Didja see that big wave swoop over the surface of the sun in that clip? That was a coronal mass ejection on the surface of the sun that happened on Sunday, and the resulting solar wave of electromagnetic particles and such is hitting Earth even as we speak.
The solar eruption was unusually large, and the resulting wave is particularly strong. Astronomers say that here on Earth we should expect to see increased visible aurora activity, making the Aurora Borealis visible much farther south than usual. The media, however, have latched on to the buzzwords “solar tsunami” to tart up their headlines, and the London Telegraph breathlessly reports that the “tsunami” could “destroy satellites and wreck power and communications grids around the globe…”
The CBC reports that scientists using the new Spitzer Space Telescope (you know, the one that is capable of nailing three hookers a day) have discovered naturally-occurring fullerenes in the dust of planetary nebulae. They theorize that the buckyballs may be responsible for light absorption in space, and that the particles may be very common in space, whereas here on Earth fullerenes are the product of laboratories.
Even if you live in an urban area where light pollution makes it hard to see the full glory of the night sky, most people can find the seven stars that make what we call “The Big Dipper” (or, as the French so aptly call it, “La Casserole” — “the saucepan”). Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere, and very easily located, and the other six stars are also big, bright objects. Two of the stars, Alcor and Mizar, were found to be a binary pair many years ago, but more recent observations have now determined that there are additional stars gravitationally bound to them, creating a cluster of six stars, the first such grouping ever discovered. The discovery came as astronomers were looking for planets orbiting Alcor, and they think there may still be planets or other objects to be found there.
At the opposite end of things, researchers at UMass Amherst are working on building a microscope that should be able to resolve an image of an individual molecule. The researchers are trying to develop a better understanding of how a protein called tubulin controls cell division, and they expect that their microscope will let them watch real-time reactions of tubulin down to its molecular level.
(I didn’t take this picture, BTW. It comes from a Mutual Friend of Torrez.)
If you live in Australia or other regions in the Southern Hemisphere, you would have seen a “happy face” instead, due to the change in angle between the Earth and Moon on the opposite side of the globe.
If you did miss seeing it, it’s not entirely too late. The Moon will be much farther away from the two planets than it was last night, but since these three objects are the first ones to show up in the night sky, you should still be able to make it out. Once the Moon has moved further across the sky, Venus and Jupiter will continue to be exceptionally bright and close to one another for a couple more days.
Via Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, comes news that yesterday there was a massive gamma ray burst bigger than any astronomical event ever seen by human beings. The event was so massive that it was visible to the unaided human eye, even though the burst was 7.5 billion light years away. For those of you who aren’t fundamentalist Christians, that means that the explosion actually took place 7.5 billion YEARS ago, before the Earth was even formed. (For those of you who are fundamentalist Christians, GFY) Ordinarily, the most distant object visible to the naked eye is a galaxy 2.9 billion light years away.
The afterglow of the burst (which is what you see in the picture above), was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever detected in recorded history. If you had been standing outside in the dark, in a place without much light pollution, this burst would have been just barely visible if you knew where to look. Most astronomers were able to pick it up on radio telescopes, not optical ones.
To give you a sense of how massive that explosion would have been, Phil Plait says:
Let me put this in perspective for you. Imagine a one megaton nuclear weapon detonating. That’s roughly 50 times the explosive yield of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Devastating.
The Sun, every second of every day of every year, gives off 100 billion times this much energy. That’s every second. A star is a terrifying object.
In the few seconds that a gamma-ray burst lasts, it packs a million million million times that much energy into its beams. In other words, for those few ticks of a clock the GRB is sending out more energy than the Sun will in its entire lifetime.
Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog, it’s just a little old lunar eclipse tonight right around 10:00 p.m. Eastern. Unusually for a lunar eclipse, it will be visible pretty much everywhere in North America and in Europe, too. This marks the third total lunar eclipse in less than twelve months, but there won’t be another one visible in North America until December, 2010. That one will coincide with the Winter Solstice.
Meanwhile, if you were all keyed up about the satellite shoot-down that was also supposed to happen around 10:30 this evening, you’ll probably have to content yourself with just the eclipse. An updated announcement from the Navy this morning said that bad weather will probably scrub any chance of firing the missile this evening. This CNN story has more details; for example, the launch window for actually hitting the missile only lasts for 10 seconds, and the missile has to hit the fuel tank of the satellite dead-on for it to accomplish the stated objective of the mission, which was to prevent the toxic fuel from reaching the ground. The satellite itself generates no heat, so the missile’s heat-seeking capabilities can’t be used to target the missile, making the likelihood of an accurate hit all the less likely. And the price tag for all of this: a cool $60 million.
If you’re outside braving the cold to see the lunar eclipse, you might be able to see the satellite, according to this Sky & Telescope article. The explosion, when and if it occurs, will probably only be visible in the immediate range of the missile launch, somewhere out in the North Pacific.
The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]
On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]
In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]
Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]
boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas Related Posts:Observe The Snow, It FornicatesThere’s No Business Like Show BusinessTiger, Tiger Burning BrightEphemeral EffluviaAddenda
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]
Even if you live in an urban area where light pollution makes it hard to see the full glory of the night sky, most people can find the seven stars that make what we call “The Big Dipper” (or, as the French so aptly call it, “La Casserole” — “the saucepan”). Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere, and very easily located, and the other six stars are also big, bright objects. Two of the stars, Alcor and Mizar, were found to be a binary pair many years ago, but more recent observations have now determined that there are additional stars gravitationally bound to them, creating 
At the opposite end of things, researchers at UMass Amherst are working on building a microscope that 
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
