“[T]he earliest image indicates that it was roughly 100,000 Kelvin, which
suggests we were looking at it just six hours after it exploded. The latest
lensed image shows that the debris had already cooled to 10,000 K over the
eight days between the two different images.”
posted 11/24/2022 8:00pm ∞
“Bubbles of hydrogen-ripping galaxy light began to grow, carving holes in the
cold, quiet bulk of the intergalactic gas. Over a billion years, the bubbles
filled the cosmos and nearly every hydrogen atom was torn in two, leaving
protons and electrons to wander the Universe separately again.”
Katie Mack ,
How the first stars split the Universe apart
(BBC Science Focus October 10, 2022 )
posted 11/18/2022 8:00pm ∞
“There are some who take organic chemistry to get into a Ph.D. program or
prepare for a career in chemistry, but they’re relatively rare. Most of the
students are pre-med, and for a lot of them, organic chemistry is a
dream-shattering experience.”
It seems to me like the professor at the center of this story was done a grave
disservice by NYU , set up to fail
(though surely not intentionally on anybody’s part) and then abandoned.
posted 10/26/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[T]here’s the uncomfortable fact that producing the 2 megajoules of laser
power that started the fusion reaction took about 300 megajoules of grid
power, so the overall process is nowhere near the break-even point. … [W]e’re
still left with major questions about whether laser-driven fusion can be
optimized enough to be useful.”
posted 12/22/2022 8:00pm ∞
“[A] team of European researchers decided to model an event that should be
relatively uncommon: the two black holes didn’t start out in a mutual orbit but
happened to pass close enough to gravitationally latch onto each other. … The
models that produced a chirp that best matched the GW190521
signal saw a single pass that drew the black holes closer, followed by a single
rapid curve into the collision.”
posted 11/28/2022 8:00pm ∞