This one is from cosmicpower, and it’s so good I just don’t feel right editing the commentary. jipc:dvdp:  When a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupts from the Sun, movies in extreme ultraviolet light often show enormous waves, spreading over a large area on the solar surface, just as tsunamis travel far from the original seismic event. Now STEREO data have been used to show that these waves are the footprints of giant domes that spread upward into the corona as well as outward across the surface.
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This one is from cosmicpower, and it’s so good I just don’t feel right editing the commentary.

jipc:dvdp:

 When a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupts from the Sun, movies in extreme ultraviolet light often show enormous waves, spreading over a large area on the solar surface, just as tsunamis travel far from the original seismic event. Now STEREO data have been used to show that these waves are the footprints of giant domes that spread upward into the corona as well as outward across the surface.

Source: dvdp

And you thought Pluto was screwed up. [From Bad Astronomy]
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And you thought Pluto was screwed up. [From Bad Astronomy]

Around and round he goes, where he stops, Newton knows. [From Physics and Physicists]

This photo of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3190 came up on my wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day app a few days back. It was so tasty that I just had to share. It’s hard to imagine that all of the diffuse light is coming from millions of stars as big (or bigger) than our sun, and that some of the dust that’s obscuring the light is likely larger than the planet we’re sitting on now.
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This photo of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3190 came up on my wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day app a few days back. It was so tasty that I just had to share. It’s hard to imagine that all of the diffuse light is coming from millions of stars as big (or bigger) than our sun, and that some of the dust that’s obscuring the light is likely larger than the planet we’re sitting on now.

A reblog from physicsphysics, to which I will add that there should probably be a sliver on here that says “to figure out how to make a warp drive” - the subtext to which would then be “so I can find some hot green alien babes like Captain Kirk.” The subtext to the subtext would be “because I can’t find any that want me here.” CAN YOU GUESS WHY I’M A PHYSICS MAJOR!? Heh heh. That’s a total lie. I’m definitely in it for the light sabers.
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A reblog from physicsphysics, to which I will add that there should probably be a sliver on here that says “to figure out how to make a warp drive” - the subtext to which would then be “so I can find some hot green alien babes like Captain Kirk.” The subtext to the subtext would be “because I can’t find any that want me here.” CAN YOU GUESS WHY I’M A PHYSICS MAJOR!? Heh heh. That’s a total lie. I’m definitely in it for the light sabers.

Source: physicsphysics

Biggest Detector To Look For Gravitational Waves

I’m not going to provide any commentary on this one aside from this: it’s nice to see gravitational waves are cool enough to make their way onto Slashdot. More on this topic later.

It’s time for another (De)Motivational Monday! And this time it’s good ol’ Al Einstein reminding us that it’s the end of the semester here at GWU, and that means some mighty big headaches for us grad students trying to finish everything up before finals come round and kill us all.
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It’s time for another (De)Motivational Monday! And this time it’s good ol’ Al Einstein reminding us that it’s the end of the semester here at GWU, and that means some mighty big headaches for us grad students trying to finish everything up before finals come round and kill us all.

This one is a reblog from scienceisbeauty that I just couldn’t resist because it is precisely the sort of thing I’m interested in on an academic level. The source link is a little vague on the details, as it’s an abstract for what I presume is a colloquium presentation, but it carries the unmistakeable scent of a binary black hole system mingling with the wonderful aroma of SCIENCE! Numerical Simulations of Black Hole Spacetimes Source: California Institute of Technology, link
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This one is a reblog from scienceisbeauty that I just couldn’t resist because it is precisely the sort of thing I’m interested in on an academic level. The source link is a little vague on the details, as it’s an abstract for what I presume is a colloquium presentation, but it carries the unmistakeable scent of a binary black hole system mingling with the wonderful aroma of SCIENCE!

Numerical Simulations of Black Hole Spacetimes

Source: California Institute of Technology, link

Source: scienceisbeauty

As promised, more from the SDO/AIA. The false-colors in this image show just how dynamic the sun really is. The first thing you notice (or at least the first thing I noticed) is the massive temperature variations; from about 110 thousand degrees (Fahrenheit) in the areas shown in red, to nearly 1.8 million degrees in the areas shown in blue. But there’s so much more hidden away in an image as stunning as this. Notice all the swirling eddies and bright flashes that speckle the surface. You can even see a brilliant flare shooting up through the corona! So much potential knowledge! All of which is made possible by the amazing resolution of the images taken by SDO. The one shown here was 4800x4800 pixels in it’s original size. That’s over 4 times the vertical resolution of the best HDTV’s, and still they manage to fill the frame with an object that’s 93 million miles away. To put things in perspective, many of the images of the sun that you’ve already seen have come from NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), and its 2400x2400 resolution looks dinky by comparison. This is just one example of the many exciting NASA missions currently flying, or coming up in future. Recently, there’s been a lot of negative press about the policy decisions to put manned spaceflight on the back-burner, but there’s still a enormous amount of incredibly interesting work just waiting to be done. It’s an exciting time to be interested in science. If this sort of things turns your gears, I strongly suggest reading the source link, and then taking some time to flick through NASA’s website. They’re a veritable wealth of fascinating astronomical information. [Source NASA’s New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images]
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As promised, more from the SDO/AIA. The false-colors in this image show just how dynamic the sun really is. The first thing you notice (or at least the first thing I noticed) is the massive temperature variations; from about 110 thousand degrees (Fahrenheit) in the areas shown in red, to nearly 1.8 million degrees in the areas shown in blue. But there’s so much more hidden away in an image as stunning as this. Notice all the swirling eddies and bright flashes that speckle the surface. You can even see a brilliant flare shooting up through the corona! So much potential knowledge! All of which is made possible by the amazing resolution of the images taken by SDO. The one shown here was 4800x4800 pixels in it’s original size. That’s over 4 times the vertical resolution of the best HDTV’s, and still they manage to fill the frame with an object that’s 93 million miles away. To put things in perspective, many of the images of the sun that you’ve already seen have come from NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO), and its 2400x2400 resolution looks dinky by comparison. This is just one example of the many exciting NASA missions currently flying, or coming up in future. Recently, there’s been a lot of negative press about the policy decisions to put manned spaceflight on the back-burner, but there’s still a enormous amount of incredibly interesting work just waiting to be done. It’s an exciting time to be interested in science. If this sort of things turns your gears, I strongly suggest reading the source link, and then taking some time to flick through NASA’s website. They’re a veritable wealth of fascinating astronomical information. [Source NASA’s New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images]

[Flash 10 is required to watch video]

Here’s some more jaw-dropping awesomeness brought to you by SCIENCE! Another solar prominence, this one from March 30th, captured by the brand new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Today NASA released some great preliminary images from the new Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), and the results are impressive. So impressive in fact, that I’m going to have to put up another post, so keep your eyes peeled. [Source SDO First Light Briefing]