超新星コンデンセート
Supernova Condensate is a blog about our place in the Universe. Of astronomy, chemistry and life in the big bad bubble of academia.-
Invader Xan is a molecular astrophysicist and part-time alien invader, who spends life looking at very small things on very large scales, and trying to better understand the chemistry of interstellar space.
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Monthly Archives: September 2010
Cosmic Rays and Chemicals
Did you know that, seen in high energy gamma rays, the Moon is actually brighter than the Sun? Remarkably, the photons that make up this image carried over 20 million electron volts of energy each. That already sounds like a … Continue reading
Posted in Imported from Livejournal, physics
Tagged astrophysics, particle physics, the moon, the sun
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Elementary, my dear Watson
“The Earth,” as Carl Sagan once said, “is far too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.” I, for one, agree with his sentiment entirely. Indeed, I’ve always been the one to … Continue reading
10 commandments…?
I was browsing through my list of arXiv papers this morning, when I stumbled across a rather interesting title. Sitting there amidst the usual selection of papers about circumstellar disks and planetary nebulae, I spied this — 2010arXiv1009.4891F: Ferrín: “SCIENTIST … Continue reading
Posted in academia, Imported from Livejournal
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Science of Starcraft
I’ll freely admit than I’m something of a video game culture nut, as well as being a shameless science geek. So when I discover something that makes a reasonably good effort to combine the two, I find it rather exciting! … Continue reading
Massive!
A friend of mine pointed this story out to me a couple of weeks ago… I’ve been pondering it, but I haven’t had a chance to write anything about it yet. The biggest reason for this is the fact that … Continue reading
r = a + bθ
I’m going to refrain from using the phrase “Holy Haleakalā”, but I think I’d be perfectly justified in doing so at an image this pretty! (click to galactify) That mysterious looking spiral is a pre-planetary nebula* forming as the dying … Continue reading
Spaceballs 2: The Sequel
I wrote previously about a paper on the detection of fullerenes in the planetary nebula Tc1… And I mentioned then that there was more than one group of researchers working on much the same thing. The other group have now … Continue reading
Posted in Imported from Livejournal
Tagged astrochemistry, molecules, papers
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New eyes for SALT!
It’s been a bumpy few years for the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). Despite being one of the newest and most advanced telescopes in the world, it’s been plagued by seemingly endless image quality problems. Those problems have all been … Continue reading
Posted in Imported from Livejournal
Tagged technology, telescopes
Comments Off on New eyes for SALT!