Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland warns that Eta Carinae could be “seen to explode at any time.” [BBC News]
Esteemed NASA scientist Stefan Immler at the Goddard Space Flight Center thinks Eta Carinae could very well explode in our lifetime, or even in the next few years.
Well, maybe Earth has a little more time, right? Well, maybe not.
Some astrophysicists at the European Space Agency have suggested it’s quite possible, based on observational analysis, that the killer star has already gone hypernova thousands of years ago and the speeding death rays could inundate Earth in as little as a year.
How exciting. Of course, that something is “possible” is not to say that it is likely. The problem with this kind of event is that getting off the planet is no protection, per se, though if we were spacefaring, we could at least have shelters ready, and put out pickets in the outer solar system to give us some warning, since there’s some evidence that gamma rays are subluminal.
Ken Chang has an article about them in the New York Times. And over at The Space Review today, Andrew Gasser of Tea Party in Space defends them from the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt being sown by the defenders of the status quo.
…of gun control. As he notes, unlike the early days when the laws were explicitly driven by racism and a desire to disempower law-abiding blacks, the current laws continue to have that effect if not intent.
Why architects design such awful buildings. I think something similar goes on in the fashion industry. And if we don’t get how wonderful their creations are, there’s something wrong with us.
Some thoughts on the upcoming ignominious end to Occupy Wall Street:
…the value of the sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it falls. Obama told Wall Street that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. That scared them into line for a while. But now Wall Street’s sick of him, and doesn’t care. They’re not playing ball like they used to.
So he unleashed the pitchforks and what we got was the #occupy movement, a pathetic, and totally non-scary, embarrassment for the Democrats. Republicans are now hoping they’ll stay in place until November of 2012.
That Alinsky stuff just doesn’t work like it used to.
I took the weekend off from blogging, because after having been back in the house for two years, we finally decided to paint the living room/dining room.
OK, so after getting a speeding ticket a few blocks from the Frank Borman auto dealer last night, I’m driving my U-Haul special F-150 back down to El Paso (I may check with the local ATF office before I leave and see if they’d like me to deliver a few dozen government-funded machine guns to Juarez on the way, for a little extra income — I’ve got plenty of room in the bed, and I hear that they’re running low. Maybe some grenades, too. Maybe even MANPADS, if they’re on special this week).
There is one time a year I eat too much (or any) candy, and it’s in October.
But it’s not Halloween. It’s at the International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight, where they have candy bars and big bowls of M&Ms in the afternoon.