You Can't Hide from a Supernova

[Luet]

I saw one way down here in upstate NY about 6 years ago. It was awesome. I hope you guys get to see it someday.

[Rei]

I'm told my family saw one once on a trip to Manitoba. It's just that nobody bothered to wake me up that I've never seen one *facedesk*

[Eaquae Legit]

I wonder if that was the same one I saw in Waterloo, Nomi. Except it was more like 7-8 years ago. It was incredible, all greens and reds, and I was amazed how it was visible so far south. I remember it so clearly, both because of its unusualness and because I was taking an astronomy course at the time and we all just freaked out about it at the next lecture.

[Luet]

It very well could be. I have no sense of time. I only know it was sometime between 2000-2004.

[LilBee91]

*Revels in my Alaska-ness*

I love the Northern lights. It's been a few years since I've seen them, and I've never seen red. But the green ones are awesome. And I love it when they dance =]

[megxers]

I've never seen them. I don't think I've ever been far enough north enough to do so. SOME DAY.

I really want to do an observatory late evening tour this summer, but the August date hasn't been set yet so I can't decide whether to book without knowing the day. HMMM.

[Eaquae Legit]

Anyone have any experience with BOINC? It looks great and I'd love to be involved (however marginally) with things like Rosetta@Home or Einstein@Home. Just wondering if anyone has any experience.

P.S. There are still Perseids tonight! Go take a look!

[Wil]

I run Einstein@Home and Seti@Home because they both make use of my GPU and they both have screen savers. It would be pretty cool to get a pweb team going for either or both of those projects.

[zeroguy]

Yeah, I've run boinc on a few machines for the World Community Grid. Works pretty well in my experience if you want to limit it (for example, to a certain % of cpu usage, or for certain times of day).

[megxers]

Anyone have any experience with BOINC? It looks great and I'd love to be involved (however marginally) with things like Rosetta@Home or Einstein@Home. Just wondering if anyone has any experience.

P.S. There are still Perseids tonight! Go take a look!

I have never run SETI@Home for very long because it did funky things to my computer/the network. I would be interested in trying again though--I've read a few books by employees in the last month/was in one of their buildings yesterday.

Also, I met one of my favorite astronomers and now know about some NOVA episodes to look forward to in the future. Wooo!

[Eaquae Legit]

Earth-like exoplanet discovered

Okay, so the headline is misleading (are they ever not?), but it is more earth-like than anything yet, which is a step in the right direction. I remember not too long ago when finding something as small as Jupiter was huge news, and now we're down to only 3-4x Earth-sized? It really calls to mind Carl Sagan's quote about how lucky we are to be living in a time when we're visiting other worlds (and discovering them!)

[zeroguy]

Earth-like exoplanet discovered

Makes me think of:

Here it was still a pretty day. Here it was damn near Earth. Sloping flatlands. Blue sky. A clear blue river that sparkled cheerfully past the milk-white Complex dome. I shook my head in wonder. It wasn't Earth at all. But it could have been.

I had been to maybe two dozen planets like this. None of them had been Earth either. But they were man places just the same. It gave me the creeps.

Some thinker types claimed it was because Homo Sap was the perfect model for the universe. They cited things like bi-symmetry and opposing limbs and (ever since finding Ants) something called Adaptation By Individual to explain it. These weren't just made for man, they said. Man was made for them. Man was the model. I didn't buy it. I had drunk water and swatted flies on alien soil again and again and they had been man places. I had felt that with a subtle certainty. I still did.

Another idea used the model for the universe bit as well but extended it to mean that there were Homo Saps out there who had nothing to do with Earth at all. These other guys were supposed to have sprung full-blown from another place but be just like us. The thinkers who thought this thought something else. They thought we would run into them and soon. A statistical certainty, they claimed, that these other Saps would be along. I remember once seeing a vid on it with one guy claiming they would show up any minute and another guy boshing it with the question of how would we know if we ran into a new bunch or not, as spread out and weird as we already were. Maybe they were already here and we didn't know it, the guy had added and laughed.

The first guy hadn't laughed at all. He had just smiled politely. But the smile and the courtesy didn't stop the twinkle in his eyes from coming across. That had given me the creeps too. Man places.

[Eaquae Legit]

Where's that from?

[zeroguy]

Armor. It's been a bit on my mind recently :)

[Eaquae Legit]

You really can't hide, you know!!

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/young-nearby-s ... 27084.html

Get your butts outside this weekend, it shouldn't be hard to locate!

[Rei]

I'm sad to say, Sir Patrick Moore has died.

[Eaquae Legit]

I saw, and I am CRUSHED.