Starship Asterisk*

APOD Robot wrote: Methuselah Nebula MWP1

Explanation: Based on its expansion rate the nebula has an age of 150 thousand years, a cosmic blink of an eye in the 10 billion year life of a sun-like star. But planetary nebulae represent a very brief final phase in in stellar evolution, as the nebula's central star shrugs off its outer layers to become a hot white dwarf. In fact, planetary nebulae ordinarily only last for 10 to 20 thousand years.

Pretty impressive; this nebula lasted 7 to 15 times an average nebula! What kept it intact for such a long time?

http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Methuselah wrote:

FRED (@ 35426) is a methuselah:

<<Conway's Game of Life, also known as the Game of Life or simply Life, is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is the best-known example of a cellular automaton.

A methuselah is a pattern that takes a large number of generations in order to stabilize (known as its lifespan) and becomes much larger than its initial configuration at some point during its evolution. In particular, patterns that grow forever are not methuselahs. Fred is a methuselah with a lifespan of 35426 generations, discovered by Schneelocke on May 15, 2010, using Nathaniel Johnston's soup search script,only the second pattern ever to be found this way with a longevity greater than that of Lidka, and the first with a lifespan greater than that of Edna. It is currently the longest-lived known methuselah to fit within a 20×20 bounding box.>>

orin stepanek wrote:
Pretty impressive; this nebula lasted 7 to 15 times an average nebula!

What kept it intact for such a long time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah wrote:
<<Methuselah (מְתוּשָׁלַח; "Man of the dart/spear") is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Methuselah's age of 969 years conflicts with evidence that a lifespan of centuries is not currently possible. Some literalists suggest that the patriarchs had a better diet, or a water vapor canopy protected the earth from radiation prior to the Flood.>>

biddie67 wrote:Oh my - I made the mistake of coming to visit today's APOD before my coffee was ready and before I had put on my reading glasses..

I apologize for taking away from the beauty of today's APOD picture but several years ago I had a situation that exactly resembled the frantic scurrying seen in the above little methuselah. My daughter and I exterminated a cockroach colony we found in a little shed at the back of the yard - their behavior, upon being hit with the spray, was exactly like that .....

math follows life follows math once again!!!

Bric wrote:
You say that the nebula has lasted 150,000 years, a cosmic blink of an eye compared to the 10 billion year age of the star. This is inaccurate. The nebula lasts approximately 1.5e-4 of the life of the star. On the other hand, the human eye blinks in about 350 milliseconds, so if the average person lives about 70 years, an eyeblink represents 1.6e-10 of a human life. So the nebula has survived for more than one million cosmic eye blinks, or about a half a cosmic week. This does not detract from the amazing longevity of the nebula, nor its beauty.

neufer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah wrote:
<<Methuselah (מְתוּשָׁלַח; "Man of the dart/spear") is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Methuselah's age of 969 years conflicts with evidence that a lifespan of centuries is not currently possible. Some literalists suggest that the patriarchs had a better diet, or a water vapor canopy protected the earth from radiation prior to the Flood.>>

orin stepanek wrote:

neufer wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah wrote:
<<Methuselah (מְתוּשָׁלַח; "Man of the dart/spear") is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Methuselah's age of 969 years conflicts with evidence that a lifespan of centuries is not currently possible. Some literalists suggest that the patriarchs had a better diet, or a water vapor canopy protected the earth from radiation prior to the Flood.>>

I'm thinking, that maybe back in their time when that was written; that a lunar cycle was considered to be a year.

orin stepanek wrote:I'm thinking, that maybe back in their time when that was written; that a lunar cycle was considered to be a year.

neufer wrote:You're just trying to avoid having to eat better yourself.

bystander wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:I'm thinking, that maybe back in their time when that was written; that a lunar cycle was considered to be a year.

neufer wrote:You're just trying to avoid having to eat better yourself.

Nah, he wants to claim to be older than Methuselah in another 5 yrs or so.

Perk Cartel wrote:Is it just an illsuion or is this structure really toroidal please? Thanks in advance! Cheers, Perk