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You likely heard about it a few days ago. NASA announced the detection of a supernova turning into a black hole. It was big news and justifiably so.
The story starts back in 1979 when an amateur astronomer observed a supernova. It was the third one seen in 1979 and thus named 1979C. Yes all that astronomical numbering is real complicated you know;).
You probably know that a supernova marks the end of a star’s life when it explodes. Only big stars go out this way and our star (aka the sun) will die a rather wimpy death as a red giant. Supernova 1979C was a star big enough to explode. A star has to be around 8 times more massive than the sun to do this.
A young graduate student named Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar is the person who first worked this out. His friends called him Chandra and now you know how the famous x-ray telescope got it’s name.
So how did Astrophysicists work out that supernova 1979c has become a black hole?
Look at the pics..
Location of supernova 1979c in a galaxy 50 million light years from Earth. All of these are NASA/CHANDRA images.
If you look at this area with just x-ray light you see a very bright star.
X-Ray images show strong radiation coming from the location of the 1979 supernova.
What if we look in the infra-red?
Nothing there in the IR images.
The visible light wavelengths show nothing either.
So the experts with the Chandra telescope (One of whom is my neighbor) have deduced that the star that produced supernova 1979C has collapsed into a black hole.
At least that’s the story that appears in the press releases, and the peer reviewed astronomical journals. Is there something missing here from the main stream TV and newspaper reports?
With tongue firmly planted in cheek let’s explore further…
Surely the press could have found an astrophysicist somewhere who does not believe in black holes! Back in the 1960′s there were plenty of reports with scientists calling the idea preposterous!
I have found several pages on the Internet where people are calling everything to do with black holes “liberal pseudoscience“. Why did we not see any of their quotes in the press?
No one has stolen the emails of these astrophysicists, so I guess the papers could not publish them, but what might they show? Could they be hiding something? Are the media missing supernova-gate?
What about the fact that this black hole is 50 million light years away. The whole event happened way before humans invented the telescope. So, if that’s the case, how could we possibly detect it!
Surely there is a petition out there signed by hundreds veterinarians, MD’s and retired chemists. You know, the one signed by all those bonafide scientists who think this is all a hoax. Obviously a ploy to get more funding for astronomy!
Nope, nothing about any of that in the press reports. Not even a quote from a scientist in another field who has never published a paper on black holes.
How about the public? Don’t they get a say? How many really believe we can even see something that happened 50 million years ago in a galaxy far, far away?
It seems to me that many in the media need to take an example from their coverage of climate science and publish the real truth.
Perhaps even the Congress should hold hearings. It will be easy to get real scientists to testify. You know, people who have spent a lifetime learning the complicated math of astrophysics, and written dozens of papers in such prestigious journals as Science and Nature.
These black hole alarmists will of course say it’s based on peer reviewed science, but Congress will need to find someone on the other side of the issue. That should be easy enough. Just google the phrase “Moon Landing Hoax” and follow the lead.
Plenty of experts there!
I look forward to the entire story of supernova-gate being published soon.
This post is dedicated to those climate researchers (Like Dr. Ben Santer of LLNL) who were accused with flimsy evidence of being liars and worse. ALL have now been totally cleared. Why was that fact buried deep in a broadsheet (or not even reported) by many of those who made the accusations?
Author: | Posted on: 18. November 2010 at 17:55 pm | Filed under: Astronomy, Opinion, Space | 0 Comments
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You have likely heard about the Large Hadron Collider. You probably even now they are searching for an elusive atomic particle called the Higgs Bosun.
Want to know why it’s so important and just how incredible the LHC machine is?
Watch this video and then watch an explanation by Brian Cox that I posted last week.
Author: | Posted on: 15. November 2010 at 22:22 pm | Filed under: Science, Video | 0 Comments
This blog has moved to the AGU Blogosphere. Click the image to go there!
A viewer emailed me some amazing pictures today. They appear to show floating layers of snow surrounding trees. Pretty cool, no??
So what caused this?
Dr. von Tiesenhausen has an explanation that is very thoughtful. I will let him explain it in his email:
“As best as I can tell, what happened was that the water level had been up, since Huntsville is used as a watershed by the TVA. Then we had a big freeze, and the area on the photo was iced in. Then the TVA dams must have dropped the water level by about a foot or so, breaking off the ice that had formed around the trees, but leaving ice rings. Then it snowed, covering the ice rings but not the water, and then everything froze again, leaving the black ice below, with the snowed up rings around the trees above, creating a surreal image in the woods.”
Occam’s razor is at work here. In case you are not familiar with it, it can be stated as “The simplest and most likely explanation is probably the correct one.” It seems to me that Dr. von Tiesenhausen has come up with just that.
You can read a much more detailed discussion of Occam’s razor here.
Excellent scientific reasoning Georg!
Thanks!
Note: Dr. von Tiesenhausen is a well known educator in Huntsville, as well as my daughter’s high school English teacher.
Author: | Posted on: 12. November 2010 at 20:55 pm | Filed under: Photographing Weather | 0 Comments
Thanks for letting me know. I'll shop somewhere that isn't trying to scam me.
You are on the OLD home of the Wild Wild Science Journal. Click the image to go to the new one on the AGU Blogosphere!
No blog post I’ve ever written has had more comment than the one about these so called “magic power bracelets” being sold on cable TV.
You know the ads- They promise this little bracelet will harness your bodies natural energy field and correct all kinds of problems. Issues like balance and the sudden urge to eat dog food among others. They don’t, however, seem to correct the urge to throw money away.
While skimming the blogosphere tonight, I see Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy has a post up about the University of Colorado Athletic Department. They are licensing their logo to be sold on these bracelets. That left me utterly dumbfounded.
Then I find this. It’s on a well known news site. These people are in college! You know, that place where you are supposed to pick up some knowledge!
Just to be clear, one more time.
This is QUACKERY.
iPower, iRenew, Power Balance they are all the same.
They are lying to you. There is no such thing as an energy field around your body. If there was, this little piece of plastic wouldn’t control it.
My favourite quote is by Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. It’s very apropos here: “The laws of physics are real, everything else is just politics.”
A note to my alma-mater, The University of Oklahoma: If you start licensing this kind of quackery, you can save the stamp on that letter you send me each year asking for money.
For those of you about to write me and tell me that you bought one, and that it has actually curbed you urge to eat dog food, etc. Let me ask you to read this first.
Most people in science see this kind of thing and just shake their heads. We live in an age where science needs to stand up and not be afraid to call something like this out. With America 21st in the world in maths and 25th in science, it’s even more imperative.
Note this blog is now part of the AGU Blogs- Go here! I will double post for awhile but please bookmark the new site. There are other great Earth science blogs at AGU as well.
Author: | Posted on: 9. November 2010 at 22:40 pm | Filed under: Miscellaneous, Opinion, Quackery, Science | 3 Comments
Image from National Climate Data Center/NOAA
The incredible warmth globally this year has continued into October across America. Almost the entire 48 states were above normal in October. The Mountain West and the North were the warmest.
From Gerald Meehl Nat. Centers For Atmospheric Research
This warmth also shows up in the temperature extremes. Nationwide, there were 1544 new record highs in October. Only 321 record lows were set.
This trend has actually been increasing for decades now. Is it another sign of our warming global climate? I wrote a post on this awhile back.
It now seems that 2010 will be no different. The trend continues. Over 2 record highs for every record low.
What makes this even more incredible is that we have a strong La Nina in the Pacific right now. La Nina’s are (in many, but not all) ways the opposite of El Nino. Look at the ocean temperatures on the image to the right. A large area of colder than normal water is cooling the air over the Pacific Ocean. This actually cools the planet down some (about 0.1° C). El Nino’s warm us up about the same amount.
From NOAA-ESRL- Blue is below normal water temperature. The La Nina in the Equatorial Pacific shows up clearly. It's been developing since August. Click for a much larger image.
In spite of this, 2010 may end up being the warmest year globally on record. With the La Nina in full bore, we still set 8 record highs for every record low in October.
We are almost certainly witnessing something that has not been seen in thousands of years. A major shift in the planet’s climate.
While there are month to month and even decade to decade fluctuations in the global temperature, there is nothing left to explain the long term rise. Everything except rising greenhouse gases have been ruled out…
Author: | Posted on: 8. November 2010 at 17:01 pm | Filed under: Climate, Climate Change, Global Warming, Science, Weather News | 0 Comments
