Starship Asterisk*

I don't see any sharks in it.


Someone had to say it.

Yes, it's just the central bubble that matches the diameter mentioned in the description and that appears smaller than the open cluster.

... Furthermore, even the elusive never-seen first stars in the universe, so-called Population III stars, are predicted to have a large mass and a small but set amount of heavy elements. ... Ummm... from following the links it seems that our sun would be a generation III star and these elusive neve...

Actually, I'm talking about Special Relativity. My question is related to the gravitational force experienced by one body by another body based on the relative velocity of the two. Here's the thought experiment that got me to this point and then we can go from there. Imagine if you will a body ident...

My question is simply this: Since the calculation of gravitational force includes a time element, shouldn't this force be reduced because of the time dialation which occurs due to relativity?

neufer wrote:

http://www.universetoday.com/88418/managers-still-assessing-how-progress-crash-will-affect-iss-operations/#more-88418 wrote:
The biggest problem might be a shortage of what Suffredini called “potty supplies,” extra parts and equipment for the bathroom on the station. The specialized toilet includes hardware designed to recycle urine into drinking water.

Someone call Bear Grylls!

More like the gravity would crush you. With a mass about 10 times that of Jupiter but a radius similar or even smaller than Jupiter, the gravitational pull at the top of the atmosphere would be more than 20 times that of the Earth. An average person would weigh a ton and a half. A balloon could theo...

bystander wrote:Jaded West Coast chuckles over East Coast quake
PhysOrg | Joseph Adelman, AP | 2011 Aug 24

Yeah, people in NYC and DC getting nervous about buildings shaking this close to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.... the people on the West Coast need to cut us some slack.

When I got home from work yesterday after the earthquake, there was a big crack in my foundation, the driveway was damaged and the roof of the garage looked like it could fall in at any moment. Thank goodness everything was normal.

Don't worry about it. Most guys are idiots at that age and they want to look cool to their friends by making fun of the girl while secretly wishing you'd talk to them. Do what BMAONE23 suggested and use an gender neutral name and in five years these same guys will all be desperate to know you.

Perhaps what you mean is that the central black holes in galaxies almost never collide directly when galaxies merge. They end up orbiting each other, and their death spiral may take a long time. But eventually they do collide. When they do, they may form a new, more massive black hole, or one may b...

This sounds a lot like the concept of quark stars where the individual neutrons theoretically would break down into a quark soup. I guess the big difference would be that the square neutrons would be rigid while the quark soup would be fluid.

I voted no because the common understanding of a blog is that it's centered on one person's (or a small group's) specific viewpoint. The only viewpoint that APOD espouses is that astronomy and space are freakin' awesome. Also the lack of direct commentary on the main page takes it out of the usual b...

I became interested in astronomy at such an early age I don't even remember what got it started. My mother was a nurse and my father an insurance agent, neither of whom had any interest in it. It's possible my uncle who eventually became a physicist introduced me to it but, again, if he did it I don...