Regarding the APOD for feb 27, 06 ;
a GRB , gamma ray burster, with full spectrum display !
This is what we've been looking for !!! and it's near by too.
As a side note; a redshift of z=0.033 , and the BBT's estimate a 440 million light year distance, I am curious how Halton Arp will interpret the redshift and at what distance he figures this newly glowing object to be.
Earlier ideas that GRB's are two neutron stars spirialing in to closure, this may give us an up close look at what is going on. And explain the slower rise to high energy display than a nova does, and why it is full spectrum.
A daily record of changes will be good to keep abreast of.
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As another side note; a friend was reading an essay or paper, by Lise Meitner from the 1930's and she mentioned the decay of uranium into lead etc. He was confused by the elapsed time of the uranium decay into lesser isotopes than 238 or whatever, but what struck me is; by calculating the decay time by half-lives, we know when the nova that produced the uranium in the first place was ! by working it backwards, from the present levels of decay.
There is a lot of hydrocarbon deposited on this planet. Could we have passed thru a region of space and it deposited onto the earth as our sun in its orbit around the galaxy passed thru a region of exploded star dust containing a lot of carbon and hydrogen, which combined into long hydrocarbon chains, but since that time it seeped into the ground or was covered over by volcanism events? And is this where our oil and coal comes from?
Another thought is where was the solar system 100 million years ago? The opposite side of our galaxy? And do all the dust coulds etc. all revolve at the same rate as the stars around the galaxy?
The 60 minutes topic last night about all the coal in Montana got me to thinking , where did all that coal come from, as it is 20-100 feet under the surface of the ground and in a discrete 20-100 foot thick layer. A big widespread deposit , the eastern half of Montana !!, but what would create that?
An interstellar rain of hydrocarbons might do it, but quite a long time ago.
Where was the earth that long ago, and are there large hydrocarbon clouds in the interstellar medium in that location?
There was some big event; the Albert Canada tar sands and the Montana coal fields are connected in some way to my thinking.
What was the closest nova to earth, and when was it?
How many novas did it take to make the heavy element composition the earth enjoys? (I suspect not all novas produce the same residual elements in their dust cloud)
Could some of the brown dwarf stars nearby be the remains of the stars that blewoff their hydrogen clouds, and other carbon heavy stars when they novaed carbon combined to produce our oil and coal and gas deposits?