Starship Asterisk*

And Chris / Owlice, when the mainstream itself agrees that the mainstream theory / model is incomplete, engendering at best a consensus belief, then is any challenge to the theory / model, using scientific principles e.g. observation - from people who are not convinced of the theory - generally not ...

Chris and Ann - thank you for your speedy replies!

...or must they belong to a cluster or galaxy? Can we actually detect "hermit" stars? If so, is it inevitable that they will one day end up as part of a group? Is there a particular size below which a star tends to be isolated?

For anyone wishing to holiday in Australia, I recommend you don't miss touring the Great Ocean Road, of which the Loch Ard Gorge is one of its many wonderful natural features. One curiosity: Visiting the graveyard of a nearby 1800's township, almost all the tombstones upon inspection revealed ages o...

Let's face it - most people don't understand scientific concepts, let alone understand ideas relating to quantum physics or astronomy. Yet pretty well everybody has at least some fascination for the Universe. Even with my very limited knowledge, I've derived some satisfaction attempting to describe ...

Which is the "odd one out"? And why? α, β, γ, μ, ν, and τ. In case the Greek symbols don't display properly, these are (lower case, or small) alpha, beta, gamma, mu, nu, and tau. Given the sequence of the above letters, definitely "tau". You won't find this letter in the famous ...

Thank you Beta - now I'm on track! :D Your answer has changed my ideas about "mass" from the concept of a quantity in the way that increasing the mass of a half cup of sugar can be achieved by adding more sugar, to one of mass simply being the potential of a body to be affected by an energ...

How else can a photon leave a surface already at 186,000 miles per second? It's been 30 years since I studied physics at uni, but I always thought that a photon is never at rest, and that once it comes into existence, the acceleration from an outside observer's reference frame is infinite - or mayb...

Playing devil's advocate, though, I wonder how I would feel posting on a music board where I knew professional musicians posted. I am not a musician, and I can see feeling intimidated there myself. And I don't know how that could be appeased. A very successful, growing, and well-moderated website d...