31 Days of Planets: Fiery Planet of Doom

Day 25

The Fiery Planet of Doom! as you might think, is not a place in a video game. Although it might be. And that would be awesome. It is not the place that parents tell their children they will go when they lie, and it is not the place that haunts your nightmares. Well, actually, I don't know that. It might be. It's real name is WASP 18b, such clever and intriguing name, and this planet is the superhero of planets: the Flash!

It whips around its sun in less than a day (an Earth day). In addition, it is more than 10x the size of Jupiter! That is huge, in case you didn't realize. HUGE. And the planet is so close to the sun it is extremely blazing hot, and about to crash into the sun... making it a fiery planet... of doom.

If THE FLASH had more control over its general direction, it would be a fiery, fast, fortuitous, fabled, fantastic, fabulous, formidable, furious, free, fierce, flaring, flickering, flashy, ferocious, fearless, forceful, frenzied, flaming FLASH!

In conclusion, this might actually be where you go when you lie.

Picture from here.

31 Days of Planets: Earth 2.0

Day 18

Three-ish days ago, scientists announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet in the Alpha-Centaui system- which is made up of 2 sun-like stars and one red dwarf. They call it Bb. This new Earth-sized planet is a bit too close to its star for our comfort, averaging a 1,200 degrees Celsius. Maybe we could dig tunnels and live underground? At any rate, the idea is that if there is one small planet in a solar system, there are likely more small planets. This is exciting, because the likelihood of finding a small planet in the Goldilocks zone is high - and it might support or already have life! 

The other awesome thing about this planet, is that it is only four light years away from Earth. Now granted it would take a while to get there, but astronomically speaking, it's really close. One news article used the phrase "an astronomical stone's throw" which I think is a really intriguing statement which shows the clear concept of our own, tiny concept of distance in contrast with a universe-sized concept of distance.  

Some scientists think that NASA should drop everything and go find it. I say, one step at a time people. I'm all about going to find it, but we haven't even been to the moon in ages! I think that all kinds of astronomers would like doing all sorts of things, and instead of arguing about which things to do, we should just find ways to do more - and cheaper is probably better, so it might be a good idea to start with the solar system first. Besides, for all I know, one the Voyagers will just happen to end up in the Alpha Centauri system before we know it!

Here's a picture. It's not a photograph - don't be deceived!

In conclusion, Earth is not alone in the universe. And neither are we, probably.

For more information, read this article.

Picture from all the news articles.

31 Days of Planets: The Blue Giant

Day 13

A blue giant is actually a star. And it is gorgeous. Watch Stargate Universe.

Since today is the 13th, I felt it was only natural to take a break from planets and do a star. Of course, this star isn't necessarily real...

It looks like this:

When the Destiny (the space ship) was being attacked by bezerker drones, they needed to recharge by flying through a star. So they used a blue giant planet instead of their typical stars. Desperation calls for desperate measures, I suppose.

In conclusion, watch Stargate Universe.

But really, you can read about real blue giants here.

Pictures from Stargate Wiki.

31 Days of Planets: 55 Cancri e

Day 11

55 Cancri e is an exciting planet for multiple reasons. It orbits the sun-like star 55 Cancri A (very creative naming convention, I know). A sun-like star! You know what that means? There may be the possibility of an Earth-like planet which orbits a sun-like star, and an Earth-like planet may have Earth-like life... Aliens would be the best Christmas present ever.

In October 2012, they announced that this planet is a carbon planet. If the planet is composed largely of carbon, and is regularly subjected to high temperatures (over 3000 degrees F) and high pressure, then the carbon on this planet could be largely composed of diamond. A diamond planet! Amazing.

Imagine the views - so much sparkling! Of course, rough diamonds are not nearly as sparkly as cut diamonds, but it's fun to imagine... castles cut out of the ground, glittering turrets and impenetrable glowing walls; rolling hills of graphite, and kings who are never at a loss for diamond pencils.

And here it is - an artist's conception of the diamond planet orbiting its sun:

And the diamond core - which in real life is probably not so sparkly -

In conclusion - a diamond ring might be nice, but a diamond planet would be amazing.

Pictures from Reuters.

31 Days of Planets: Eris

Day 5: Eris

Eris is a real planet inside our solar system. Not a myth. Not some suddenly-appearing planet made up by crazy people. Some people claim that the planet Nibiru is actually Eris. This is not true.

Eris is a dwarf planet, probably bigger than Pluto. It resides past Neptune, and is known as a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet. It is the farthest known natural body in our solar system. It has one moon, Dysnomia, and the two were discovered in 2005. Eris was originally known as Xena, or Planet X.

Eris played an important role in modern astronomy - it forced scientists to differentiate between a planet and a dwarf planet. Many people were very upset when Pluto got "downgraded" from a planet - but in truth Pluto is still a planet, just a dwarf-planet. This is an important distinction because as we continue to discover more and more objects out in space, each with unique characteristics, we will have to have some way to classify them - just as scientists classify species and rocks and everything else imaginable. Then our human obsession with organizing everything will slowly be fulfilled in the arena of giant rock-like objects in space.

So what is a planet? you ask. Well, a planet orbits the sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has cleared its neighborhood of smaller objects around its orbit. This definition currently only applies to our solar system, but I'm sure eventually they'll expand it to "orbits a star" and then name everything else differently. Dwarf planets orbit the sun, is massive enough that its shape is controlled by gravitational forces, but hasn't cleared the neighborhood. Dwarf planets are like kids that like to play with other kids. Big planets are like grownups that build giant fences around their yard and call the cops if anyone cuts across the grass.

This is photo taken by the Keck telescope in Hawaii: 

This is an illustration of what Eris and Dysnomia might look like:

In conclusion, Eris is the first of many (planets, but not necessarily in our solar system). I can't wait to see what else is out there!

Pictures from NASA.

Imagining the Universe with Kitty Litter

If you imagine the universe, instead of as what exists beyond the the thin layer of elements that separate us from everything, but as an endless expanse of darkness with droplets of stars floating in determined circles around massive all-consuming, all-absorbing black holes, you'll discover that this is impossible. No matter how hard I know that the universe is thirteen billion years old, that stars are so massive it could take 1100 years to fly around one (a big one) in a jet plane, that millions and billions of these objects inhabit the rest of the dark, vast expanse of everything--in my head the looming rent bill still seems bigger.

When I see this picture-- 

--the biggest thing I can imagine is a dust storm blowing over cities and farms and continents. But this picture represents the birthing process of stars: the Orion Nebula having babies as big as or bigger than our sun, far bigger than our Earth, and incomprehensibly larger than me.

I'm a girl. Sometimes I feel fat. Well. Here's the thing:

Watch this. 

I'm not fat.

I like to imagine the universe. I spend hours and days and months and eventually years trying to picture it, to capture it with words or pictures or simply with thought, but I never will. I also don't care. Despite the immense impossibility of ever understanding the whole thing, it still fills me with wonder (which is a great feeling), reminds me that there's so much more to find and see than the little things that sit in front of me everyday, and it makes even the most mundane seem valuable.

Our magnificent universe, working and working without ever stopping, building and destroying, thinking and innovating; our magnificent universe, functioning in perfect rhythm, ignoring tiny little me who so admires its beauty and grace but still creating the perfect conditions for my existence; our magnificent universe filled with massive stars and planets, made of every element imaginable, filled with black holes and galaxies, life and death and existence, is swirling around itself, dying and breathing and living, and I am lucky enough to be allowed to change the kitty litter.




For more cool things about the size of the universe, check this!

Yes. You've got wrinkles, too. Make sure to name them appropriately.

Everyone gets bags under their eyes and wrinkles. Take Dave for example: he's only twenty four, but give him two weeks of working 12 -15 hour days, and suddenly the bags under his eyes are as big as Chandra's twin black holes, the gray hairs around his ears start reproducing exponentially, and he's got Mariana Trench-sized wrinkles.

The word wrinkle is a funny word, especially if you look at it too long. Like this:

WRINKLE

Or say it too many times like this:

wrinklewrinklewrinklewrinklewrinklewrinklewrinkle

See what I mean? If you google the word, the first thing that pops up is an ad for anti-wrinkle cream; the second is Wikipedia, which only discusses wrinkles on the skin (no disambiguation!), and the third is the Merriam-Webster dictionary which explains that the aging process is not the only definition of wrinkle: it's also a change in a customary procedure or innovation.

This morning I experienced a wrinkle. It started with this picture (which is awesome):

As I gazed at the picture I suddenly noticed, in the upper left hand corner, the word "supershell". To my great horror, I had no idea what that was. Wrinkle! 

So, you ask, what did I do? Well, I took my only possible course of action: I googled it. To my horror, once again, there was no Wikipedia article! In fact, there were no articles at all! Only research papers. Research papers are wonderful things, but please tell me how I'm supposed to learn anything from this: 

"H1 aperture synthesis maps of the LMC have revealed an ISM with a turbulent, fractal structure that is self-similar on scales from tens to hundreds of pc [18], likely due to the energy input of OB stars and supernova explosions. "

I kept looking. The whole process is enough to give me wrinkles.

As far as I can tell, a shell is just the outermost blanket of a star, the burning hydrogen. When a star is dying, it blows off this layer (as I explained here). This is also how stellar winds are created. Really, really, really big stars, like the blue supernovas, emit so much gas and dust that they create bubbles of hot gas-- also called stellar wind bubbles, which explode away from the star during its process of fusion reactions. Supershells are the result of a number of stars right next to each other, all exploding hot gas and dust simultaneously. Some scientists suggest that the Gum Nebula is actually a supershell.

So next time you look in a mirror and worry about getting wrinkles, just be glad that when you die you don't explode into giant clouds of gas and dust. Instead, just for posterity, you should name a wrinkle after every person that you know...

A Wish on an Exploding Star

If you wish on an exploding star, do you wishes explode too? Or do your wishes multiply?

A star is quite a fascinating phenomenon. It is a conflagration of interstellar gas and dust, which all collapses into a massive (or tiny, depending on your perspective) ball and starts releasing massive (or tiny) amounts of energy by way nuclear fusion reactions. Hydrogen fuses together in the star's core and forms helium (or He, which is also a pronoun and, when multiplied, an indication of virtual laughter).

The heat and carbon increase continually, until the helium nuclei produce carbon nuclei, and as the heat and temperature continue to increase, other elements are created, until the star consists of layers of seething, fusing, burning elements (which sounds terrifying, to be honest). Eventually, the star creates iron. The iron ignites and burns through all the remaining fuel within the star.

Then the layers collapse into the star at 1/4 the speed of light. The outer shells explode, flying outward into the deep, dark universe, brighter than the billions of stars, brighter than its whole galaxy. Within the star the heat and the elements combine and intersect, and build more and more elements, until the star has birthed all of the ingredients necessary for life. The supernova explodes and spits the elements of life outwards into the vacuum of space, where they dance and mingle with the elements that are already floating about.

BAM.

Happy birthday to us.

So that's why I wish on exploding stars. Because then my wishes come true--and then some.

If you're curious, read more about supernovas.

I am also including the Periodic Table, so you can see all of the exploding star's babies.

A Sad Candle

There are certain types of weather which are perfect for lighting candles. Well, they would be if I didn't buy cheap candles that burn out after only an hour of use.

For example, yesterday the sky was grey and the trees were orange. Rain droplets pelted down from the clouds, smacking the leaves hard enough to make them wave, but without enough force to break them from their parent--more like a slap on the wrist than a spanking. The wind shoved the branches of the trees back and forth, but luckily, trees are able to stand up against most winds.

This sort of weather is not classified as a storm, but more of a wet drizzle with an extra helping of cloud.

A storm looks more like this: a powerfully angry agglomerate of air smashing into the trunks of trees with the force of the Roman Army, so that the trees bow to the majesty of the winds; millions of beads of water falling simultaneously like bombs, exploding painfully as they crash into skin and leaves and dirt; rumbling thunder serenading the fury of world below; spikes of electricity piercing the earth with sparks and fire and pain.

Earth storms can be quite exhilarating. Then the sun comes out, and the blue-skied weather is beautiful once more.

But then the sun storms. These storms are far more terrifying than anything you can imagine. The sun is already a behemothic ball of writhing snakes of fire, contorting and twisting, blazing at fifteen million degrees Celsius. But when the sun storms, tongues of fire reach out into the blackness of space, towards Venus and Mercury and Earth, releasing the same amount of magnetic energy as hundreds of 100-ton hydrogen bombs exploding simultaneously.

If you were there, you would die.

Our sun will never have the storm of all storms, releasing all of it's energy at once, exploding itself and all surrounding planets and moons into the vast space, where the left over pieces will drift away, eventually crashing into other planets and suns and black holes. Instead it will merely burn out.

Like a sad candle. Which I will then use to light my house when it drizzles.

Moskowitz, Clara. "Giant Sunspot Releases Massive Solar Flare." 4 November 2011. http://www.space.com/13517-giant-sunspot-unleashes-massive-solar-flare.html Accessed 5 November 2011.

"What is a solar flare?" NASA. http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/sftheory/flare.htm Accessed 5 November 2011.

"Ask an astronomer: is the sun expanding? Will it every explode?" Cornell University. 10 February 2006. http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=232 Accessed 5 November 2011.

Watching the Universe Expand

They say the universe is expanding, faster than we ever imagined possible; so fast, in fact, that the end will come with planet-sized cubes of ice and the simultaneous explosions of a thousand million unopened cans of soda. My aunt told me that she plans to dress in layers. It's a rushing train, speeding by us at the speed of sound, at the speed of light, at the speed of time.

I don't plan to miss the show. One day I will be writing to you from the window of a space ship, or from a space suit on the moon. Of course, in order to accomplish this, I either need to acquire a lot of money in a short period of time, or wait until you are all up there with me, until outer space is next best vacation spot. So for now I will watch from my living room as one star floats by at a time.

Today I saw a "huge 'waterworld' [that] has boiling oceans hundreds of times as deep as Earth's"*. A world where one year lasts only eighteen hours, a world in which water exists in a confused state of vapor and liquid, and makes up 20% of the mass of the planet. A world in a family of five, orbiting 55 Cancri A, 40 light years from Earth. Another planet, another beautiful, unreachable world. And when the universe explodes, it will rain water in some confused state, but by the time it reaches me, only shards of ice will remain.




*Slack, Chris. "Huge 'waterworld' has boiling oceans hundreds of times as deep as Earth's". http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2053866/Planet-year-lasts-just-18-hours-waterworld-twice-size-Earth.html?ito=feeds-newsxml. DailyMail 10/26/2011. Web 27 October 2011.

*"Giant waterworld confirmed around naked eye star". technologyreview.com. MIT 10/26/2011. technologyreview. Web. 10/27/2011.