The Space Thread

I was thinking something similar.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

,

Nothing quite as spectacular. It's pure speculation at this point but it's possible that it might be something approximately Earth-sized.

About white dwarfs.... Erm. They are actually the slowly-cooling leftovers from a kablooie: that's their whole gig. <_< It's yellow and red dwarfs that aren't (and the brown dwarfs that are kind of neither one thing nor the other).

And, yellow dwarfs are likely to turn in to red giants and go kablooie. I wasn't suggesting supernova kablooie, here. Just your standard, regular nova that's a healthy part of a regular-sized solar body's existence and cycle and that won't wind up in anything like a black hole or it's lesser mate the neutron beacon of gamma-ray hell. -_-

When it comes to the pension plans for stars, you basically get white dwarf, neutron star, pulsar and black hole. If they really paid into the pot (or just live in the wrong part of town), they can hope to become part of a supermassive black hole one day by joining up with like-minded individuals.

Oh — and a white dwarf can look forward to trying to turn into the theoretical black dwarf down the line (the universe is in no way old enough for the first crop of white dwarfs to have even got halfway there, yet). The problem is... that may take so long that entropy might win enough before they cool that much that nobody will be around to notice. -_-

...

Actually, "pension plan" might have been the wrong choice of analogue. Stars will spend the vast majority of their existence not as regular stars unless they luck out from the start and are small enough to escape the kablooie stage. <_< Maybe I should have gone for turning adult? <scratches head> No, that wouldn't work: red dwarfs aren't exactly constant teens.

edited 27th Mar '14 2:12:09 AM by Euodiachloris

Not exactly a kablooie. The major part of the star is expelled, but at a force that resembles a water balloon bursting when compared to the supernova's nuke.

edited 27th Mar '14 3:38:43 AM by Elfive

When you expand and take out the immediate neighbourhood (and, by the looks of it, take some of in doing so) in a series of bursts of intense energy... you might not be doing the supernova nuke, but you aren't exactly being a damp squib, either.

edited 27th Mar '14 4:54:23 AM by Euodiachloris

Big water balloon then

Oh really when?

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own... Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us: creatures from The Dark Planet...

Keep Rolling On

First ring system around asteroid: Chariklo found to have two rings

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Oh, wow: that certainly trumps a dwarf planet.

"The team found that the ring system consists of two sharply confined rings only seven and three kilometres wide, separated by a clear gap of nine kilometres — around a small 250-kilometre diameter object orbiting beyond Saturn."

Neat.

The thing is, we've (probably) only found a few of the little ice balls that are out there. In the end we're likely to have more like hundreds or thousands of such 'planets'.

Join my forum game!

There was that bit about possibly detecting the faintest whiff of a big thing that would qualify as a legit planet maybe.

I remember when I was little and there was speculating about a 10th "Planet X". And then Pluto got demoted to a dwarf planet when they found so many other dwarfs

Yup... which is why finding a new dwarf to name doesn't exactly make my skin tingle any more. Unless it turns out to be really, really weird. Frankly, I suspect enough will start getting found that they'll mostly stick to serial numbers. Particularly for the less impressive specimens.

Now what would interest me is how many of 'em could turn out to have rings, thanks to this other find. <drools> It does raise a question: do rings depend on where you are more than how much you mass?

Apparently This Matters: NASA's new spacesuit

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Jesus Christ, the amount of unnecessary snark in that article.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

First sightings of solar flare phenomena confirm 3-D models of space weather

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Ignore the comments - you'll live longer for it.

Even if I had different face, I AM STILL DISGRACED.

'Geologic clock' helps determine moon's age

Ancient volcanic explosions shed light on Mercury's origins

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Part of me is imagining all the inner planets and asteroids basically being all toddler about their volatiles for as long as possible. "It's mine!" <clutches> "Can't have! I'll bite!"

Watched, and enjoyed, the most recent Cosmos.

Gravity measurements confirm subsurface ocean on Enceladus

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

NASA may be doing a massive info dump with software

Wired article on Enceladus

edited 3rd Apr '14 4:19:57 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

AWESOME. I love space.

I'm baaaaaaack