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Supernova could be Cosmic Ray Nursery

News Friday, February 27 by Captain



The world of science fiction is filled with the wondrous and the glorious - the extremes of human imagination and creativity. Which is all well and good, until of course we compare it to the terrifying beauty of reality.

Case in point - the Tycho white dwarf supernova.

Named after the silver-nosed (yes, he actually had a prosthetic nose, made from silver) Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, who first noted it down in 1572, it is one of the wonders of the universe.

We've gotten our filthy little mitts on a beautiful happy snap, which isn't actually a happy snap at all - it's a composite image made from three sources - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra Observatory and Spain's Calar Alto Observatory (although you could probably already guess, couldn't you? just look at those greens!).







So what are we looking at exactly?

Mostly, it's what you can see when you use X-rays for eyes. What we can see is shockwaves from the initial explosion of the star, followed by an expanding wave of debris. It's travelling at about six million miles per hour. Which is pretty quick, even by cosmological standards.

Tycho and supernovas like it are what many astronomers think to be the prime candidates in the universe for the birthplaces for cosmic rays. Cosmic rays bombard the earth and generally wander our galaxy as high energy nuclei, making nuisances of themselves, like zapping human bones in the middle of spaceflights, which is entirely irritating and a bit lethal after a decade or so.


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COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Okay: Everyone loves to hear of a "murder" of crows, or an "exultation" of larks, but what is the collective noun for geeks? Perhaps we should discover it in our postings, yes? A "...." of geeks. A "..." of Sci Fi Fans. A "..." of Stargate Fans. etc and so forth match any show, format, 'flavour' or genre of Sci Fi with the perfect collective noun. Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!

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