Tag Archives: astronomy

Jokes from the desk of a grad student: Vol 4 #westernu

One day, all of the world’s famous physicists decided to get together for a tea luncheon. Fortunately, the doorman was a grad student, and able to observe some of the guests…

* Everyone gravitated toward Newton, but he just kept moving around at a constant velocity and showed no reaction.
* Einstein thought it was a relatively good time.
* Coulomb got a real charge out of the whole thing.
* Cavendish wasn’t invited, but he had the balls to show up anyway.
* Cauchy, being the only mathematician there, still managed to integrate well with everyone.
* Thompson enjoyed the plum pudding.
* Pauli came late, but was mostly excluded from things, so he split.
* Pascal was under too much pressure to enjoy himself.
* Ohm spent most of the time resisting Ampere’s opinions on current events.
* Hamilton went to the buffet tables exactly once.
* Volt thought the social had a lot of potential.
* Hilbert was pretty spaced out for most of it.
* Heisenberg may or may not have been there.
* The Curies were there and just glowed the whole time.
* van der Waals forced himeself to mingle.
* Wien radiated a colourful personality.
* Millikan dropped his Italian oil dressing.
* de Broglie mostly just stood in the corner and waved.
* Hollerith liked the hole idea.
* Stefan and Boltzman got into some hot debates.
* Everyone was attracted to Tesla’s magnetic personality.
* Compton was a little scatter-brained at times.
* Bohr ate too much and got atomic ache.
* Watt turned out to be a powerful speaker.
* Hertz went back to the buffet table several times a minute.
* Faraday had quite a capacity for food.
* Oppenheimer got bombed.

Supernova 1987A Brightening! #westernu

The most famous supernova ever, 1987A, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

The link below shows the brightening of material (knots) in the ring surrounding the remnant over time.

This occurs as an outward-moving blast wave collides with the ring material and shock-heats it.

 

See the time-lapse by clicking on the image at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120227.html

 

Animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfiwDXv6g0Q

 

Article: http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1202/23sn/

Five planets to be visible in a single night this month

 

 

Dark Matter INSIDE a Star! #westernu

A recent article summarized on astrobites states that a star can capture WIMPS [hypothetical dark matter (DM) particles]. These DM particles can transport energy out of the star via collisions BUT do not contribute to radiation pressure since they do not interact/emit photons.

For high DM density environments [dwarf spheroidal galaxies] where a star captures many DM particles, the energy carried away from the inner stellar core can exceed the energy produced there! [see article]

This forces properties of the star to change and alters its position on the HR diagram.

 

Article:

http://astrobites.com/2012/02/08/dark-matter-inside-a-star/

Paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.5387

Jokes from the desk of a grad student: Vol 3 #westernu

Smearing ink on the eyepiece, so as to give the observer an appearance of a “black eye”.

What do you call a lawyer in space? A.) A good start

One blonde asks the other, “Which is closer, Florida or the Moon?
the second answers: “Duh! The Moon! You can’t see Florida from here!

A Higgs-Boson walks into a bar. The bartender says “You know, there were some guys looking for you.”