Starship Asterisk*

What does " scientific consensus " mean? The universe was thought to be 13 billion years old based on the dubious quality of the General Theory of Relativity equations. Ignoring that this is a far-reaching extrapolation of equations that have a questionable relationship to reality, in a s...

The red/pink is H-alpha. Is that to say that upon seeing the red/pink during totality, we are seeing with our own eyes the actual H-alpha colours of distant pink/red nebulae? The Sun is made of hot hydrogen. That hydrogen is emitting the same red light we see in emission nebulas. But where its gas ...

It is hardly a guess. It is scientific consensus, and therefore what most people should consider the likely answer. What does " scientific consensus " mean? The universe was thought to be 13 billion years old based on the dubious quality of the General Theory of Relativity equations. Igno...

The CMB is the edge of the observable universe, not the the entire universe. I doubt this is the case. There is no evidence that microwave background radiation was produced 13 billion years ago, when the universe was allegedly forming. These are guesses. In my opinion, microwave background radiatio...

Thanks. Are these "greater than total Solar eclipses" less common than annular ones? I don't know. I guess you'd have to look at all the average distances involved (Earth to Sun, Earth to Moon) and figure out whether the angular size of the Moon- on average- is larger or smaller than the ...

Another question about the upcoming eclipse. I know a big deal is made of how the remarkably coincidental almost exact same apparent size of the Moon and Sun allows for viewing the Sun's entire corona at once and provides the best opportunity for science to study it, but wouldn't any total eclipse ...

Another question about the upcoming eclipse. I know a big deal is made of how the remarkably coincidental almost exact same apparent size of the Moon and Sun allows for viewing the Sun's entire corona at once and provides the best opportunity for science to study it, but wouldn't any total eclipse ...

I suppose the Sun has no meaningfully permanent longitude map that would allow these two coronal un-wrappings to be matched up. Which makes sense since the Sun is just a ball of plasma! But I gather that the rotational north-south pole line should remain the same long term. Or does it? I know the r...

Can ths be done with a coronagraph image over time, so as to highlight changes in direction and latitude of emissions? To some extent, but no ground-based coronagraph can approach the dynamic range accessible during an eclipse. One tricky point is that what we're seeing here is transient. The Sun i...

Yes, Pons-Brooks is a nice comet! :D https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/12P_Pons_Brooks_2024_03_30_JuneLake_DEBartlett1024.jpg APOD 4 April 2024 annotated.png I still find it very interesting that Pons-Brooks is so "gassy", even though it has (or so I think) visited the vicinity of the...

Does the nebula from which the sun emerged still exist? Run 3 Even if the nebula has been dispersed, there would still exist highly detectable traces of the emission cloud would there not? No, it no longer exists at all. It's material ended up in the Sun and in the other bodies that make up the Sol...

Says ChatGPT: The radioactive decay of nickel-56 (⁵⁶Ni) typically proceeds through electron capture, where one of the atom's inner shell electrons is captured by the nucleus, resulting in the transformation of a proton into a neutron. This process converts the nucleus into iron-56 (⁵⁶Fe) through th...

With a temperature near 200,000 K, WD J005311 is the hottest star known. The extreme properties of the central star are being powered by the residual radioactive decay of ⁵⁶Ni, where the usual half-life of 6.0 days from electron capture is increased to many centuries due to the nickel being complet...

I agree but even the experts had to start somewhere . :thumb_up: I wasn't making any objection to your comment here! Thank you for the clarity you offer to all of us. You class is bigger than just the students in school. We've all had teachers that changed our lives and pushed us to think better. :...

I should have commented on this APOD before, because it is really stunning! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/CoronaExmouth_Hart_1080.jpg APOD 2 April 2024 annotated.png So these are my questions. Are the long straight lines magnetic lines, where particles rush out away from the Sun into the ou...

Does the nebula from which the sun emerged still exist? Run 3 Even if the nebula has been dispersed, there would still exist highly detectable traces of the emission cloud would there not? No, it no longer exists at all. It's material ended up in the Sun and in the other bodies that make up the Sol...

Speculation is natural and a good start for later stages of theory. Perhaps, periodically, it flips from inverse to an un-inverse . :idea: It has a nice symmetry though one too many “n’s”. :wink: Consensus is one of the most important parts of science and the scientific method, though. Speculation ...

I read a news: Bruno Bento, researcher at the departament of mathematical scienses at the University of Liverpool, England, states that," perhaps, ( in the Universe), there was not even a beginning" Proposes an infinite past and sees the Big Bang as one more event " in a cosmos that ...

Not sure if this is a correct way to put it but solar wind is the corona spreading ever further out into space, so even we here on Earth are in a sense bathing in the Sun's corona! Luckily it has cooled down on the way. While the density of the coronal material (the solar wind) is much reduced by t...

How far out do the petals of the corona extend? They seem huge. Not sure if this is a correct way to put it but solar wind is the corona spreading ever further out into space, so even we here on Earth are in a sense bathing in the Sun's corona! Luckily it has cooled down on the way. While the densi...

I read a news: Bruno Bento, researcher at the departament of mathematical scienses at the University of Liverpool, England, states that," perhaps, ( in the Universe), there was not even a beginning" Proposes an infinite past and sees the Big Bang as one more event " in a cosmos that ...

So the accretion disk "looks" the same from any POV, yet the geometry of it (and presumably the matching magnetic field that we see here) would look different? Are different, despite the appearance after all the directions light travels have been distorted. That's my understanding. Ok. My...

Ok. What's confusing here then is that assuming this imaging of the magnetic field lines would look the same from any angle - and it looks pretty non randomly flowing here! - then what does that say about the magnetic field as a whole? Too bad we don't have a near by BH to send a probe to to find o...

So if the accretion disk can be seen perpendicularly to the line of sight from any angle (as other posts of videos point out), and we're viewing the magnetic field lines in the accretion disk in this APOD image in that same perpendicular/face-on way, what is the overall form of the magnetic field o...

I have nothing to say about the magnetic lines in today's APOD, but there is a video that explains why the black hole images (minus the magnetic lines) look the way they do. Minor nit. The lines indicate polarization of electromagnetic radiation. This is most likely a proxy for magnetic fields. So ...