Starship Asterisk*

Posted: **Sun Feb 23, 2014 11:54 pm**

Wow, Bruce the Bard!

Say... you don't mean the supernova that is supposed to have triggered the formation of our solar system?

Ann

Posted: **Mon Feb 24, 2014 12:59 am**

Yikes! Texans don’t wear garb like that, unless there out to break a record for causing gut bustin’ laughter.

Let me restate the clues so that they can all be seen in one place, and with some error corrections:

I once was they say, though [I’m] no mo’ today
But if I hadn’t been, then y’all wouldn’t be.

While some may fret ‘he’s gone over the line,’
I assure Mods and all, this isn’t dvine.
I’ve been proposed as a cause theoretical,
Which Creationists might find quite heretical.

[Big Bang] might fit, but nope, that ain’t it.

Don’t think so far back to compute the right track.

My name is Titanic, but my end was gigantic.

And the next two lines:

No, I’m no supernover, but you are gettin’ warmer
Cuz I was closer in space and in time.

Posted: **Mon Feb 24, 2014 2:20 am**

Eh... you don't mean Theia?

Ann

Posted: **Mon Feb 24, 2014 2:24 am**

No, wait! I think you mean the giant asteroid that killed the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago or so?

And thanks to the demise of the dinosaurs, mammals and, later on, humans could take over the world.

Ann

Posted: **Mon Feb 24, 2014 3:08 am**

Ann wrote:Eh... you don't mean Theia?

Ann

I Did mean Theia, one of the Titans. Well done Ann

Sorry I don't have a prize to offer.

Bruce

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:44 am**

In lieu of flowers I’ll offer these tidbits of info in the following links about the formation of the moon via the collision of a then slightly smaller proto-Earth (about Venus sized) with Theia (which was about Mars sized). If more clues had been needed I would have had to have created some drivel about ‘dieing when Venus united with Mars, which gave birth to a moon’ which should have made it more obvious to many.

These two news stories from articles on the Sky and Telescope website were how I developed an interest in this object. It is most fascinating that there may once, possibly for about a century after the collision, have been a ring system around Earth that included a shared silicon vapor envelope!

I found these very fascinating, and I hope y’all enjoy them too.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/communit ... 54611.html

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/communit ... 96555.html

Oh, and Ann, you won, so tag, your it. I advise against trying to make your clues rhyme.

I blankidyblankblank as a poet, my lines certainly show it…

Bruce

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 2:52 am**

Bruce wrote:
Oh, and Ann, you won, so tag, your it. I advise against trying to make your clues rhyme.

I promise I won't try to rhyme. However, the school winter holidays have just ended here, I'm back to my teaching job, and I don't have a lot of time to spare at all. And right now I don't have a puzzle to post - well, I have one, but it's not very good... oh well...

I don't have time to post it now. Let me say, though, that I, too, find the Theia hypothesis utterly fascinating. To me, what fascinates me most is not that this truly titanic collision might have created the Moon (and given the Earth a ring system for a while), but that it may have boosted the Earth's habitability by a magnitude or so. Consider. If a Mars-sized object collided with the proto-Earth, then most of the intruder's iron core must have ended up inside the Earth, increasing the mass of the Earth and, perhaps more importantly, giving the Earth an extra helping of internal heat (from the impact alone) and an extra helping of radioactive elements. These radioactive elements would have decayed inside the Earth for billions of years, thereby keeping the Earth's interior hot and partly molten, and helping to uphold the Earth's magnetic field. Thanks to the Earth's strong magnetic field and hot dynamic interior, the Earth's atmosphere is protected from the solar wind and its plate tectonics continually recycle the Earth's crust, continually rejuvenating it and keeping it "nourishing" and habitable.

If Theia had not collided with the proto-Earth, would the Earth have remained an utterly dynamic world bursting with life, four and a half billion years or so after our planet condensed out of the Sun's protoplanetary disk?

Ann

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:37 am**

Yes Ann. All that and more. Of cource, none of us can know for sure if this Thiea hypothesis is what actually happened, but we do know that giant collisions are part of the way planets form. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon

However the Earth/Moon system formed, we also know that at it’s begining the Moon would have been much closer to the Earth, so when things had cooled off and the Late Heavy Bombardment had brought in enough water to form the world ocean that the Moon would have kept the premordial soup well stirred, because the Earth’s rotation rate was much faster, and the Moon was much closer, so tides would have been greater in both period and magnitude.

The Moon also kept and keeps the Earth’s axial tilt at 23.5 degrees, which has given Earth its seasons.

Oh, and it makes for a nice night light.

Night night.

Bruce

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:20 pm**

BDanielMayfield wrote:
The Moon also kept and keeps the Earth’s axial tilt at 23.5 degrees, which has given Earth its seasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Seasons wrote:
<<The Moon's axial tilt with respect to the ecliptic is only 1.5424°, much less than the 23.44° of Earth. Because of this, the Moon's solar illumination varies much less with season, and topographical details play a crucial role in seasonal effects. From images taken by Clementine in 1994, it appears that four mountainous regions on the rim of Peary crater at the Moon's north pole may remain illuminated for the entire lunar day, creating peaks of eternal light. No such regions exist at the south pole. Similarly, there are places that remain in permanent shadow at the bottoms of many polar craters, and these dark craters are extremely cold: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter measured the lowest summer temperatures in craters at the southern pole at 35 K (−238 °C) and just 26 K close to the winter solstice in north polar Hermite Crater. This is the coldest temperature in the Solar System ever measured by a spacecraft, colder even than the surface of Pluto.>>

Posted: **Tue Feb 25, 2014 3:10 pm**

Okay then, my next puzzle - and I apologize because it isn't a very good one!

So: Why is there something rather than nothing? Has it something to do with the answer to my puzzle? Was "the something" somehow created by the "thing" I'm asking about? Would all the "something" have gone missing if the thing I'm talking about had never come about?

No!!! There would still be plenty, plenty of "something" even if this "thing" had never existed.

And there might even have been someone around to ask that question too, "Why is there something rather than nothing?".

But there wouldn't have been anyone to ask that question in English. (Or in Swedish.) There would have been no Carl Sagan around to send that golden record into space, where humans introduced themselves to intelligent beings elsewhere, and Turkish civil servants at the U.N. sent a greeting to beings in other solar systems by saying,"Hello, all Turkish-speaking friends!"

So no, there wouldn't have been much of a difference, except that we wouldn't have been around thinking to ourselves that we are the natural center of existence.

(And you know... Saturn wouldn't have existed either. Not Mars, either. Nor Pluto... neither the planet, minor or not, nor Mickey's dog. Nor the classical antique Greek civilization that created the story about Hades, ruler of the underworld, later known as Πλούτων, Ploutōn.)

Ann

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 1:25 am**

No more guesses? Here's one more clue. Not only would we be missing English-, Swedish- and Turkish-speaking people as well as Greek mythology (and, although I didn't tell you, the Roman Empire), and Saturn, Mars and Pluto in all his (its) guises, but we would be missing the Earth as well, and also the Sun, if this "thing" hadn't been. What a pity! There would be no solar system. Of course there would be gazillions of other solar system, just not ours.

Think a little! I promise that with my next clue, you are bound to come up with the right answer!

Ann

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:00 am**

Say, wait a minute. Wasn't what made this solar system already covered? Or was it just a wrong guess at another puzzle? At any rate, i don't remember what it was, but that's alright, as I'm a late-comer to the whole thing.

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:26 am**

Beyond wrote:Say, wait a minute. Wasn't what made this solar system already covered? Or was it just a wrong guess at another puzzle? At any rate, i don't remember what it was, but that's alright, as I'm a late-comer to the whole thing.

Beyond, you almost got it!

I actually told you the answer to my puzzle a few posts ago!!!

(Why do you think my puzzle is so bad?)

Ann

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 3:40 am**

Ah, the super nova that might have had a hand in the formation of the solar system.

Question: what's badder than your puzzle?? My not putting 4 and 1 together to come up with three.

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:38 am**

Beyond wrote:Ah, the super nova that might have had a hand in the formation of the solar system.

Question: what's badder than your puzzle?? My not putting 4 and 1 together to come up with three.

Well, you got the answer right, Beyond!

Congrats!

Ann

Posted: **Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:43 pm**

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Yee Haa

Posted: **Thu Feb 27, 2014 5:56 am**

I'll post another puzzle, even though I haven't really decided what I should say. Oh well, I'll play it by ear! (And it should be better than my last puzzle - at least you can't find the answer to it in my recent posts!)

Here is my first clue!

To B or not to B, that is the question!

Ann

Posted: **Thu Feb 27, 2014 7:10 am**

The question is... to blazar, or not to blazar.

Posted: **Thu Feb 27, 2014 10:06 am**

I should amend that... it's not To B or not to B, but rather To b or not to b!

Ann

Posted: **Thu Feb 27, 2014 1:45 pm**

Could you amend it again, Ann? I still got nothing.

Posted: **Thu Feb 27, 2014 4:49 pm**

"Did you hear about b, mate? ?"

"Yeah! Fantastic! I tell you, I always knew it!"

"Can you imagine going there? Looking at it with your own eyes? Course, we can't..."

"What you mean, we can't? Sure we can! We'll be going to Mars soon... b is just round the corner!"

"Round the corner, eh? I don't think the NASA people agree with you..."

Ann

Posted: **Fri Feb 28, 2014 12:13 am**

Upper case B's are use to distinguish the second star in star systems, so are you referring to a recently discovered binary?

Bruce

Edit: no wait, it's lower case b's, which is used for the first exo-planet found in a star system. Is this on the right track Ann?

Posted: **Fri Feb 28, 2014 1:03 am**

I'm going to go ahead and guess Alpha Cen Bb, the nearest exoplanet, and the first one that might be explored someday.

Bruce

Posted: **Fri Feb 28, 2014 1:11 am**

Yes!!! Right you are, Bruce!

But Alpha Centauri Bb just might not exist.

That's why I wrote, To b or not to b!

Ann

Posted: **Fri Feb 28, 2014 2:22 am**

Ann wrote:Yes!!! Right you are, Bruce!

But Alpha Centauri Bb just might not exist.

That's why I wrote, To b or not to b!

Ann

Nevertheless, I, and countless others, remain very optimistic.

I thought "To b" might have been a play on words, as in Two B's. At least, if it were one of my clues it would have been.

Ok then. A new clue or two shall be forthcoming later this evening...

Bruce

Starship Asterisk*

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