So... space. There is some weird stuff out there.

[Pickles von Brine]

Ran across this article and found it rather interesting. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/white-dwarf-causes-strange-relativity-effect-called-frame-dragging/

I know of another strange instance from back in 2004. A magnetar released a massive blast of gamma rays, blinding the swift telescope while it was look away. The energy hit earth's magenet filed and caused it to ring like a bell. From 50000 light years away it did this. 


Pretty crazy if you ask me. Any of you have some weird, interesting or rather fascinating space stuff, strange astronomy or odd science stories you ran across?

[cesh me inside b0z]

You can also listen to Saturn.

[Pickles von Brine]

3 minutes ago, cesh me inside b0z said:

You can also listen to Saturn.

There is also the hexagon

[Gix7Fifty]

Dude we have no idea about dark matter and dark energy, then there are black holes that could completely erase our whole evolution.

[PhantomJaguarr]

There's a nebula cloud made with "that" kind of alcohol. 

 

https://www.sciencealert.com/cosmic-cloud-contains-enough-alcohol-to-keep-the-world-world-drinking-for-a-billion-years

[Pickles von Brine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R136

R136, a group of stars in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Mellegenic Cloud, houses some of the one of the largest and most powerful stars in the observable universe. R136a1 is a Wolfe-Rayet star of approx 315 solar masses, a blue super giant. It and a group of about 7 other stars is the forge of light that lights up most the nebula itself, some 1000 light years across. The solar winds of R136a1 are so strong, it is stripping mass from itself at an astonishing rate. It looses mass of approx 3.21 × 10¹⁸ kg/s, over a billion times more than the sun itself sheds, per year. 
 

[Guest]

I think it's neat to be able to just look up at the night sky and see a bunch of stars that don't even exist anymore. The star dies yet they're so far away that the light takes YEARS to get to us. Kinda freaky when you think about it, and really makes you think about the size and scope of the universe.

[harryk]

3 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

I think it's neat to be able to just look up at the night sky and see a bunch of stars that don't even exist anymore. The star dies yet they're so far away that the light takes YEARS to get to us. Kinda freaky when you think about it, and really makes you think about the size and scope of the universe.

Not to be a downer, but while you have the right concept this isn't correct.

 

Of the ~9000 stars that are visible to the naked eye, the farthest is only ~16,000 light years away. Even the shortest lived stars last millions of years, and most stars going on for billions. The probability that one of the ~9000 visible stars has died during the time it took for the light to travel to Earth is extremely low. The same applies to every star in the Milky Way which is 100k - 200k light years in diameter. Furthermore, the Andromeda galaxy (which is visible to the naked eye in very dark skies) is 2.5 million light years away. So there is still only a small probability that a star in Andromeda has died during the time for its light to reach us.

 

Stars live a very long time and there have only been ten supernovae in the Milky Way in recorded history.

[Giganthrax]

My favorite is the planet that rains molten glass sideways at incredible speeds.

 

https://www.space.com/22614-blue-alien-planet-glass-rain.html 

[Pickles von Brine]

Oh yeah that one is rather interesting. 

Here is another interesting factoid:

Magnetars - a type of neutron star with incrediblely powerful magnetic fields - have such powerful magnetic fields that if you put one at the orbit of pluto, it would wipe every magnetic media on planet earth from there. At about the distance of the moon, any matter within its magnetic fields would be torn apart into subatomic matter. Electrons stripped right off the atoms. 

 

Furthermore, you could "touch" its magnet fields. They are so strong they act solid. 

A rather intersting entry college lecture. 

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Another fact is factoid originally didn't mean a little fact but, instead referred to a false "fact". However, so many people misused the word, both meanings are now recognized. It's like the word "enervate". It seems like it would mean to give something energy but actually means the opposite. 

[Pickles von Brine]

3 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Another fact is factoid originally didn't mean a little fact but, instead referred to a false "fact". However, so many people misused the word, both meanings are now recognized. It's like the word "enervate". It seems like it would mean to give something energy but actually means the opposite. 

Hm... I learned a thing today!

Also hi fitz! 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Lord Xeb said:

Hm... I learned a thing today!

Also hi fitz! 

Hi, Xebbie! 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, harryk said:

Not to be a downer, but while you have the right concept this isn't correct.

 

Of the ~9000 stars that are visible to the naked eye, the farthest is only ~16,000 light years away. Even the shortest lived stars last millions of years, and most stars going on for billions. The probability that one of the ~9000 visible stars has died during the time it took for the light to travel to Earth is extremely low. The same applies to every star in the Milky Way which is 100k - 200k light years in diameter. Furthermore, the Andromeda galaxy (which is visible to the naked eye in very dark skies) is 2.5 million light years away. So there is still only a small probability that a star in Andromeda has died during the time for its light to reach us.

 

Stars live a very long time and there have only been ten supernovae in the Milky Way in recorded history.

Well shit, my science teacher lied to me! Lol. Thanks for the correction.

[dalekphalm]

18 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Well shit, my science teacher lied to me! Lol. Thanks for the correction.

That depends, what exactly did he tell you?

 

Because, yes, it's 100% possible that a star in the night sky has already died. It's just very unlikely, due to how rare those events are.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

That depends, what exactly did he tell you?

 

Because, yes, it's 100% possible that a star in the night sky has already died. It's just very unlikely, due to how rare those events are.

Well I couldn't quote the man verbatim, it was around twenty years ago, but the jist was that because of the distance of some of those stars, they could be dead and we wouldn't know it because of how far the light has to travel to our eyes.

[dalekphalm]

22 minutes ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Well I couldn't quote the man verbatim, it was around twenty years ago, but the jist was that because of the distance of some of those stars, they could be dead and we wouldn't know it because of how far the light has to travel to our eyes.

Oh, in that case, yes what he said is correct. 
 

Granted, we know a decent amount about most Stellar life cycles, so we can reasonably predict what stage a star is in. 
 

But as noted, the “margin for error” is rather large. There’s a star that had a mass ejection event in the late 1800’s that *almost* went supernova. This star will die soon. 
 

But soon could mean this year or 50,000 years from now.

 

It might already be dead due to speed of light - or it could have another few tens of thousands of years left. 

[ARikozuM]

23 hours ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Another fact is factoid originally didn't mean a little fact but, instead referred to a false "fact". However, so many people misused the word, both meanings are now recognized. It's like the word "enervate". It seems like it would mean to give something energy but actually means the opposite. 

Enervate is interesting. It's actually a poor use of word parts without considering prior words. E- means "away" and nervo- is obvious and -ate means "action" of the prior word part. It's analog/synonym would be unnerve. 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

Enervate is interesting. It's actually a poor use of word parts without considering prior words. E- means "away" and nervo- is obvious and -ate means "action" of the prior word part. It's analog/synonym would be unnerve. 

The word came almost directly from Latin by a bit of a roundabout route. See here for a brief explanation.

[ARikozuM]

7 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

The word came almost directly from Latin by a bit of a roundabout route. See here for a brief explanation.

I just gave you the Latin word parts. 

[greenmax]

The obvious question about space is

Are their "beings" out there?

Are their microscopic organisms out there?

 

Space smells like cooked beef steak I heard.

[jones177]

10 hours ago, greenmax said:

The obvious question about space is

Are their "beings" out there?

Are their microscopic organisms out there?

 

Space smells like cooked beef steak I heard.

When my hobby was astronomy way back in the 70s I used to cook steak in beer. It was the cowboy way. 

 

We know how long it takes to evolve an intelligent species with the right conditions so the chances are that any intelligent life out there it too busy being stupid to notice anyone else, just like us.   

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On 2/8/2020 at 8:31 PM, ARikozuM said:

I just gave you the Latin word parts. 

Enervate was derived from a complete Latin word, not bits and pieces of Latin.

[redbread123]

On 2/1/2020 at 7:15 PM, Lord Xeb said:

Ran across this article and found it rather interesting. 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/02/white-dwarf-causes-strange-relativity-effect-called-frame-dragging/

I know of another strange instance from back in 2004. A magnetar released a massive blast of gamma rays, blinding the swift telescope while it was look away. The energy hit earth's magenet filed and caused it to ring like a bell. From 50000 light years away it did this. 


Pretty crazy if you ask me. Any of you have some weird, interesting or rather fascinating space stuff, strange astronomy or odd science stories you ran across?

we're never gonna travel to different stars tbh, our civilization's technology for interstellar travel is pretty basic, just BIG FIRE MEANS BIG PUSH SO GO BIG HOT PUSH FIRE TO MOON. 8 months to go to mars, yeahhhh we need new space travelling technology.

[Pickles von Brine]

Back in 1991, the Oh My God particle was detected. It was (and still is) the most energetic particle ever detected. The energy of the particle was estimated at approx. (3.2±0.9)×10²⁰ eV, or 51 J. That is equal to the amount of energy of a 5 oz baseball traveling at 58MPH. 

This particle is over 100 quintillion times more energetic than visible light.