The Daily Croissant

Eclectic Perambulations in the Noosphere

  • The Most Astounding Fact {"We Are Stardust"}

    • 16 Mar 2012
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    • Astrophysics Film Shorts March 16 2012 Philosophy Universe music
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    via youtube.com
    "Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer."

     

    via soundcloud.com

    "Composed in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics added in 1929 by Mitchell Parish, one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century, with over 1,500 total recordings. In 2004, Carmichael's original 1927 recording of the song was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry."

    "And now the purple dusk of twilight time 
    Steals across the meadows of my heart
    High up in the sky the little stars climb
    Always reminding me that we're apart

    (You wander down the lane and far away)
    (Leaving me a song that will not die)
    (Love is now the stardust of yesterday)
    (The music of the years gone by)

    Sometimes I wonder why I spend
    The lonely night dreaming of a song
    The melody haunts my reverie
    And I am once again with you
    When our love was new
    And each kiss an inspiration
    But that was long ago
    Now my consolation
    Is in the stardust of a song

    Beside a garden wall
    When stars are bright
    You are in my arms
    The nightingale tells his fairy tale
    of paradise where roses grew
    Though I dream in vain
    In my heart it will remain
    My stardust melody
    The memory of love's refrain"

     

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  • Elenin and the Mystery of Exploding Comets

    • 15 Mar 2012
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    • Astrophysics Comets Electric March 15 2012 Theories Universe
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    "Electric universe proponent David Talbott takes up the Comet Elenin question from a vantage point generally ignored by both the scientific mainstream and the Internet popularizers of Doomsday speculations. What is the relationship of Elenin's catastrophic demise to the larger, unsolved mystery of explosive comet disintegration? For a first look at the larger context, see "Seeking the Third Story"" 
    via youtube.com

     

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  • Vision of the Sun's Death Throes

    • 1 Jan 2012
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    • Astronomy Astrophysics Death January 01 2012 sun
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    Media_httpidailymailc_mokzl
    "Astrophotographer Bill Snyder captured the Dumbbell Nebula - a cloud of star debris which offers a vision of the death throes of our own solar system. 
    'All the expanding gas and dust in this image was inside that star,' says Snyder. When sun-like stars die they 'puff' out their outer layers of gas, which form a huge cloud lit up by core of the dead star.
    Our own sun will blossom into a similar nebula when it dies in about five billion years."
    via dailymail.co.uk

     

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  • Sturm und Drang

    • 23 Nov 2011
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    • 22November11 Astronomy Astrophysics Uranus
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    Media_httpwwwthunderb_nhgen

    The planet Uranus with a few of its moons.
    Credit: NASA/ESA and H. B. Hammel

    "Uranus recently erupted with a new bright region in its lower latitudes. Could electrical effects be responsible ?"

    via thunderbolts.info

     

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  • From the Beginning of Time

    • 19 Nov 2011
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    • 18November11 Astronomy Astrophysics Time
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    Media_httpwwwuniverse_yfblv

    Credit: Simulation by Ceverino, Dekel & Primack

    "Is there any place in space which hasn’t been affected by time ? The answer is yes. Thanks to some very awesome research, the W. M. Keck Observatory and a team of scientists have recently located two clumps of primordial gas which may very well have had its origin within minutes of the Big Bang.

    How do we know these gas clouds are so special? In this case, they are simply too disseminated to enable stellar birth and contain no heavy metals which would support it. These diaphanous regions are pure hydrogen and helium… along with a heavier isotope, deuterium. This combination could mean the two billion year old regions are pure – never involved in the star-forming process. An exciting discovery ? You bet. The clouds could have possibly survived in an unchanged state – giving us a look at what may have occurred at the dawn of time."

    via universetoday.com

     

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  • The Pirouette of Discovered Spiral Star SAO 206462 in Lupus

    • 7 Nov 2011
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    • 06November11 Astronomy Astrophysics Discoveries
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    "Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system.  

    This recent discovery of a star with spiral arms startled researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. SAO 206462 is more than four hundred light years from Earth in the constellation Lupus, the wolf."

    via dailygalaxy.com


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  • Planetary Pinball – Uranus Gets The “Tilt”

    • 14 Oct 2011
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    • 13October11 Astronomy Astrophysics Uranus
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    Media_httpwwwuniverse_rgnir

    "At a 98 degree inclination, Uranus and its satellites have always been somewhat of a mystery to planetary scientists. While many of the Solar Systems planets have an inclined axis, none can compare with nearly being on its side.  

    Popular theory on how Uranus ended up with a highly eccentric axis has always been pretty standard – one giant blow. However, at today’s (October 6) EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting in Nantes, astronomers are thinking things may have occurred slightly differently. Instead of a singular impact, the glowing blue-green gas giant may have been the victim of a series of smaller punches."

    via universetoday.com

     

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  • Doubting the Dark

    • 29 Aug 2011
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    • 28August11 Astronomy Astrophysics Dark Matter
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    Media_httpwwwthunderb_sbebf

    Supposed galaxy density in the Cosmic Evolution Survey. Redshift of 0.2 (blue) to 1 (red).
    X-ray emission contours in pink.

    Dark matter theory's claims have not convinced everyone in consensus circles.

    Another in a series of announcements from NASA and the European Space Agency reports "the confirmation" of dark matter. Dark matter, as its name implies, is non-luminous, invisible to telescopes, and weakly interacting (at best) with the "baryonic" matter around it. However, its existence has been considered an essential aspect of cosmology because, as an ESA scientist put it a few years ago: "Our own galaxy should have fallen apart by now, so dark matter—this unseen force—is somewhere keeping it glued together."

    via thunderbolts.info

     

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  • A Galactic Fairy Ring

    • 29 Aug 2011
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    • 28August11 Astronomy Astrophysics Plasma Universe
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    Media_httpwwwthunderb_bxhgx

    "Today’s image is  billed as a ring of black holes. As such, it presents a fairy ring of gravitational fantasies.  

    The first fairy dances a fantasy of Redshift-is-Proportional-to-Distance, overlooking half a century of contrary evidence. That puts the ring far away. For the ring to appear as bright as it does, a second fairy must dance a pas de deux of Super Luminosity. To get that much energy from the feeble force of gravity, a third fairy must support the others with the Dance of Great Mass.  

    Since the ring is constrained by the Assumption of Equivalence of Mass and Matter, a fourth fairy must squeeze in—and be squeezed to a supernatural density. She (or he, we can’t tell at these densities) can’t dance but can only quiver and quake. When the other fairies bump into her, she does emit X-rays. The ring is the result of the crowded stage and the bumping.  

    Fairy rings and fantasy dances are entertaining, but when a theory requires this much supernaturalism, it would be wise to question assumptions. Astronomers no longer see what’s there but gaze with incurious enchantment upon artists’ impressions of obsolete hypotheses......

    ....As “mass and gas” astronomy pirouettes to ever more fanciful dances, plasma astronomy describes a natural history of electrical phenomena."      Mel Acheson

    via thunderbolts.info


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  • Searching For Gravitational Waves

    • 23 Aug 2011
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    • 22August11 Astrophysics Detection Gravity Phenomena Waves
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    Media_httpwwwuniverse_btyeu

    Two-dimensional representation of gravitational waves generated by two neutron stars surrounding each other. Credit: NASA

    "Colliding neutron stars and black holes, supernova events, rotating neutron stars and other cataclysmic cosmic events… Einstein predicted they would all have something in common – oscillations in the fabric of space-time. This summer European scientists have joined forces to prove Einstein was right and capture evidence of the existence of gravitational waves."

    via universetoday.com  

     

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