722 million spacecraft that's been faithfully sending data since 1977 because someone typed the wrong command? That's the kind of catastrophe that keeps space engineers awake at night. Voyager 2 is practically family at NASA—been sending postcards from the edge of our solar system for 47 years. The panic when mission control realized they'd essentially hung up on their most distant relative must have been... astronomical. Thankfully, they managed to call back.

Content The detection of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015 Some guy asking what happens if we make the compound interest interval reaaalllly small imgflip.com

The cosmic drama unfolds! NASA's Juno spacecraft mission is a brilliant astronomical pun hiding in plain sight. In Roman mythology, Jupiter (Zeus in Greek) was notoriously unfaithful, and his many lovers became the names of Jupiter's moons. Meanwhile, Juno (Hera) was his long-suffering wife. So NASA essentially sent Jupiter's wife to spy on him and his 79+ moons/affairs! The spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, collecting data on the gas giant's composition, gravity field, and magnetic field. Clearly, someone at NASA's mission-naming department deserves a raise for this mythological relationship counseling session happening 365 million miles from Earth.

Content Real physics F=MA Physics 1 Freshmen physicist

Physics teachers love blowing students' minds with the fact that light takes 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth. But there's always that one smartass in class (looking like a disappointed seal) who ruins the dramatic moment by pointing out the obvious flaw—if the Sun vanishes at night, we'd be blissfully asleep and completely oblivious for a lot longer than 8 minutes. Nothing like ruining a perfectly good apocalypse scenario with basic logic. The teacher's conspiracy wall in the background really completes the "I've thought of EVERYTHING" energy that physics instructors radiate when dropping these cosmic bombshells.

When your childhood astronomy documentary suddenly takes an unexpected turn into stellar classification. Left: our sun (a G-type main sequence star). Right: VY Canis Majoris (a red hypergiant approximately 1,420 times larger than our sun). Nothing prepares you for the cosmic reality check of discovering that what you thought were educational videos about space were actually showing you how insignificant we truly are in the universe. Childhood trauma via astronomy - the gift that keeps on giving.