Dungeons & Dragons is back in the news, what with it being 40 years old (Happy Birthday, D&D!) and the release of the new Starter Set. Hopefully this means lots and lots of new players and new fans. There’s a lot of history when it comes to D&D, however, and anyone discovering it for the first time might also be interested in this history.
George Santayana (December 16, 1863 –
September 26, 1952), a poet and novelist among other things, famously
said “Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to
repeat them.” Yeah, that doesn’t really apply here. Well, unless you’re a
Dungeon Master (DM) that hasn’t figured out that it’s a bit cliche to
start your players’ new adventure off with You’ve all gathered at the Griffin’s Tail Tavern…
Don’t be that DM.
... Many of us see D&D
as a game, but we forget that there was a company, filled with
employees (over 300 at one point), that answered to a board of
directors. And as anyone who has ever worked in an office setting knows,
there’s office politics in every business. And TSR wasn’t immune.
... Finally, I’m going to return to Jon Peterson and recommend his blog that continues to provide background stories, interesting facts, videos, and much more about D&D
(and do NOT forget to reads the comments as they often contains some
gems). It’s one of those websites that I’ve pinned to my favorites and
check in on often. Peterson always manages to find the best stuff to
share with his readers, so please encourage him to continue if you like
what you read there.
As we fans celebrate the release of the new rules, let’s not forget where D&D came
from and everything that’s happened in between 1974 and 2014. .... And D&D is (and always will be) all about the good times.
from article link
One year from today, everybody’s favorite dwarf planet will receive its first man-made visitor. The New Horizons mission, which launched in 2006, will make its closest flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015.
Right now, Pluto is mainly known as that object in the solar system that used to be a planet (some would argue it was never a planet, simply misclassified as one for a long time). Scientists have been studying the small body since its discovery in 1930 and know a fair amount about its basic properties. But once New Horizons sweeps past and observes Pluto with its collection of high-tech instruments, there will be an explosion of new knowledge about the tiny world.
So what is the current state of Pluto science and how might things look different in one year?
Pluto is located far beyond all the outer planets, roughly 4.5 billion miles from Earth. Out there, sunlight is about 1,000 times fainter than on our own planet, and Pluto’s surface temperature is a chilly -380 degrees Fahrenheit. Like Uranus, Pluto rotates on its axis like a knocked over top, so that its north pole is at about the same place that other planets’ equators are. No one is sure exactly why this is, but some scientists suspect a major impact by a large space rock billions of years ago could have tipped the dwarf planet over.
Pluto has a radius of 733 miles, making it roughly two-thirds the size of our moon. It is the second-largest known object in the Kuiper belt, a collection of small frozen bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Its surface is almost entirely nitrogen ice and it has an extremely thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. This faint envelope of gas has a pressure more than 10,000 times less than surface pressure on Earth.
Starting in January 2015, New Horizons will be passing what Stern calls the BTH (better than Hubble) line. The spacecraft will start returning images of the frozen dwarf planet that look better than anything we’ve ever seen before. This is when Stern suspects researchers might start getting surprises about the dwarf planet. Craters and mountains are some of the first things New Horizons could see, though it may also discover new moons.
Just prior to its Pluto encounter, New Horizons will be watching the dwarf planet rotate on its axis, spinning around every 6.4 Earth days. This will allow it to map most of the surface at high enough resolution to pick out features approximately 25 miles across, or roughly what you could see on the moon’s surface with a good pair of binoculars. The probe might see large impact craters or a network of geological fractures supporting the hypothesis that a large object hit Pluto in the past.
As the spacecraft swoops down over the surface at its closest approach, it will map one side of the planet down to a resolution of about 1,000 feet, with the best imagery reaching down to 230 feet. In image of New York City at 230-foot resolution, you’d be able to see streets, wharfs, buildings, and even count the ponds in Central Park. The motion of the probe as it passes over the surface will allow scientists to see features from slightly different angles, giving them the ability to create stereo 3-D images and infer heights.
The point of closest encounter is planned to take New Horizons over
an area of Pluto with the widest variety of different features. Because
of the regularity of orbital mechanics, the science team was able to
choose this precise location extremely far in advance of arrival,
maximizing their chance of seeing something interesting. As it flies
over the dwarf planet, the probe will also take the temperature of the
surface, sample the composition of Pluto’s atmosphere, and bounce radio
waves off its surface, which will tell researchers about underground
features.
New Horizon’s Pluto visit will transform the science of this small body in a matter of weeks, and it will likely take a long time before all of the data it provides will be unpacked. The only thing that would truly surprise the science team at this point would be if they find no surprises on Pluto, said Stern. It’s a safe bet to assume the probe probably won’t be definitively answering scientific questions so much as raising interesting new problems and providing researchers with many decades of mysteries.
As it leaves the Pluto system, New Horizons will burn its rockets and head toward a new destination. The team plans to send it to another Kuiper belt object, though exactly which one has not yet been decided. Hubble is right now searching for candidates, giving the mission a whole new world to observe and learn from.
Right now, Pluto is mainly known as that object in the solar system that used to be a planet (some would argue it was never a planet, simply misclassified as one for a long time). Scientists have been studying the small body since its discovery in 1930 and know a fair amount about its basic properties. But once New Horizons sweeps past and observes Pluto with its collection of high-tech instruments, there will be an explosion of new knowledge about the tiny world.
So what is the current state of Pluto science and how might things look different in one year?
Pluto is located far beyond all the outer planets, roughly 4.5 billion miles from Earth. Out there, sunlight is about 1,000 times fainter than on our own planet, and Pluto’s surface temperature is a chilly -380 degrees Fahrenheit. Like Uranus, Pluto rotates on its axis like a knocked over top, so that its north pole is at about the same place that other planets’ equators are. No one is sure exactly why this is, but some scientists suspect a major impact by a large space rock billions of years ago could have tipped the dwarf planet over.
Pluto has a radius of 733 miles, making it roughly two-thirds the size of our moon. It is the second-largest known object in the Kuiper belt, a collection of small frozen bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. Its surface is almost entirely nitrogen ice and it has an extremely thin atmosphere of nitrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. This faint envelope of gas has a pressure more than 10,000 times less than surface pressure on Earth.
Starting in January 2015, New Horizons will be passing what Stern calls the BTH (better than Hubble) line. The spacecraft will start returning images of the frozen dwarf planet that look better than anything we’ve ever seen before. This is when Stern suspects researchers might start getting surprises about the dwarf planet. Craters and mountains are some of the first things New Horizons could see, though it may also discover new moons.
Just prior to its Pluto encounter, New Horizons will be watching the dwarf planet rotate on its axis, spinning around every 6.4 Earth days. This will allow it to map most of the surface at high enough resolution to pick out features approximately 25 miles across, or roughly what you could see on the moon’s surface with a good pair of binoculars. The probe might see large impact craters or a network of geological fractures supporting the hypothesis that a large object hit Pluto in the past.
As the spacecraft swoops down over the surface at its closest approach, it will map one side of the planet down to a resolution of about 1,000 feet, with the best imagery reaching down to 230 feet. In image of New York City at 230-foot resolution, you’d be able to see streets, wharfs, buildings, and even count the ponds in Central Park. The motion of the probe as it passes over the surface will allow scientists to see features from slightly different angles, giving them the ability to create stereo 3-D images and infer heights.
 |
| A map of Pluto’s surface, showing brighter and darker areas. NASA |
New Horizon’s Pluto visit will transform the science of this small body in a matter of weeks, and it will likely take a long time before all of the data it provides will be unpacked. The only thing that would truly surprise the science team at this point would be if they find no surprises on Pluto, said Stern. It’s a safe bet to assume the probe probably won’t be definitively answering scientific questions so much as raising interesting new problems and providing researchers with many decades of mysteries.
As it leaves the Pluto system, New Horizons will burn its rockets and head toward a new destination. The team plans to send it to another Kuiper belt object, though exactly which one has not yet been decided. Hubble is right now searching for candidates, giving the mission a whole new world to observe and learn from.
