17th CENTURY EXPLOSION NEWLY
SEEN
In 1604, a bright light appeared in
the sky. The German astronomer Johannes Kepler believed he was looking at a new
star As it shone up brighter than all other planets and stars at its peak. He
was wrong, but that’s okay. He did find something alright. What he found was an
exploding star, and now centuries later it has been named Kepler’s supernova.
A basic cosmic autopsy has shown that
it was a white dwarf with more heavy elements than our sun Sol.
This type of supernovae is thought to
originate in binary systems where at least one of the stars is a white dwarf. Gas transferring from a normal star in the
pair can accumulate on the white dwarf, or if both are white dwarf stars, they
can combine together from a shrinking orbit and fuse. Either way, eventually
too much weight is added, somewhere around 1.4 times the mass of the sun, and well, boom. You get a runaway nuclear
reaction that begins inside, eventually leading to the brilliant flash we know
as a supernova.
By studying this, which is thought to
be around 23,000 LY’s away, we are hoping to fine tune our understanding of the
universe beyond our galaxy. I am betting it will help us understand more about
our own galaxy as well.
SPACE.COM HONORED
Yeah I know. This is sort of off topic
here more or less, but considering how much we all use their site, and refer to
it constantly from the horrible writings of certain places that begin with a “Y”
that we all know, I think it should be mentioned here.
What I am talking about is the Webby
Awards. This is an award for excellence on the internet that is presented annually
by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
Space.com will be announcing the
distinction in conjunction with its coverage of the Antares rocket’s maiden
launch, which may happen on Friday April 19th at 5pm EDT. The
Antares will be launching from Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional spaceport.
You can read the entire article and
get all the basic information at, well, where else, at Space.com.
ALIEN LIFE LOOKS LIKE WHAT?
Looks like we are returning to Kepler
again this week. Here is what is being talked about right now. The two planets
that are being discussed are Kepler 62e, and 62f. It has been stated that the
two worlds are perhaps the most promising yet found to have life beyond our
solar system. Computer models have shown that both of these worlds could well
be covered entirely by ocean.
Now to me, that sounds pretty
promising. At least in the terms that we are looking for life elsewhere, and
since we insist that it takes water to have life, then we may have found
something here. Life here came from the oceans so far as we have learned so
far, and if these are completely oceanic, well, I’m guessing there could be all
kinds of things there, the same as there are in our own oceans here on Earth.
It is not believed that they could
have any type of advanced technological civilizations like our own, due to the
fact that water, mixed with anything like electricity or fire doesn’t work
well. Nor would it allow for advanced metallurgy. But if either did have any
dry land that is yet undiscovered, that could change the entire scenario in
that respect.
The article itself is very good, and
they even had a little fun with it. Here is a direct quote from the article
that actually had me chuckling here.
("If you want to write a
science-fiction story, and you land on both [planets], at least be sure that on
f you don't want to take your mask thingy off," said modeling-study lead
author Lisa Kaltenegger, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.)
Seriously, mask thingy??? Oh well, we
all have our days I guess. I know i do. Well worth the read just to get to that
part, believe me. And there is a pretty good short 2 minute 3 second video
there as well to watch.
The second link here leads to a gallery showing more about the Kepler planets in terms of size relationship to Earth, etc.
LIFE IN SPACE
This is a list of six things that
happen to the human body in space. I’ll give you numbers six and five. For
numbers four through one you’ll have to go to the article.
#6. If
you’d like to be a bit taller, go spend six months or so in space. On the ISS,
(International Space Station), the astronauts grew as much as 3 percent taller.
It’s a simple explanation actually. Without the gravity of earth pulling you
down, your spine is free to expand, and it remains so for a few months even
after returning to Earth. After a few
months being back, they will return to their regular Earth bound height.
Hmmm. I wonder if they would let me
volunteer to go up there for a few months to conduct a perfectly legitimate
experiment on this. What I am wondering is this. Outside of the gravity, and
using their recreation equipment, I am wondering what it would do for someone
who’s back is, well to put it simply, shot to oblivion. Yep, self-serving all
the way on this one.
#5. The
Puffy Faced Ones. This means all of them up there. Here is what happens. While
on Earth, the fluids of the body are not evenly distributed. Once again, we can
blame that old gravity guy for that as well. Most of our fluids pool in the
lower extremities, which also makes a lot of sense since we are being pulled
down. Apparently, for the first few
weeks of spaceflight, most astronauts appear to get puffy faces, and skinny
legs. This is due to the fact that the fluids in the body are now able to
redistribute themselves evenly. After a time in orbit however, the body will
adapt, and they no longer appear to have skinny legs and a puffy face.
This is well worth reading. Especially
when you get to number one, which fascinates me to no end. And I am sure I know
why. Blame the Fantastic Four for my fascination with number one.
ELECTRO
Well, I am sure everyone knows this
already, but just in case. The next villain in the new rebooted Spiderman
franchise is going to be Electro played by Jamie Foxx. But don’t be expecting the Electro in the
green suit and the fake lightning bolts sticking out from the mask. For one, he’s
blue. Not a whole lot has actually been said yet, due I am sure to them not
wanting too much of the plot to get out. Also, Peter will be learning more about his
past as well it appears. Here’s a link to the site with a picture of him
cloaked, and a short video that shows him walking through the city.
My main site for sci-fi news seems to
be down, so that is the best I can do on the sci-fi front this week. There were
a couple other things, but I don’t want to write it up without a link, and a
way to quickly refresh my memory. Sorry about that folks. And since I was so stupid as to not bookmark
the other site, (as it was on my homepage of a certain “Y” organization as
mentioned before), I don’t remember where it was at the moment. Yeah, they
removed that one as well with no warning, so I’ll be on the hunt for it again
this week and have the sci-fi section here back to normal again next week.
Well, hope you all enjoyed this week’s
rundown folks. And I’ll be back next week with more interesting topics again,
and hopefully a real sci-fi rundown again.
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