Starship Asterisk*

I very much like the way you wrote about star travel so matter-of-factly... very encouraging! ...Where's my galaxy cruiser "after-light" switch??? :wink: ...maybe it should be called "after-gravity" switch! :D ...what a load that would be off my mind! :wink: Sorry! Reality has a...

One thing I hope that discoveries from the LHC and other future particle colliders will lead is better understanding how the gravitational force is created. Until we learn if this fundamental force can be controlled by some artificial means, long-term space travel will remain very difficult to attai...

huh? Neutron Stars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuetron_star http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/magnetar_hybrid.html http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Highlights/1998/PHYS_neutron.html http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/neutron/neutron.html http://www.uwgb...

What matters is you doing research: Google for: Neutron Stars Cosmology Compact Core Cosmology Star Formation Cosmology Than read up on the formation of the elements within the solar envelope. The information is out there. I duly did as you suggested - googling those terms - and Google did not find...

The dialog is "lively" to be sure! My own knowledge of such processes is pretty laughable so all I have are novice opinions at best. V838 is truly gorgeous in a dusty sort of way. Could the nuclear composition that began this event ever be such that it would illuminate dark matter once re...

Hello Starnut I did not say Fe core. Fe forms around the core being the heaviest element formed within the solar envelope apart from Ni. Please explain how iron is formed in the envelope and what is formed in the core after the silicon-sulfur fusion. Don't tell me that you still believe that new st...

OK. Let's start with a nova. A nova is simply a white dwarf that draws matter off its red giant companion in a close binary system and accumulates too much of it on its surface. The white dwarf has a very strong gravitational force on its surface and also very high temperature, ranging from 100,000K...

Has anyone ever observed a new star coming into existence? I.e., taken photos of a portion of the sky one day and the next they observe a star there? Nope, not possible. The "birth" of a star involves a localized collapse in a giant molecular cloud, and the process takes hundreds of thous...

Hello All What triggers a nova or a supernova is really unknown. One theory is that the core loses matter and thus mass resulting in the solar envelope expanding and uncontrollable heat release. The Fe built over billions of years is shot by high energy matter that causes the Fe to be broken down v...

Could anyone explain this? What is considered "hot" or "very hot" in interstellar space, dust or molecular gas? How hot must that gas be to be seen as a red glowing cloud by us? Thank you. "Hot" in interstellar/intergalactic space is not the same as "hot" you...

OK, fair enough, they only mention 'likely', but I'm getting weary of this 'instant' science where pictures are said to depict things that are only conjecture or at best unproven theory such as dark matter. I'll retreat to the background on this. No further replies are necessary. Don't retreat. Sta...

1. " formed about 100,000 years ago" ? I assume that was when nuclear fusion started in the core, otherwise that seems too short a time for a massive star like this one to form. Even so, shouldn't it take longer than 100,000 years for the heat to reach the surface and make it shine? 2. Why...

Qev wrote:Wouldn't that be the Tropics?

Yes, at the Tropic of Cancer during the northern summer solistice and the Tropic of Capricorn during the southern summer solistice.

Abiogenic petroleum origin theory is the minority opinion, especially in the West. Most oil exploration is based on biogenic theory . Thank you, bystander, for your support. What we need on Mars more than anything else is water No, there is plenty of water on Mars. APOD may be about pictures, but o...

Woah Spirit really made a mess there didn't she? But silica has a wide variety of uses in industry, from glass to computer chips. A few more incentives like that, and maybe private industry will beat government to Mars. Can't you just see the bulldozers? Now if we could just find oil... Oil? I know...

BMAONE23 wrote:It is amazing just how DUSTY Spirit is right now.

It is tough to tell where the ground ends and the rover begins

Is there a carwash nearby? If not, then the next rover someone sends to Mars should have some way to wipe the dust off as needed. Perhaps a robot housekeeper with a feather duster.

What are the dipoles in the upper right quandrant? I know CMB is cosmic microwave background and IRAS is Infra Red Astronomy Satellite.

Another Q. about that Perseid picture: These are billed as 'new' stars, but the region is clear of any gas or dust left over from their birth. Pictures of 'star-forming' regions as on the 29th November are dense with cosmic muck! Does all the gas & dust form planets, or is it blown away by the ...

No more than all the planets of the Solar System will eventually coalesce with the Sun, or all the stars in a galaxy will coalesce. The galaxies in a group orbit about each other. Such orbits will be unstable, so you get collisions, but there's nothing that can generally cause them all to end up as...

there could be something of an EYE WALL effect or tourus (doughnut) shape event horizon around the central BH. this hasn't been observed though (yet) The event horizon of the supermassive BH at the center of the galaxy would be the "eye wall" itself, but only if there is an accretion disc...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071102.html The blue false color in the Lagoon Nebula, aka M8, shows that there is an abundance of oxygen in the nebula, compared with the other two nebulae. How is this possible? Where did the oxygen come from? I would think that hydrogen would predominate, like ...

When I read the explanation, I see "speculation", "possibilities", and "controversial scenarios". In no way was the "Big Rip" presented as hard fact. I like seeing alternative theories presented. After all, everything we now hold to be true was at some point ...

What's concerning... stomach curdling even, is the apparent ability for those individuals in the top tier of hierarchy to pick and choose to their liking who should be granted a career and whose career, life... should be destroyed and buried when the evidence points in another, potentially benefici...

I have no problem accessing these links. They both pointed to the same aiXiv web page. As an aside, I wonder how many billion years is a "few billion" years. In 5 billions years from now, two significant events are predicted to happen in this neck of the wood: Dear old sun will become a re...

It might be the terminator, but it seemed very abrupt to me...it doesn't seem to fade gradually as the sunlight strikes at increasingly oblique angles, but I guess that could make sense if, as auroradude suggested, they selectively brightened portions of the image. I'm also not used to seeing smoot...