"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Science Saturday: Gamma Rays

This is an interesting story, if a little esoteric.

An exploded star some 3.8 billion light-years away is forcing scientists to overhaul much of what they thought they knew about gamma-ray bursts – intense blasts of radiation triggered, in this case, by a star tens of times more massive than the sun that exhausted its nuclear fuel, exploded, then collapsed to form a black hole.


Now, I don't know if you're interested in astrophysics or not (outside the version that's operating in Thor: The Dark World), but there's one thing in that paragraph that ought to make you think: the star that exploded is 3.8 billion light-years away, which means that explosion actually happened 3.8 billion years ago. That's about the time that life arose on Earth.

And we're just now seeing it.

If that doesn't make you stop and think, I give up.

Christian Science Monitor, via Raw Story.

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