The Known Universe: Amazing Video!

Just Wow:

YouTube
- The Known Universe by AMNH: “The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010. “

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected?

Possibly huge news!

Has dark matter finally been detected? The Guardian: “For 80 years, it has eluded the finest minds in science. But tonight it appeared that the hunt may be over for dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that accounts for three-quarters of the mass of the universe.

In a series of coordinated announcements at several US laboratories, researchers said they believed they had captured dark matter in a defunct iron ore mine half a mile underground. The claim, if confirmed next year, will rank as one the most spectacular discoveries in physics in the past century.”

We’ll be studying Dark Matter/Energy a great deal this Spring, so stay in the loop!

Is Lithium the Key to Finding Extra-Solar Planets?

If you are in Robotics this semester, we briefly discussed this on Friday…

New Clues Discovered to Detect Alien Worlds (A Weekend Feature): “The key is lithium.  A stellar spectography survey of over five hundred stars reveals that known-planet-bearers, including our own Sun, have less than a hundredth of the lithium of ‘barren’ stars.  Stars don’t produce much lithium in their fusion reactions, so most share the same proportion of the element, which was created at the beginning of the universe.  But some stars seem to destroy their stock, fusing it into other elements, and a European team have found that they all have one thing in common: planets.”

I love lithium.

MH's First Telescope Viewing

Had to share…

MH’s First Telescope Viewing.

via MH’s First Telescope Viewing on Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Milky Way Composite

A new panoramic image of the full night sky — with the Milky Way as its centerpiece — has been made by piecing together 3,000 individual photographs.

Beautiful!

via 3,000 images combine for Milky Way portrait – Space.com- msnbc.com.

We Are Starstuff

We’ll be talking about elements this week as we begin our studies of the Periodic Table and the properties of elements.

A part of that study will help us understand how everything we see (including each other) ultimately comes from stars.

Pretty neat to think about when you think how connected you are to the universe…

We Come From Stars from Sam Harrelson on Vimeo.

Giant Ancient Black Holes That Emit Light?

Fascinating new observation…

Which brings us to the second issue: light coming from a black hole. Everyone knows that nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light, but that’s only after matter passes the “event horizon” – the ultimate one-way sign in spacetime. But as matter falls in towards this cut-off point it’s heated up by friction, radiating energy away as light, and this emission from infalling matter makes up over half of all the light detected from the distant galaxy. This is why we didn’t see it before – a little thing like a few hundred billion stars was outshone by the superheated material around the black hole.

via Giant Galaxy Surrounding the Most Distant Black Hole Ever Discovered at Edge of the Observable Universe.

400 Years Ago…

Go to Google tonight.

See this?

That has to do with this.

Nifty.

Why Am I a Science Teacher?

When I was in 7th grade (way back in the early 1990′s), my dad gave me my first computer. Of course, this was before the days of the World Wide Web being used as it is today, so there wasn’t much “mult-media” accessible on the computer (not that it could have handled much to begin with!). However, I did have a CD-ROM (be thankful those are mostly antiques now) of “Famous Speeches” that came with the computer.

I only remember watching one video on that disc, and it was this one. It changed my life and made me dream beyond my small hometown. I still cry every time Pres. Kennedy says “Why some say go to the Moon?…”

This is a video about dreaming, determination, freedom and humanity’s greatness.

As a result of this speech (and watching it countless times on my now-ancient computer collecting dust in my parent’s attic), I’m a science teacher.

Dream big.

The View

This is just awesome:

The View

Astronaut Michael Good peers through a window toward Atlantis’ crew cabin interior, where his shirt-sleeved support team members busy themselves to aid the flight’s second of five spacewalks to perform work on the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronaut Mike Massimino can be seen in the background at work on the port side of the shuttle’s cargo bay.

Image Credit: NASA