A SUPER NOVA

WOW that is amazing stuff. I love astronomy. Did you hear that they are going to go up and fix the Hubble for at least 7 more years of service. Then we will see actual photos of super novas, dying and new born stars and all kinds of awesome stuff. Indeed it is mind boggling.

 

It was pretty interesting. One teaspoon of matter from a neutron star would weigh over 200 billion tons. Amazing.

 

also, they said in 2 billion years, the milky way galaxy will collide with the nearby andromeda galaxy, and after another 2 billion years, we will have one galaxy from the two. geez, i need to buy some collision insurance!!!!!!

 

Our local rag had this to say:

http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/ny-hshubb1101,0,1150915.story?coll=ny-main-bigpix

Check out the photo galleries. Totally insane.

 

Science rules. There are some good laymen's books out there to get a basic overview of things like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. But nothing really gives you a better idea of how insignificant we are in the world than a photograph like the ones idloveaguinness linked to that contains hundreds of galaxies, each comprised of billions of stars, then realizing that what you're seeing is only a tiny fraction of the smallest sliver of the known universe.

-R

 

Thinking about this stuff should convince people that it is not a matter of 'if' other intelligent life exists but where, and how much of it.

 

Actually a sun that is twice as dense as our sun will create a "black hole". A super nova is created when a star burns through it's hydrogen & Helium, leaving only the heavier elements.

In fact, we are the product of many such super novas, that's how the heavier elements got created. A larger star has a much shorter life span than a class M sun (like our sun), on the order of "only" 100,000,000 years.

If you'd like most of this put together into one cogent book, although the physic is a little dated, read Asimov's book on the universe: Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 2nd Rev. Ed.

Also recommended is Brian Greene's the Elegant Universe, which explains M theory (new name for the successor to string theory).

Art

 

that would require a very strong spoon

 

I love this kind of stuff, I always watch SuperNova when it is on.

 

Think about this...200 BILLION stars in the Milky Way galaxy (an estimate) and 200 BILLION galaxies (another estimate). Do the math.

Here's an interesting factoid...if you do the math more closely, you'll find that there could be as much as 100 stars in the universe for each grain of sand there is on the Earth!

 

Someone once told me that if you tried to count the stars 10 stars at a time, 10 times per second, it would take you longer to count all of them than the earth has been in existence...

 

There are A LOT more than 200 billion galaxies in the universe.

 

Last estimate I saw 1 - 10 trillion galaxies.

Art

 

I'm a big fan of Carl Sagan, especially his adage "we are starstuff"... The fact that EVERYTHING we can see/feel/smell/taste is the product of a star that exploded some time ago still makes my head spin.

-R

 

I'm not sure that is correct. When a smallish-star burns all of its lighter elements, it will first expand to about 10 times its regualr size, then slowly shrink and burn out. Typically, yellow stars our size and maybe 5 - 10 times larger will go through this phase. It is a "nova".

A "super nova" happens when the white and blue giants burn off all of their lighter elements. What remains is a super concentrated amount of heavy elements (silicon, iron, gold, etc). These have such a huge mass that the entire star then collapses in on itself, and shrinks to a very small percentage of its regular size. As it shrinks, the core's mass increases so much that massive fusion reactions take place, which eventually cause the entire star to explode. The resulting explosion hurdles elements throughout space, but the core often will have become so dense, and have given birth to such a powerful gravitational field, that nothing can escape its gravity, including light. This is a black hole.

However, I'm no atrophysicist. I merely stayed at a Holiday Inn last night.

 

Hello, hello, hello......is there anybody out there?

 

Flying Nova
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oh man...that is so wrong hilarious yes, but so wrong.

I thought the universe was infinite? Where are these figures coming from?

 

I took the picture, then had to help cut the driver out of his seat, then had to interview the co driver for Hot Rod TV.... Infinite no just really busy...

 

i think they come from the believers of the big bang theory. like any other explosion, the explosion radius will have a limit. within the limit youll find lots of debree but outside that limit it is essentially empty.