It Is Enough
To know that the atoms
of my body will remain to think of them rising through the roots of a great oak to live in leaves, branches, twigs perhaps to feed the crimson peony the blue iris the broccoli or rest on water freeze and thaw with the seasons some atoms might become a bit of fluff on the wing of a chickadee to feel the breeze know the support of air and some might drift up and up into space star dust returning from whence it came it is enough to know that as long as there is a universe I am a part of it. |
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Thursday, January 23, 2014
"It Is Enough" Beautiful Poem! Atoms of My Body Remain Part of Universe
From The Writer's Almanac for January 22, 2014 with Garrison Keillor:
Monday, January 20, 2014
Cosmic "Hand of God" NASA Photo
'Hand of God' Spotted by NASA Space Telescope (Photo)
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer | January 09, 2014 02:45pm ET
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 The hand might look like an X-ray from the doctor's office, but it is actually a cloud of material ejected from a star that exploded. NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft has imaged the structure in high-energy X-rays for the first time, shown in blue. Lower-energy X-ray light previously detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is shown in green and red.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/McGill |
Religion and astronomy may not overlap often, but a new NASA X-ray image captures a celestial object that resembles the "Hand of God."
The cosmic "hand of God" photo was produced when a star exploded and ejected an enormous cloud of material, which NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, glimpsed in high-energy X-rays, shown in blue in the photo. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory had imaged the green and red parts previously, using lower-energy X-rays."NuSTAR's unique viewpoint, in seeing the highest-energy X-rays, is showing us well-studied objects and regions in a whole new light," NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.
The new image depicts a pulsar wind nebula, produced by the dense remnant of a star that exploded in a supernova. What's left behind is a pulsar, called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short), which spins around 7 times per second blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star's death throes.
As these particles interact with nearby magnetic fields, they produce an X-ray glow in the shape of a hand. (The pulsar is located near the bright white spot in the image but cannot be seen itself, NASA officials said.)
Scientists aren't sure whether the ejected material actually assumes the shape of a hand, or whether its interaction with the pulsar's particles is just making it appear that way.
"We don't know if the hand shape is an optical illusion," Hongjun An, of McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. "With NuSTAR, the hand looks more like a fist, which is giving us some clues."
The red cloud appearing at the fingertips is a separate structure called RCW 89. The pulsar's wind may be heating the cloud to produce the low-energy X-ray glow, astronomers believe.
The X-ray energies seen by NuSTAR range from 7 to 25 kiloelectron volts, or keV, whereas the energies seen by Chandra range from 0.5 to 2 keV.
The Hand of God is an example of pareidolia, the psychological phenomenon of perceiving familiar shapes in random or vague images. Other common forms of pareidolia include seeing animals or faces in clouds, or the man in the moon. Despite its supernatural appearance, the Hand of God was produced by natural astrophysical phenomena.
Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.
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AUTHOR BIO
Tanya Lewis
Tanya joined the LiveScience staff in 2013. She received a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2012. Before that, she earned a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University. She has interned previously at Wired.com, Science News, Stanford Medical School, and the radio program Big Picture Science. To find out what her latest project is, you can follow Tanya on Google+.Friday, October 18, 2013
Asteroid(s) On Path To Blow Up The Earth
Ukrainian astronomers reported yesterday (10/15/2013) that an asteroid 1,345 feet in diameter, which they call 2013 TV135, may hit the earth on August 26, 2032. The odds of impact are 1 in 63,000. "A 400-meter asteroid is threatening to blow up the Earth," Russian Vice Premier Dmitry Rogozin, in charge of his nation's space research, wrote Wednesday on his Twitter account. "Here is a super target for the national cosmonautics."(sic).
And from 2007:
And from 2007:
Asteroid on a Direct Path to Collide with Earth in 2036
My wife's usual response when I discuss an impossible plot or scene in a film is, "It's just a movie. Of course it's not real." That may be true for most of American cinema, but for movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact, both of which deal with a crisis involving a meteor colliding with Earth, they are more real than ever. According to AOL News, there is an asteroid on a direct path to collide with Earth in 2036. This asteroid, named Apophis, has an arrival date of April 13, 2036.
Before you start building your underground shelter, it's important for you to know that the chances of it actually making contact with the Earth are very slim. In fact, the chances are 1 in 45,000, to be exact. Although, Apophis isn't the only meteor that NASA is tracking. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of meteors and rocks that pose a thread to Earth, including a thousand yard-wide asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth in 2880. However, these numbers are still too close for comfort and a group of engineers are scientists are urging the United Nations to step in and develop the blue print for a global response to deal with such an issue. The Association of Space Explorers have already started working on the matter and will present a solution to the United Nations in 2009.
There are several different theories and principles on how NASA could deal with an asteroid threat. One of the easiest ways to deflect an asteroid like Apophis is to alter the surface, including the amount of heat energy it radiates. This thermal emission serves as the fuel for the asteroid, and if the asteroid's surface is somehow manipulated then ultimately it will affect its orbit and path. Just changing a small section on an asteroid will be enough for the asteroid to narrowly miss the Earth. This theory, called the Yarkovsky Effect, is often referred to as how an asteroid's trajectory can be manipulated by the amount of heat radiation.
According to AOL News, another approach would be to launch a spacecraft that would alter gravity so the asteroid will change its trajectory. The spacecraft, called a Gravity Tractor, would remain near the asteroid and after a few efforts to "tug" it the asteroid would change the course. The site estimates that, taking the size of the Apophis asteroid into consideration, it would take approximately twelve days of "tugging" in order for the operation to be successful. The mission is reported to costs hundreds of millions of dollars, but I'd say that it's the best money that taxpayers ever spent.
After all, this 460-foot object could take out an entire city or region, but the ultimate conclusion would be catastrophic and the asteroid's harmful effect would not discriminate from any country or city. Depending on what the asteroid is made of and how it hits the Earth would ultimately determine our fate. However, if it hit just right then the entire world and life forms, as we know it, would cease to exist.
Where are Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck when you need them the most?
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