so says artist Adam R. Garcia
Monday, September 12, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Milky Way Galaxy: A Memoir
Galaxies like me live for hundreds of billions of years, which seems like a long time, but a lot has happened in the mere 13 billion years of my existence so far. My life has been anything but boring.
Galaxy Birth
The memories of my very first years remain fuzzy and diffuse, but I know I came into existence soon after the Big Bang. The first stars that formed in the Universe were BIG! So big that they lived very brief and powerful lives and quickly exploded, causing a series of events that resulted in my formation!
The energy from the explosions of the first stars initiated the gravitational collapse of huge halos of material. I am the result of one of these gravitationally bound systems. When I was born I contained lots of dark matter and gas, which quickly churned into thousands of millions of stars.
Star Formation and Supernovae Explosions
Hydrogen gas was the fuel inside me that I turned into a range of stars, big and small. The stars were either born as twins, gravitationally bound to each other as they slowly moved around my center every 200 million years or so, or they formed their own planets, or both!
I contain about 400 billion stars today and continue to form new stars at a steady rate of a few each year. I probably harbour more planets than stars, but the planets are very hard for me to sense since they are so tiny and do not produce their own light.
My biggest stars shine very brightly from nuclear fusion in their cores, turning hydrogen into helium and eventually into oxygen and carbon. During my adolescent years of formative star formation, which lasted several billion years, once every hundred years or so one of the most massive stars in my spiral arms would explode as a supernova, sending surrounding gas flying forcefully out in all directions.
When I was young, the gas near the supernova left me for good and was lost in space, because I wasnt yet big enough to gravitationally keep hold of it after the explosion. Eventually I gained enough mass, by collecting more loose gas and forming new stars, that I was able to hold onto almost anything that passed nearby, including other very small galaxies!
My life progressed in much the same way for a few thousand million years, and I grew massive enough that supernova explosions no longer blew away my loose gas.
Supermassive Black Hole
One year I realized something was growing deep inside my core. It felt like indegestion, but it was actually a supermassive black hole! No one seems to know exactly how the supermassive black hole initially formed at my center, but almost every massive galaxy that has been thoroughly examined has been found to bear one as well. Strange, huh?
I first noticed my supermassive black hole because the material near my center was swirling in closer and closer and heating up. During my supermassive black hole's most active phase, the gas in my core reached temperatures of millions of degrees and started emitting X-ray radiation into space.
This active phase only lasted a few million years before the supermassive black hole exhausted nearly all the energy around my core and quietly faded away, to the point where I sometimes forget it's still there.
One species of tiny lifeforms on a planet named Earth, 26,000 light years from my center, calls the region around my supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"). The mass of the black hole at my centre is four million times the mass of that planetary system's sun.
Merging with Neighboring Galaxies
I live in a small neighborhood of galaxies unimaginitely called the Local Group. There are about 50 of us living here, gravitationally bound to each other despite the expanding universe around us. I'm the most massive galaxy in the group, and there is one other big spiral galaxy nearby called Andromeda.
Since my gravity is the strongest in the neighborhood, I recently devoured a few dwarf galaxies living nearby. They remain visible though, as streams of stars orbiting around my central core.
My biggest gravitational attraction is to the Andromeda galaxy, which lives a mere three million light years away. The two of us are slowly spiraling toward each other in a fateful gravitational dance that will guide us to become one massive, egg-shaped galaxy in a few billion years.
The space between our individual stars is so huge that probably no two stars will collide during our eventual merger, but their orbits will change completely and my beautiful spiral arm disk will be destroyed as a result.
Despite losing my shape and gaining so much more mass, I'm looking forward to merging with Andromeda. Its spiral shape will look incredibly beautiful in the sky as we gradually approach each other, and our merger is sure to form a whole new generation of stars.
I've always been referred to as the Milky Way Galaxy by the inhabitants of Earth, but I wonder if I will acquire a new name for the next phase of my life. Something to look forward to!
Galaxy Birth
The memories of my very first years remain fuzzy and diffuse, but I know I came into existence soon after the Big Bang. The first stars that formed in the Universe were BIG! So big that they lived very brief and powerful lives and quickly exploded, causing a series of events that resulted in my formation!
The energy from the explosions of the first stars initiated the gravitational collapse of huge halos of material. I am the result of one of these gravitationally bound systems. When I was born I contained lots of dark matter and gas, which quickly churned into thousands of millions of stars.
Star Formation and Supernovae Explosions
Hydrogen gas was the fuel inside me that I turned into a range of stars, big and small. The stars were either born as twins, gravitationally bound to each other as they slowly moved around my center every 200 million years or so, or they formed their own planets, or both!
I contain about 400 billion stars today and continue to form new stars at a steady rate of a few each year. I probably harbour more planets than stars, but the planets are very hard for me to sense since they are so tiny and do not produce their own light.
 |
| A recently discovered supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy. Image Credit: LCOGT |
My biggest stars shine very brightly from nuclear fusion in their cores, turning hydrogen into helium and eventually into oxygen and carbon. During my adolescent years of formative star formation, which lasted several billion years, once every hundred years or so one of the most massive stars in my spiral arms would explode as a supernova, sending surrounding gas flying forcefully out in all directions.
When I was young, the gas near the supernova left me for good and was lost in space, because I wasnt yet big enough to gravitationally keep hold of it after the explosion. Eventually I gained enough mass, by collecting more loose gas and forming new stars, that I was able to hold onto almost anything that passed nearby, including other very small galaxies!
My life progressed in much the same way for a few thousand million years, and I grew massive enough that supernova explosions no longer blew away my loose gas.
Supermassive Black Hole
One year I realized something was growing deep inside my core. It felt like indegestion, but it was actually a supermassive black hole! No one seems to know exactly how the supermassive black hole initially formed at my center, but almost every massive galaxy that has been thoroughly examined has been found to bear one as well. Strange, huh?
I first noticed my supermassive black hole because the material near my center was swirling in closer and closer and heating up. During my supermassive black hole's most active phase, the gas in my core reached temperatures of millions of degrees and started emitting X-ray radiation into space.
This active phase only lasted a few million years before the supermassive black hole exhausted nearly all the energy around my core and quietly faded away, to the point where I sometimes forget it's still there.
One species of tiny lifeforms on a planet named Earth, 26,000 light years from my center, calls the region around my supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"). The mass of the black hole at my centre is four million times the mass of that planetary system's sun.
Merging with Neighboring Galaxies
I live in a small neighborhood of galaxies unimaginitely called the Local Group. There are about 50 of us living here, gravitationally bound to each other despite the expanding universe around us. I'm the most massive galaxy in the group, and there is one other big spiral galaxy nearby called Andromeda.
 |
| Arp 271 - a hint of what the Milky Way and Andromeda might do one day. |
Since my gravity is the strongest in the neighborhood, I recently devoured a few dwarf galaxies living nearby. They remain visible though, as streams of stars orbiting around my central core.
My biggest gravitational attraction is to the Andromeda galaxy, which lives a mere three million light years away. The two of us are slowly spiraling toward each other in a fateful gravitational dance that will guide us to become one massive, egg-shaped galaxy in a few billion years.
The space between our individual stars is so huge that probably no two stars will collide during our eventual merger, but their orbits will change completely and my beautiful spiral arm disk will be destroyed as a result.
Despite losing my shape and gaining so much more mass, I'm looking forward to merging with Andromeda. Its spiral shape will look incredibly beautiful in the sky as we gradually approach each other, and our merger is sure to form a whole new generation of stars.
I've always been referred to as the Milky Way Galaxy by the inhabitants of Earth, but I wonder if I will acquire a new name for the next phase of my life. Something to look forward to!
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
spiders of unusual size
my first real life encounter with a huntsman spider after i moved to australia was rather unpleasant, but not quite like this, thankfully! the final line of the video is great!
hunstmans are uncomfortably HUGE. but luckily, they arent really poisonous and in fact, they EAT roaches! i much prefer seeing the occasional massive fuzzy spider than pooping gross roaches crawling around!
hunstmans are uncomfortably HUGE. but luckily, they arent really poisonous and in fact, they EAT roaches! i much prefer seeing the occasional massive fuzzy spider than pooping gross roaches crawling around!
Monday, September 5, 2011
orion overhead
i love the lights of city shining through the low clouds in this shot, and seeing most of orion hanging brightly overhead.
i first saw this image a while ago and might have even posted it here, but i cannot remember. while i saw it this time around here, i dont know who to give credit to for creating the image. (please cite your findings, tumblrs!)
UPDATE: thanks for the comment, chris! the photo was captured by david kaplan and reminds me of his incredible photo on APOD earlier this year showing the moon and venus over switzerland.
i first saw this image a while ago and might have even posted it here, but i cannot remember. while i saw it this time around here, i dont know who to give credit to for creating the image. (please cite your findings, tumblrs!)
UPDATE: thanks for the comment, chris! the photo was captured by david kaplan and reminds me of his incredible photo on APOD earlier this year showing the moon and venus over switzerland.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
macro timelapse: ferrofluid and soap bubbles
a ferrofluid is essentially a liquid magnet. you can make them at home if you're keen, and i assume that's what kim pimmel did to make this interesting macro timelapse video.
"I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism."
maybe NASA will one day use something like a ferrofluid as the blood of a robonaut...!?!
"I combined everyday soap bubbles with exotic ferrofluid liquid to create an eerie tale, using macro lenses and time lapse techniques. Black ferrofluid and dye race through bubble structures, drawn through by the invisible forces of capillary action and magnetism."
Compressed 02 from Kim Pimmel on Vimeo.
maybe NASA will one day use something like a ferrofluid as the blood of a robonaut...!?!
Friday, September 2, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
astronaut's guide to life in space
cute video from astronauts on several shuttle missions from the ~1980s and national public radio (NPR).
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
ukulele: the hawaiian jumping flea
i dont really need to pick up a new hobby, but whatever - i just bought a ukulele! i love it so far, but my fingers are yelling at me and i'm a bit annoyed at how quickly it falls out of tune. hopefully my skin will toughen up soon and i'll figure out how the little instrument works!
here are some inspirational tunes played on the ukulele.
first, listen to the legenadary hawaiian musician Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole sing somehwere over the rainbow.
and one from pearl jam's front man, eddie vedder, who released an album of ukulele songs earlier this year. here is his tune called can't keep.
here are some inspirational tunes played on the ukulele.
first, listen to the legenadary hawaiian musician Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole sing somehwere over the rainbow.
and one from pearl jam's front man, eddie vedder, who released an album of ukulele songs earlier this year. here is his tune called can't keep.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
aurora over greenland
today's astronomy picture of the day is a lovely view of the aurora over greenland during a recent shelios expedition to learn about auroras.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
shuttle launch reflection
this beautiful long-exposure photo of a shuttle launch at night was linked to on twitter today. the reflection is really gorgeous.
Monday, August 22, 2011
playing with balls
sorry about the title of the post, but i really couldnt think of anything else more appropriate to describe these two completely different demonstrations of incredible ball skills:
Sunday, August 21, 2011
the tim tam slam
a tim tam is a very popular and tasty australian biscuit/cookie composed of two layers of chocolate malted biscuit that surround a chocolatey cream filling, and completely covered in a thin layer of chocolate.
tim tams were first created in the 1960s and named after an american thoroughbred racehorse.
the packaging is unique in that each biscuit ("biccie" in aussie slang) has its own little compartment and there are precisely 11 biscuits per package.
i have developed a tim tam habit while observing at the australian astronomical observatory. very early in the morning, when i start to get sleepy and exhausted from working all night, i like to perform a tim tam slam (or two) to help me stay awake (and because they are so yummy)!!
to perform a tim tam slam, you need a tim tam and a mug of hot beverage such as coffee, tea or hot chocolate.
first, take small bites off opposite corners of the tim tam, or daintily bite off both ends (my preferred method).
the next few steps happen in rapid succession, so get ready...
hold the tim tam tight between your fingers and place one of the nibbled off bits in your mouth. submerge the other side in the beverage and suck, suck, suck!
as soon as you get the *hit* of liquid through the tim tam straw, pop it directly into your mouth!
if you wait too long, the whole thing turns into sludge and can easily drop out of your hand, so its best to eat it quickly.
every time i do the slam, it tastes better than i expect :)
UPDATE: in response to this post, some fine fellas in cardiff decided to demonstrate a similar technique using a twix, which they call tea-twix-tubes!
tim tams were first created in the 1960s and named after an american thoroughbred racehorse.
the packaging is unique in that each biscuit ("biccie" in aussie slang) has its own little compartment and there are precisely 11 biscuits per package.
i have developed a tim tam habit while observing at the australian astronomical observatory. very early in the morning, when i start to get sleepy and exhausted from working all night, i like to perform a tim tam slam (or two) to help me stay awake (and because they are so yummy)!!
to perform a tim tam slam, you need a tim tam and a mug of hot beverage such as coffee, tea or hot chocolate.
first, take small bites off opposite corners of the tim tam, or daintily bite off both ends (my preferred method).
the next few steps happen in rapid succession, so get ready...
hold the tim tam tight between your fingers and place one of the nibbled off bits in your mouth. submerge the other side in the beverage and suck, suck, suck!
as soon as you get the *hit* of liquid through the tim tam straw, pop it directly into your mouth!
if you wait too long, the whole thing turns into sludge and can easily drop out of your hand, so its best to eat it quickly.
every time i do the slam, it tastes better than i expect :)
UPDATE: in response to this post, some fine fellas in cardiff decided to demonstrate a similar technique using a twix, which they call tea-twix-tubes!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
this is love
can you guess what these are?
i didnt know so i'll just tell you: serotonin and oxytocin. prints by maggie hurley.
i didnt know so i'll just tell you: serotonin and oxytocin. prints by maggie hurley.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
pancake machine
off to Canberra to feel a couple days of winter and give a talk!
Monday, August 15, 2011
what a "shooting star" looks like from space
ever wonder what a meteor might look like from space?
here's the view from the international space station during last night's persied meteor shower, as the earth passed through the space dust left over from comet swift-tuttle.
here's the view from the international space station during last night's persied meteor shower, as the earth passed through the space dust left over from comet swift-tuttle.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)