tagged w/ Supernovae
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The Intelligent Universe proposes a possibility: that the universe might end in intelligent life. Not life as we know it but life that has acquired the capacity to shape the cosmos as a whole, just as life on Earth has acquired the ability to shape the land, the sea and the atmosphere. As the iconoclastic Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson put it: Mind, through the long course of biological evolution, has established itself as a moving force in our little corner of the universe. Here on this small planet, mind has infiltrated matter and has taken control. It appears to me that the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/42985-it-takes-a-giant-cosmos-to-create-life-and-mindThe Intelligent Universe proposes a possibility: that the universe might end in... more
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worrg
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added this
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11 months ago
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The latest buzz is that Betelgeuse, a red supergiant and the ninth brightest star in the sky, is about to go supernova in the next few weeks or months. It seems as though every few months we're subjected to warnings of some new disaster that threatens to destroy us. What is the reason for our strange obsession with doomsday?
More details and links at the URL below:
http://talkingskull.com/article/oh-my-god-were-all-gonna-dieThe latest buzz is that Betelgeuse, a red supergiant and the ninth brightest star in... more
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There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object in galaxy M82 12 million light-years away has started sending out radio waves, and the emission does not look like anything seen anywhere in the universe before except perhaps by Ford Prefect. M82 is starburst galaxy five times as bright as the Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy's center.
"We don't know what it is," says co-discoverer Tom Muxlow of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics near Macclesfield, UK. But its apparent sideways velocity is four times the speed of light. This "superluminal" motion occurs usually in high-speed jets of material bursting out by black holes. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/submit-an-article/306-mysterious-radio-waves-from-unknown-object-in-m82-galaxy-There is something strange is lurking in the galactic neighborhood. An unknown object... more
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worrg
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added this
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2 years ago
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Researchers conducting a routine sky survey have spotted a group of galaxies that breaks the known rules of cosmic evolution. They are too big to be as young as they seem. These unusual specimens could help improve the understanding of how giant galaxies such as the Milky Way arose.
Instead of exhibiting the usual characteristics of large and mature galaxies--as do the other 2500 KISS subjects--these galactic cousins showed spectra, or light characteristics, indicating they contain almost no metals. At the same time, their discoverers report this week in Astrophysical Journal Letters, the group members appear to be only 3 billion to 4 billion years old, or far younger than galaxies of that size should be.Researchers conducting a routine sky survey have spotted a group of galaxies that... more
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Ice cores drilled from the poles have provided valuable historical climate records, as the composition of the ice and the air bubbles trapped therein offers a relatively pristine glimpse of ancient conditions. Now a group of Japanese scientists says that the same technique may yield records of significant astronomical events as well.
In a paper posted recently to arxiv.org, Yuko Motizuki of the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Wako, Japan, and colleagues present evidence for an Antarctic ice-core record of supernovae, or stellar explosions, a millennium ago. A 400-foot (122-meter) core pulled up in 2001 at Dome Fuji station in East Antarctica shows spikes in the concentration of nitrate ion (NO3–) that coincide with two known supernovae in the 11th century: supernova 1006, named for the year it was observed, and the Crab Nebula supernova of 1054. (Astronomers and astrologers in the Far East and the Middle East were already making detailed records of such events by that time.) Nearby supernovae, the researchers write, shower Earth with gamma rays, which can boost levels of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere that might be recorded as nitrate spikes in the ice.
A third nitrate peak unearthed by the Japanese team, dated to 1060–1080, could be the mark of an unrecorded celestial event, the authors venture. An exotic stellar remnant called a soft gamma repeater might account for the mystery nitrate boost, as might a supernova obscured by clouds or simply not visible in the northern hemisphere, where the astronomers of the day were clustered.
The concept of drilling for astronomical records, the authors note, was proposed by astronomer Robert Rood of the University of Virginia and his colleagues in a 1979 paper in Nature, but the link between supernovae and nitrate spikes has remained speculative. Even the new research would be bolstered by additional correlations—to that end the authors note that a comprehensive review of ion levels and known supernovae from the past 2,000 years is now under way.Ice cores drilled from the poles have provided valuable historical climate records, as... more
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