Starship Asterisk*

Which direction is downhill? I keep changing my mind.

This sure isn't anything like a river. Rivers branch upstream, and grow larger downstream. These tracks both branch and grow (very slightly) to the right. Maybe that implies sublimating, and joining, track-makers moving to the left.

Why are there striations? are they an indication of a rotation of the comet ? I like your train of thought. One portion of the comet nucleus releasing more volatiles indicating a period of rotation. Getting on board both your trains. Thinking of a rotating two-liter bottle of diet coke with fresh m...

bystander wrote:

neufer wrote:Interaction with the meridian causes the photons to transform into antiphotons.

Wouldn't that cause annihilation along the meridian?

In fact, yes, causing energy to erupt in the form of crepustular rays.

I like to explain crepuscular (and anticrepuscular) rays by imagining a bamboo forest. Imagine you have climbed halfway up a bamboo stalk in a tall tall bamboo forest. Stalks above you, stalks below you. You would see a vanishing point above you, where all the stalks seem to point to your zenith. An...

<<Oxygen is unusual in terms of its return to ground state: it can take three quarters of a second to emit green light and up to two minutes to emit red . Collisions with other atoms or molecules will absorb the excitation energy and prevent emission. Because the very top of the atmosphere has a hi...

nGuinn wrote:the payload bay seems to be missing something

Some cargo was already um "delivered" over the Bahamas. It was successfully retrieved by a small vessel, I believe it's ship name was "Innocent Fishing Boat". Hey budgets are tight, this should come as no surprise.

The events are not separated in time by 760 years, but by 17 years. Ah, true of observations from Earth. But observations of these same three supernovae from other points in the universe must definitely be separated on the order of 76,000 years (the time it takes light to cross the diameter of M51)...

Excellent points Guest and Ann. A trivial Wikipedia -induced correction: latest estimates are that M51 is 23 ± 4 million light-years distant from Earth. Re "reasons for the supernova surge in M51 are being debated." Hunh? Is there any credible reason to believe there IS a surge at all? Oth...

Blue lines and yellow lines - anyone else wondering what they mean? Are they innies and outies?

emc wrote:...Holmes has traveled a long way from us but it left a huge question mark in its wake...

Does anyone know, can we expect to see 17P/Holmes up close in 2014 and resolve some of the mysteries? Will Caspar still be friendly when he returns?