If there's one thing I've realized when writing articles about space, is that it is very easy to link a mysterious astronomical phenomena with doom. If not doom for Earth, certainly doom resulting in a huge explosion of some kind, destroying something, somewhere...
Up to bat for this week's Discovery Space Wrap Up: Four-way galaxy cluster crash spied by Hubble and Chandra telescopes, Asteroid collision predates dinosaur extinction by 300,000 years, The last time you'll see two space shuttles out at NASA launch pads -- ever:
I can't believe Phil Plait -- the Bad Astronomer himself and persistent plucker of pareidoliac photos -- hasn't posted about this gem from NASA's Image of the Day!
Take a look, and prepare to be frightened:
Aaaaaaaaagh!!
I dare you to tell me that this is not the creepiest (legitimate) space image you have ever laid eyes on...
...that's what I thought.
What does it all mean, you ask?
The latest video from yours truly:
Note: Thankfully, YouTube has a wonderful annotations editor -- which lets me add in nifty facts and correct my word fumbling that I don't notice until after shooting a decent 3-5 minute take.
Neutron stars might be tiny, but they can be extremely temperamental.
Case in point is SGR J1550-5418. That's an unwieldy name, but you could deem it a magnetar, pulsar, gamma-ray repeater, or just plain naughty:
This little bugger is 12 miles across but it likely packs more mass than the sun, which is about 21,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
Just a teaspoon of the neutron star, in fact, would weigh in at about 10 million tons (no spoonful of sugar could help that go down).
So where do these violent outbursts -- at times 20 years worth of sun energy -- come from?
Cosmic collisions. If those two words don't send your neurons into a tizzy, I question whether you are human.
You should imagine asteroids smacking into the Earth, fire and destruction, and all of that other Armageddon goodness we humans are oh-so-fascinated with. Which is why the Discovery Channel decided to bring you a great three-part special called, well, "Cosmic Collisions."
Click here for the schedule which you can ask to send you an e-mail reminder. Cool right? Very useful for forgetful types (e.g. myself).
As of this posting, the first episode called "Galaxies" is set to air Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 10:00 p.m. ET.
And for the behind-the-scenes scoop on what the show covers, visit the Wide Angle I put together.
You can test your know-how by taking this quiz, browse real and imagined outer space smashups in a slide show, find out what comets have to do with life on Earth, discover the difference between asteroids and meteorites, and investigate what will happen to life on Earth after Andromeda whacks our host galaxy in a few billion years.
By the way: the show's timing couldn't be better! Ever heard of how a Mars-sized object gave Earth the kiss of death about 4.5 billion years ago, resulting in the created of the moon?
Well, get a load of this new story -- we now know the moon cooled from an "ocean of magma" into the solid body we look up at today about 100 million years after obliterating early Earth. That's more than twice as good as the estimate we had before, thanks to a little zircon crystal in a moon rock (which you can bet is more valuable than those impostor diamond rings).
Anyhow, feel free comment about the show below. And for reading all the way to the end of this post enjoy this special treat. It's a little something we cooked up but haven't officially put up on Discovery Space!
Photo: Don Davis, NASA
If you want incredible astronomy news straight from the source, this is it my friends:
It's AstronomyCast's live video feed -- complete with chatroom -- of the American Astronomical Society's 213th annual meeting.
Get a load of this bit of news from the American Astronomical Society meeting: Before there were galaxies, there were supermassive black holes. (Sort of.)
The UK's Telegraph has a well-rounded story up about it, and Discovery News' Irene Klotz is cranking one out as you read this.
But this is a Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?) universe, so let's dive right in.
My initial thought: Not surprised! Well, not that surprised. Let me explain.
Dr Ian O'Neill produces Discovery Space for the Discovery Channel. He is a solar physicist, but loves to write about manned space exploration and exposing the myths behind bad science. He can also be found ranting about space on Astroengine.com.
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