Starship Asterisk*

Thinking about it, it makes sense if you think of a checkerboard whose squares are randomly painted white or black. In such a case, there would be 2^64 possible states of "disorder", a high amount of entropy. But if the checkerboard kept losing squares until there was only one, there would...

Wouldn't the requirement that entropy decreases as information is lost be consistent with the Bekenstein Bound http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound and the holographic priciple http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle ?

I'll bet that cave would look cool lit by a shortwave UV lamp.

Interesting how there is a radial pattern on the sun's surface 90 degrees from the plane of the prominence's loop. One can almost imagine the massive current loops that seem to be "floating" to the surface causing increased heating and the prominence to grow and eventually break. There see...

A black hole actually behaves like a single particle, described entirely by mass, charge, and angular momentum (and possibly by magnetic charge). A black hole can no more spontaneously lose its charge than an electron can. I'm not sure that's totally true. The electric field and magnetic fields ass...

Wouldn't a black hole that has a net electric charge simply repel like charges and attract opposites, until its charge was neutralized, though? I'm not sure I follow. Where are these opposite charges going to come from? If you take a ball bearing, put a charge on it, and stick it in a vacuum, it wi...

Pretty cool!

It seems (from a back of an envelope calculation) that the apparent diameter of the planets (based on their angular sizes) is about 2000 times that of Jupiter.

This seems rather large. Could this be due to the resolution of the image?

Does anyone have any idea what the small white bump on Jupiter's limb is (~ 7 o' clock)?

Love the "photo". Whatever the technique, the perspective is real. I wonder if some being with eyes the size of the giant squid's would see a similar view. ??

Very cool. My nomination for APOD of the year.

If this image is indeed a 40 minute exposure, why isn't there "motion" recorded on the trees etc. in the foreground? Maybe that artifact was fixed in Photoshop, but once you start "doctoring" photos who knows what's what anymore. One side of the streaks seem to line up indicating...

What an interesting thread! So many things to respond to… First, thanks to uk-astro, Qev, Dr. Skeptic, Martin and others for “keeping it real”. Harry’s skepticism seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works. Mathematics is the language of science. Belief and opinion are ...

Is the circular shape at the horizon above the space station a reflection off a window or an image of the moon?

It seems too large to be the moon.

Hi,

I was wondering what was the origin of the water on Mars and how (if at all) it was precipitated.