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Happy Thanksgiving!!!
I'm feeling better and I'll be back to posting after the holiday. In the meantime I'm wishing all of you and your families a wonderful T Day!
xoxo, Lori
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Happy Thanksgiving!!!
I'm feeling better and I'll be back to posting after the holiday. In the meantime I'm wishing all of you and your families a wonderful T Day!
xoxo, Lori
Friday, November 13, 2009
Okay, I'm Out of the Hospital
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I have nothing clever to say.
I was in the hospital and now I'm out.
It's good to be out.
And now, as they say, I'm out like a light.
see also: hypogammaglobulinemia.
Night-night.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
GRB090423, or How Astronomy Gets Me Seriously Spaced Out
Forget Halloween, forget horror movies and creepy costumes. What really freaked me out this October was GRB090423.
(GRB090423)
For those of you not familiar with GRB090423 (and I'm guessing that's almost all of you), it's the oldest known object in the universe -- and it's not there anymore. It was there 13 billion years ago, but it's not anymore and scientists know that because it's 13 billion light years away, whatever that is (my head hurts).
Sometimes I think part of my trouble grasping astronomy is the result of not being taught much about it. In school the focus was on algebra (you know, 'if John is in a car traveling 412 miles at 61 miles per hour...'). There was geometry too, with its triangles and dodecahedrons that are really only important in life to architects, artists and geometry teachers. I know I took trigonometry, but I don't even remember what that is. There was some of what they called "earth science", but it wasn't much and it tended to focus more on earth than Earth.
In college I wanted to take astronomy but there was just too much physics, chemistry and math involved. They're not my strengths. (I suck at them.)
Besides, in the age of the Hubble telescope, so much more information is out there, with astonishing new findings coming in all the time. Which brings me back to the latest major finding, published in Nature on October 28 -- the discovery of the oldest known object in space.
GRB090423 is 13 billion years old. Thirteen billion years old. Imagine (I can't). And it's actually done exploding, but the last of its dying rays are only just now reaching us even though it isn't there anymore. Yes, it's gone.
(It's the tiny red dot in the center, but if you're following this, you know it's not really there at all)
At this point my head feels like it's going to explode.
When I look at the sun I tend to forget it's just another star among billions and billions of stars (I can't comprehend billions of dollars, let alone billions of stars) and that these stars are joined together in what are called galaxies, and that out of the billions of stars many have planets and thus there are billions of planets besides Earth.
(a few stars)
Ow, it hurts my head to think about it.
When I do think about it (which, mercifully, isn't often) I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that Pluto isn't a planet, as we were brought up to believe. In 2006 scientists announced it's not a planet; it's just a giant ball of ice and rock. Three years later I'm still having trouble letting go of Pluto.
And it's not just "distant" objects that stupify me. I'm blown away by our very own star, the sun, which is quite local considering it's only 93 million miles away from us. (And I thought California was far.)
The star that is our sun is one of approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (pictured below). Our sun is 4.57 bilion years old, and so it's approximately halfway through its expected lifetime of 10 billion years. In 10 billion years it will be gone, and everything in our solar system with it.
As soon as I'm over the fact that the sun will explode itself out of existence in around five billion years, I remember that that's only if a black hole doesn't come along and swallow it first, swallow the entire Milky Way and everything in it, including us.
A black hole is a huge region of space in which light cannot penetrate (how is that possible) and which has a one-way surface into which things (like entire galaxies) fall but cannot emerge. In other words for a celestial body to encounter a black hole means it will be sucked into it and never get out (how do they know this if the stuff is stuck in the black hole).
(actual black hole)
Understand, I'm not one of those people who doesn't "believe" in astronomy. For me it isn't about belief; that would be like not believing in eyelashes or sparrows. It's real, all right. Science can tell us a lot about the universe, but we only have to look up to know it's there. (Pass the Motrin, please.)
The universe, with its planets and stars and constellations and galaxies and black holes, is most definitely out there, orbiting, exploding, swallowing and in the case of our own personal star, lighting our way, every day.
Welcome to the neighborhood, GRB090423. Oh wait, you're not there anymore.
(GRB090423)
For those of you not familiar with GRB090423 (and I'm guessing that's almost all of you), it's the oldest known object in the universe -- and it's not there anymore. It was there 13 billion years ago, but it's not anymore and scientists know that because it's 13 billion light years away, whatever that is (my head hurts).
Sometimes I think part of my trouble grasping astronomy is the result of not being taught much about it. In school the focus was on algebra (you know, 'if John is in a car traveling 412 miles at 61 miles per hour...'). There was geometry too, with its triangles and dodecahedrons that are really only important in life to architects, artists and geometry teachers. I know I took trigonometry, but I don't even remember what that is. There was some of what they called "earth science", but it wasn't much and it tended to focus more on earth than Earth.
In college I wanted to take astronomy but there was just too much physics, chemistry and math involved. They're not my strengths. (I suck at them.)
Besides, in the age of the Hubble telescope, so much more information is out there, with astonishing new findings coming in all the time. Which brings me back to the latest major finding, published in Nature on October 28 -- the discovery of the oldest known object in space.
GRB090423 is 13 billion years old. Thirteen billion years old. Imagine (I can't). And it's actually done exploding, but the last of its dying rays are only just now reaching us even though it isn't there anymore. Yes, it's gone.
(It's the tiny red dot in the center, but if you're following this, you know it's not really there at all)
At this point my head feels like it's going to explode.
When I look at the sun I tend to forget it's just another star among billions and billions of stars (I can't comprehend billions of dollars, let alone billions of stars) and that these stars are joined together in what are called galaxies, and that out of the billions of stars many have planets and thus there are billions of planets besides Earth.
(a few stars)
Ow, it hurts my head to think about it.
When I do think about it (which, mercifully, isn't often) I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that Pluto isn't a planet, as we were brought up to believe. In 2006 scientists announced it's not a planet; it's just a giant ball of ice and rock. Three years later I'm still having trouble letting go of Pluto.
And it's not just "distant" objects that stupify me. I'm blown away by our very own star, the sun, which is quite local considering it's only 93 million miles away from us. (And I thought California was far.)
The star that is our sun is one of approximately 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy (pictured below). Our sun is 4.57 bilion years old, and so it's approximately halfway through its expected lifetime of 10 billion years. In 10 billion years it will be gone, and everything in our solar system with it.
As soon as I'm over the fact that the sun will explode itself out of existence in around five billion years, I remember that that's only if a black hole doesn't come along and swallow it first, swallow the entire Milky Way and everything in it, including us.
A black hole is a huge region of space in which light cannot penetrate (how is that possible) and which has a one-way surface into which things (like entire galaxies) fall but cannot emerge. In other words for a celestial body to encounter a black hole means it will be sucked into it and never get out (how do they know this if the stuff is stuck in the black hole).
(actual black hole)
Understand, I'm not one of those people who doesn't "believe" in astronomy. For me it isn't about belief; that would be like not believing in eyelashes or sparrows. It's real, all right. Science can tell us a lot about the universe, but we only have to look up to know it's there. (Pass the Motrin, please.)
The universe, with its planets and stars and constellations and galaxies and black holes, is most definitely out there, orbiting, exploding, swallowing and in the case of our own personal star, lighting our way, every day.
Welcome to the neighborhood, GRB090423. Oh wait, you're not there anymore.
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