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NASA Finds Star With a Tail
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Aug 15, 2007 08:53 PM
from the streaking-across-the-universe dept.
from the streaking-across-the-universe dept.
Andrew Stellman writes "NASA astronomers held a press conference announcing that a new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira that's leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems. Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old. The website has images and a replay of the teleconference."
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Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...
Parent
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:4, Informative)
Kirk's Bedpost Notches [memory-alpha.org]
In my defense, there were a couple that even I couldn't remember.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
*Editor's note: The human concept of friend is most nearly duplicated in Vulcan thought by the term t'hy'la, which can also mean brother and lover. Spock's recollection (from which this chapter has drawn) is that it was a most difficult moment for him since he did indeed consider Kirk to have become his brother. However, because t'hy'la can be used to mean lover, and since Kirk's and Spock's friendship was unusually close, this has l
Re:Dropping seeds all over the universe? (Score:5, Funny)
>I think it started with the urge to deny the existance of Kirk-Spock sexual tension...
What sexual tension? [youtube.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I've no idea where the Kirk-sleeping-with-every-girl-he-could-find thing started.
You must be new, that's how things were filmed then. The first ever inter-racial (ie black-white) kiss was on classic Star Trek.
Roddenberry deliberately pushed the envelope whereever he could. Sulu, Chekov on the bridge, etc. The only way a woman could get on was to be married or be mistress to him - Nurse Chapel was his wife, Uhura was his mistress and so was the (can't remember her name and my own videos of the classic series are not handy) blonde babe ensign who was in Charley, etc.
Type M-x praise-b
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Forgive me, the joke is obvious, but it had to be made
Re:NAME IT SKYWALKER AND STOP BEING AN ASSFAGGOT (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Collision Course (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Collision Course (Score:5, Funny)
Campbell or Willis?
I'd prefer the former; it would be... groovy.
Parent
The NASA folks must have been watching bad films (Score:4, Funny)
They should tell us how many parsecs it could do the Kessel run in.
Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The NASA folks must have been watching bad film (Score:5, Informative)
According to the script, they (Lucas) knew it and knew Solo was wrong. From http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/anh-script.shtm
HAN: Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
BEN: Should I have?
HAN: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve
parsecs!
Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with
obvious misinformation.
Emphasis added...
-Trillian
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
Mind you, Star Wars is so full of revisionism that all the stuff you "know" has been changed a million times. Like
NASA discovers G-class star 8 light minutes away (Score:4, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira [wikipedia.org]
Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Insightful)
For comparison, a "speeding bullet" slugs anywhere from around 1km/s (sniper rifle) to ~100m/s (short-barrel pistol).
In addition, Wikipedia states that Mira's velocity is 63.8km/s -- which is actually slower than our own's sun (which has no "tail"), leading to two conclusions: (1) Mira's tail is caused by some other factor than it's velocity alone, and (2) Mira's speed is also so faster than a "speeding bullet" beyond comparison. In other words, the comparison is not just off-scale but also irrelevant.
If you insist on using laymen's "cool-sounding" metaphors to describe scientific phenomena, at least check your facts and context, or you will just make a moron out of yourself.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Funny)
Is it more powerful than a locomotive?
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Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
1 light year = 9.4605284 × 10^15 meters.
so 103461596675415.57305336832895888, or one hundred three trillion, four hundred sixty-one billion, five hundred ninety-six million, six hundred seventy-five thousand, four hundred fifteen-ish football fields per light year.
which makes 13 light years 1345000756780402.4496937882764654, or one quadrillion, three hundred forty-five trillion, seven hundred fifty-six million, seven hundred eighty
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For Soccer Fields:
Fifa approvable fields must be between 100m and 110m in length.
so from 1229868692000000 to 1118062447272727.27, or one quadrillion, two hundred twenty-nine trillion, eight hundred sixty-eight billion, six hundred ninety-two million to one quadrillion, one hundred eighteen trillion, sixty-two billion, four hundred forty-seven million, two hundred seventy-two thousand, seven hundred twenty-seven fifa approved soccer fields.
reaalllly slow
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also note that NASA used the term supersonic.
Re:Faster than a speeding bullet? (Score:4, Informative)
You know the speed that pressure changes can propogate through a fluid (such as the not-quite-vacuum intertelar medium around the star). That speed in which there's a change in the physics due to the formation of a shock wave (because the object is traveling faster than the pressure shift that "tells" the "upstream" fluid that the object is there).
100km/s or there abouts - depends on the local density of the interstellar medium.
Parent
More powerful than a Wikipedia entry (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm, I guess I better edit the article on stadiums so that they can accommodate solar-massed objects while I'm at it.
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How do we know this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Given that with Hubble we can only see "3 or 4 pixels" worth of Pluto (according to the last episode of Universe on the History channel), how do we know what debris we may or may not be leaving behind our solar system as we move through space?
Re: (Score:2)
Someone already did it
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For all I know, the speed of sound in a medium increases with a medium's density. Pure vacuum transmits no sound at all. The speed of sound in water is much faster than that in the air.
Note that I'm referring to -sound- specifically, rather than any other form of transmitted waves (subatomic radiation, whether beta or gamma, for example stellar pulses, and the like, are not "sound" in their own right, ev
Am I the only one... (Score:3)
God says this is Impossible (Score:2, Funny)
That's Funny ... Stellarium (Score:3, Funny)
You can't see the tail with your eyes (Score:4, Informative)
Read the article, bottom of the page: "Mira's tail is only visible in ultraviolet light, and does not show up in visible light."
Parent
Re:You can't see the tail with your eyes (Score:5, Funny)
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Relative to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Relative to what? (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh, neat, you can see the bow shock (Score:3, Interesting)
The song remains the same (Score:5, Funny)
Flying at supersonic speeds
Though sound cannot propagate through a vacuum
Tail lightyears long through outer space
We know TFA will get the science wrong uh huh
And the dupe will posted in a week uh huh
Scientist as Educator (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA as presented on MSNBC: "If Neanderthal man had ultraviolet eyes and could look above the atmosphere, he could have seen the beginning of this tail forming," study leader Chris Martin, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, said during a teleconference Wednesday.
AWEsome, d00d.
And, if they had ultraviolet eyes on 30,000 light year long eye stalks, they could not only see
above the atmosphere, they could see the tail as it formed, RIGHT WHERE IT WAS HAPPENING.
OH. OH. And if the DINOSAURS had ultraviolet eyes, and could see above the atmosphere, they could see it 65 million years BEFORE it happened. And they could probably also see that asteroid coming and build SPACESHIPS, no wait, SPACE DINOSAUR MOTORCYCLES, they could get off the planet before it got hit, and fly to that star and live there, and then 65 million years later all wag their tails at the same time and make the star shoot off gas and dust like a BIG TAIL that we could see, because they wanted to say hi and let us know they were all OK and we shouldn't be all sad because we thought they all got extincted.
I guess we can't all be Carl Sagan. Because then there would be BIL..... nevermind.
Broadcast quality video (Score:3, Interesting)
Pathfire was bought out by DG Fast Channel in June. It seems they sell servers maybe and services too. It looks like what people call video press releases.
Anyway is this a commercial service only open to news agencies? Anybody know?
It doesn't make any sense, NASA should just dump it all onto a torrent so it can be watched with one of the new torrent film players that advertise open video, like Zudeo or Miro. I spent so much time once upon a time with CU-SeeMe to see NASA live video, and more recently saw interesting science discussions, but they really have very high quality television broadcast quality film they sell. Maybe HD too.
Wouldn't it make more sense, in terms of saving money and making it more accessible, to just host a torrent? Certainly this DG feed is a hose into TV stations where they can patch in some shots if they want some filler, but to degrade NASA into that kind of video press release is just so bizarre! If anyone knows how to get this high quality video I'd like to see it. NASA needs to get with the times.
This sounds good, but... (Score:3, Funny)
rhY
What Causes "Solar Turbulance"? (Score:3, Interesting)
This seems really wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mira is traveling faster than a speeding bullet, and has a tail that's 13 light-years long and over 30,000 years old.
Hrrrmmm. OK. So, a light year is about 5,879,000,000,000 miles. [wikipedia.org]
So, 13 light years would be 76,427,000,000,000 miles.
Now divide that by 30,000 years and we get 2,547,566,666.667 miles. now there are 8,760 hours in a year, so if we divide 2,547,566,666.667 by 8,760, we get 290,818.113 miles per hour. Now, that IS fast, especially given the average asteroid skips along at 40,000 mph. But it's not THAT fast - it would take that star an hour to go from here to the moon. If it did it in 5 minutes - yeah, that's fast. But an hour? Heck - our feeble crappy spacecraft get there in a few days...
RS
The story on Nature.com (Score:3, Informative)