Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote:
So the Earth's core is going to heat from being bombarded by neutrinos, so that the Earth will, I guess, explode?

neufer wrote:

Ann wrote:
So the Earth's core is going to heat from being bombarded by neutrinos, so that the Earth will, I guess, explode?

Violent earthquakes!

BMAONE23 wrote:
And I thought Krypton exploded because it was full of kryptonite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton wrote:

Krypton light has a large number of spectral lines, and krypton's high light output in plasmas allows it to play an important role in many high-powered gas lasers, which amplifies one of the many spectral lines

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<<Krypton (from Greek: κρυπτός kryptos "the hidden one") is a chemical element with the symbol Kr and atomic number 36. A colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas, krypton occurs in trace amounts in the atmosphere, is often used with other rare gases in fluorescent lamps. Krypton is inert for most practical purposes. Krypton can also form clathrates with water when atoms of it are trapped in a lattice of the water molecules.

Krypton was discovered in Britain in 1898 by Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers in residue left from evaporating nearly all components of liquid air. Neon was discovered by a similar procedure by the same workers just a few weeks later. William Ramsay was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovery of a series of noble gases, including krypton.

The high power and relative ease of operation of krypton discharge tubes caused (from 1960 to 1983) the official meter to be defined in terms of the orange spectral line of krypton-86. In 1960, an international agreement defined the meter in terms of wavelength of light emitted by the krypton-86 isotope (wavelength of 605.78 nanometers). This agreement replaced the longstanding standard meter located in Paris, which was a metal bar made of a platinum-iridium alloy, and was itself replaced by a definition based on the speed of light — a fundamental physical constant. In October 1983, the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) defined the meter as the distance that light travels in a vacuum during 1/299,792,458 s.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryptos wrote:

[b][color=#00FF00]Kryptos at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia[/color][/b]

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<<Kryptos is a sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November 3, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears. Of the four sections, three have been solved, with the fourth remaining one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world. The sculpture continues to provide a diversion for some employees of the CIA and other cryptanalysts attempting to decrypt the messages.

The main sculpture is made of red and green slate, white quartz, petrified wood, lodestone, and copper, and is located in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard, outside of the Agency cafeteria. The name Kryptos comes from the Greek word for "hidden", and the theme of the sculpture is "intelligence gathering." The most prominent feature is a large vertical S-shaped copper screen resembling a scroll, or piece of paper emerging from a computer printer, covered with characters comprising encrypted text. The characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard Roman alphabet and question marks cut out of the copper. This "inscription" contains four separate enigmatic messages, three of which have been solved.

The ciphertext on one half of the main sculpture contains 869 characters in total — in April 2006, however, Sanborn released information stating that an intended letter on the main half of Kryptos was missing. This would bring the total number of characters to 870 on the main portion. The other half of the sculpture comprises a Vigenère encryption tableau, comprising 869 characters, if spaces are counted.

Sanborn has revealed that the sculpture contains a riddle within a riddle, which will be solvable only after the four encrypted passages have been decrypted. He said that he gave the complete solution at the time of the sculpture's dedication to then-CIA director William H. Webster. Sanborn said, however, that he had not given Webster the entire solution. He did, however, confirm that where in part 2 it says "Who knows the exact location? Only WW," that "WW" was intended to refer to William Webster. Sanborn also confirmed that should he die before the entire sculpture becomes deciphered that there will be someone able to confirm the solution.

The first person to publicly announce solving the first three sections, in 1999, was James Gillogly, a computer scientist from southern California, who deciphered 760 of the characters (772 less 3 question marks and XLAYERTWO). The portion that he couldn't solve, the remaining 97 or 98 characters, is the same part which has stumped the government's own cryptanalysts. After Gillogly's announcement, the CIA revealed that their analyst David Stein had also solved the same sections in 1998, using pencil and paper techniques, though at the time of his solution the information was only disseminated within the intelligence community, and no public announcement was made. An NSA team led by Ken Miller, along with Dennis McDaniels and two other unnamed individuals, had solved parts 1–3 using a computer in late 1992, but that they too had been stumped by the fourth section.>>

Krypton was discovered in Britain in 1898 by Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers in residue left from evaporating nearly all components of liquid air.

Ann wrote:
Superman: "I'm from that planet up there. Krypton."

bystander wrote:2012 Mayan Calendar 'Doomsday' Date Might Be Wrong
Discovery Science News | 18 Oct 2010

According to all the ridiculous hype surrounding Dec. 21, 2012, the Mayans "predicted" the end of the world with one of their calendars. On this date, doomsayers assert that Earth will be ravaged by a smorgasbord of cataclysmic astronomical events -- everything from a Planet X flyby to a "killer" solar flare to a geomagnetic reversal, ensuring we have a very, very bad day. As we all know by now, these theories of doom are bunkum.

And now, according to a recent study by an associate professor at UC Santa Barbara, this fundamental "end date" may also be inaccurate. It could be at least 60 days out of whack.

Whew, I'm relieved, another two months.

neufer wrote:

Ann wrote:
Superman: "I'm from that planet up there. Krypton."

I thought the S stood for Sweden.

The high power and relative ease of operation of krypton discharge tubes caused (from 1960 to 1983) the official meter to be defined in terms of the orange spectral line of krypton-86.

Ann wrote:

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right.

Well, Hamlet, if time is inseparable from space, then maybe TIME is out of joint because SPACE is out of whack
because they defined the METER as a function of ORANGE kryptonite!!!!

• Much Ado About Nothing Act 2, Scene 1
  
  BEATRICE: The count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor
  well; but civil count, civil as an ORANGE, and
  something of that jealous complexion.
  
  Act 4, Scene 1
  
  CLAUDIO: Give not this rotten ORANGE to your friend;
  She's but the sign and semblance of her honour.

TNT wrote:Whoever came up with thus 2012 idea is completely nuts. But then, when we're still here, they'll be so embarrassed it didn't happen that they'll have to leave Earth! :mrgreen:

bystander wrote:Well, they got it wrong. A new long count begins On Dec 21, 2012. The current one ends Dec 20. A lot of people are going to be disappointed when all of their expensive end of world parties are ruined by all the lights going out a day early.

[i]William Saturno, a Boston University archeologist, excavates a mural in a house in Xultun, massive Mayan ruins in Guatemala. The mural depicts a figure who may have been the town scribe. Excavation and preservation of the site were supported by the National Geographic Society. (Credit: Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic)[/i]

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So much for the world ending on December 21, 2012. We’ve been saying it for years, but a new find by archaeologists confirms the Mayan calendar indeed does not end this year but keeps going, just like turning a page to a new calendar.

“It’s very clear that the 2012 date, while important as Baktun 13, was turning the page,” David Stuart, quoted by Alan Boyle on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log. “Baktun 14 was going to be coming, and Baktun 15 and Baktun 16. … The Maya calendar is going to keep going, and keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future.”

A team of archaeologists found a small room in Mayan ruins where royal scribes wrote on the walls — apparently like a blackboard — to keep track of astronomical records and details of the complex Mayan calendar. The writings date to about 1,200 years ago.

These are the oldest known astronomical tables from the Maya. They were found at the Xultun archaeological site in Guatemala’s Peten region. Scientists already knew the Mayans must have been keeping such records during that time period, but until now the oldest known examples dated from about 600 years later.

The room, about 2 meters (6-feet) square, contains walls decorated with images of a king and some other notable figures, as well as astronomical numbers and writings, the scientists said. The room had a stone roof rather than a thatched one, which may indicate the importance of the room.

Why did they write on walls, as opposed to other Mayan texts that have been found on bark paper?

The time period of the early 9th century was not a stable time for the Mayans, as there was political turmoil between the various city-states of the time, and the researchers said that perhaps the Xultun scribes wished to make a more permanent record of their data related to the calendar.

By some supposed “researchers,” Dec. 21, 2012 has been correlated to the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which was based on a cycle of 13 intervals known as baktuns, each lasting 144,000 days.

But the newly found writing on walls of the ancient room shows wide ranges of accumulated time, including a 17-baktun period. “There was a lot more to the Maya calendar than just 13 baktuns,” said Stuart, talking with reporters. Seventeen baktuns would stand for about 6,700 years, which is much longer than the 13-baktun cycle of 5,125 years. However, Stuart cautioned that the time notation shouldn’t be read as specifying a date that’s farther in the future than Dec. 21.

“It may just be that this is a mathematical number that’s kind of interesting,” he said. “We’re not sure what the base of the calendar is.”

William Saturno, an archaeologist at Boston University who led the team of archaeologists said many different scientists have been trying to get the word out that the end of the Maya culture’s 13-baktun Long Count calendar doesn’t signify the end of the world, but merely a turnover to the next cycle in a potentially infinite series — like going from Dec. 31 to Jan. 1 on a modern calendar.

“If someone is a hard-core believer that the world is going to end in 2012, no painting is going to convince them otherwise,” he said. “The only thing that can convince them otherwise is waiting until Dec. 22, 2012 — which fortunately for all of us isn’t that far away.”

• Science 336(6082) 714 (11 May 2012) DOI: 10.1126/science.1221444

bystander wrote:You could celebrate the beginning of a new baktun! :b: