Saturday, November 5, 2011

M5 Rendered in Artistic Light and Dark

M5 is a beautiful large globular cluster located in the constellation of Serpens. It is thought to be one of the oldest globular clusters with an estimated age of 13 billion years. This means that it must have formed only 700 million years after the Big Bang, which occurred about 13.7 billion years ago. M5 is located about 24,500 light years away and has an apparent diameter of 23 minutes of arc, which corresponds to a real diameter of about 165 light years in space. It contains between 100,000 and 500,000 stars. It was discovered by Gottfried Kirch in 1702.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

A Physics/Science Blog and my 98.75 cents opinion (under a buck)

Here is a cool blog with lots of science and links.
http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont/

My Spiel
I saw Brian Greenes Fabric of the cosmos on Nova. The spinning skater, being pulled out centripetally in a spin, was used to introduce the concept of space having some mettle to it. In the book he talks of newton spinning a bucket of water, stopping it, and the water continuing to swirl against the sides of the bucket, which is gone on to explain that it is the same as the water standing still and the space around spinning and grasping at matter. He goes on to describe how space is something of three dimensionality, though it is difficult to say why three, and filled with innate energy and pliable. Dark energy was mentioned with the same lack of true intent and cause, but there nontheless, as was the very necessary zero-spin Gibbs particle. Leonard Suskind appeared to say he thought the three dimensions of space was really just a hologram of an infinite two dimensional surface. Here's what I believe is happening, philosophically, which is as workable theory as any described to explain the hard to explain reality. Something is keeping things together. I don't mean gravity, which does hold matter together, apparently at apple, solar and galactic intervals. I don't mean time, which keeps things chronological, even if somewhat stilted by relativity. I don't mean Space, which gives everything a definite holding place, fickle as it is expanding and contracting everywhere. And I don't mean matter, which sets the stage for things to happen, even on a deserted moon in the Serpens Dwarf Galaxy. Something is keeping the pace and holding stuff into a complex ballet of reality, and with real meaning and beauty and consequence and importance of concept. What? God? Is? Real? Me? You? I think it is just a love of complexity that will always continue, maybe in new forms, without matter or time, but something else, like story and pith. Naturally, the math will continue to get more difficult, but the relationships will be fantastic.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Stairway to heaven

Here are 4 views from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and a link to a video. It is amazing the differing structures associated with different wavelengths. The Crab Nebula was caused by a SuperNova in 1054, that people living then reported lit up the sky as a star in the daytime. It is located in the Taurus Constellation. The most recent research of the nebula show that it is giving off Gamma rays of 100 billion electron-volts. The highest radiation that the known physics can account for the Pulsar, the angular momentum of the spinning magnetic field, is about 10 Billion ElectronVolts. One of these Gamma ray has the energy to ionize 7 Billion Hydrogen Atoms. The reason I post this is because I saw the pulse from the Nebula, a huge blink of energy, less than a second, but unlike any light I have ever seen, a distinctly round orb about 20 times the size of Jupiters starlight. I would describe what I saw like as looking at the pulsar itself, a huge magnification of the dense spinning pulsar 6500 light years away, which is only a few miles across but contains 1.4 times the mass of our sun. Awesome. Link to news article http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/227030/20111007/crab-nebula-pulsar-gamma-rays-100-billion-electron-volts-veritas-100-gev-crab-system.htm

Tuesday, October 4, 2011