It can't be the hand of God

Posted on April 14, 2009 by Michael

Not the hand of God

This is a photo of Pulsar B1509 taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory. There is a poll which is attached to the article on this image.

What do you think is captured on the recently released NASA photograph?

  • The hand of God
  • A natural stellar formation

“A natural stellar formation” is leading because the poll has been crashed by PZ Myers. But even though atheists crashed this poll to give it the correct answer, creationists can’t possible view this as being the hand of their particular sky fairy.

Taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory from it’s orbiting 360 miles above the Earth, the recently released photo of Pulsar B1509 captures the X-Ray nebula in a state shaped like a human hand. NASA estimates the shape spans 150 light years, but is caused by a dense neutron star that’s just 12 miles in diameter.

Astronomers believe B1509 is roughly 1,700 years old and is located 17,000 light years from Earth.

If this was God’s hand, it’d have to have existed since the beginning of time (in fact, since before the beginning of time – creationists have incredible insights into the pre-Universe). It is only 1,700 years old. As we all know, if this were the hand of the particular cultural god of Christians, it would would need to exist since roughly the beginning of the agricultural revolution – i.e., the beginning of all time.

Also, it has four fingers.

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Beautiful Hubble image

Posted on April 12, 2009 by Michael

It completely slipped my mind that the winner of the Hubble contest had been released until I saw the absurd number of searches for “Hubble” on my stats page. The winner is ARP 274.

On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the winning target in the Space Telescope Science Institute’s ‘You Decide’ competition in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA).

The winner is a group of galaxies called Arp 274. The striking object received 67,021 votes out of the nearly 140,000 votes cast for the six candidate targets.

Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is a system of three galaxies that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances. The spiral shapes of two of these galaxies appear mostly intact. The third galaxy (to the far left) is more compact, but shows evidence of star formation.

Two of the three galaxies are forming new stars at a high rate. This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left.

The largest component is located in the middle of the three. It appears as a spiral galaxy, which may be barred. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was used to image Arp 274. Blue, visible and infrared filters were combined with a filter that isolates hydrogen emission. The colors in this image reflect the intrinsic color of the different stellar populations that make up the galaxies. Yellowish older stars can be seen in the central bulge of each galaxy. A bright central cluster of stars pinpoint each nucleus. Younger blue stars trace the spiral arms, along with pinkish nebulae that are illuminated by new star formation. Interstellar dust is silhouetted against the starry population. A pair of foreground stars inside our own Milky Way are at far right.

The International Year of Astronomy is the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first observations with a telescope. People around the world came together to participate in the IYA’s 100 Hours of Astronomy, April 2 to 5. This global astronomy event was geared toward encouraging as many people as possible to experience the night sky.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

ARP 274

ARP 274

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Hubble Contest

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Michael

The Hubble image contest has been completed. The winner, by a landslide, is the Interacting Galaxies. I can only presume, humbly, that it was my endorsement of this image that made it the winner.

Arp 274 is a pair of galaxies. Drawn together by their gravity, they are starting to interact. The spiral shapes of these galaxies are mostly intact, but evidence can be seen of the gravitational distortions they are creating within each other. When galaxies interact and merge together, the gas clouds inside them often form tremendous numbers of new stars.

More detailed images of Arp 274 (the winner) will be released soon. In the meantime, here’s another image of interacting galaxies (Arp 148).

hubble_interacting_galaxy_arp_148_2008-04-24

Hubble image to be released between April 2 and 5

Come back to see the Hubble picture of Arp 274, released between April 2-5 during 100 Hours of Astronomy, a worldwide event focused on renewing interest in the night sky.

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The worst thing about creationism

Posted on March 20, 2009 by Michael

Of all the things about creationism, perhaps the worst is simply its lack of beauty. It teaches – nay, encourages – people to be content with a small Universe. It teaches that it is okay, even good, to look up at that deep band of stars that comprise the Milky Way and to say, “Meh. What else is there?” This is what believers in special creation are taught. They believe, most arrogantly, that there is nothing greater out there than their concept of an ever-shrinking, ever-so-tiny god.

Reason, rationality, and science encourage one to sit outside on one of those warm summer nights, pure awe undaunted by the anonymous fears lurking in the dark. They say, Look! there’s so much to be known. Don’t ever be satisfied with the Universe you know. They teach, “Wow! What else is there?” They teach that it is not good but stupendously great to wonder – and it is even greater to tear that wonder asunder and leave it in shattered little pieces so to discover that, yes, there are still deeper wonders. That is the prize of knowledge. Creationism rejects this beauty.

Of course, none of this says whether one or the other is true. Reality dictates that (and reality has a strong bias toward the truths of science). What this does suggest, however, is that something so vile, empty, and ugly as creationism or petty, little humanoid gods has no place among the robust beauty of science and reason and rationality.

v838lar3_kelly_c1

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Massive explosion in space

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Michael

When an explosion stronger than 9,000 supernovae takes place in deep space, it may be time to reconsider if Earth is really such a focal point of the Cosmos (provided you think such a patently silly thing).

The spectacular blast, which occurred in September in the Carina constellation, produced energies ranging from 3,000 to more than five billion times that of visible light, astrophysicists said.

“Visible light has an energy range of between two and three electron volts and these were in the millions to billions of electron volts,” astrophysicist Frank Reddy of US space agency NASA told AFP.

“If you think about it in terms of energy, X-rays are more energetic because they penetrate matter. These things don’t stop for anything — they just bore through and that’s why we can see them from enormous distances,” Reddy said.

A team led by Jochen Greiner of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics determined that the huge gamma-ray burst occurred 12.2 billion light years away.

I want to just make an extra point of the next graf in the article.

The sun is eight light minutes from Earth, and Pluto is 12 light hours away.

In other words, while the Sun may have exploded 7 minutes ago and we won’t know for another 90 seconds or so (it’s slightly more than 8 light minutes away), we only know about these explosions now because we happen to be 12 billion lightyears from them (and they happened 12 billion years ago). There’s no way to know what’s happening in this area now – it’s going to take another 12 billion years until this region of space has any indication.

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Billions of Earths

Posted on February 15, 2009 by Michael

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

Very few of these would be capable of supporting life, however. Most are gas giants like our Jupiter; and many orbit so close to their parent stars that any microbes would have to survive roasting temperatures.

But, based on the limited numbers of planets found so far, Dr Boss has estimated that each Sun-like star has on average one “Earth-like” planet.

This simple calculation means there would be huge numbers capable of supporting life.

“Not only are they probably habitable but they probably are also going to be inhabited,” Dr Boss told BBC News. “But I think that most likely the nearby ‘Earths’ are going to be inhabited with things which are perhaps more common to what Earth was like three or four billion years ago.” That means bacterial lifeforms.

Dr Boss estimates that Nasa’s Kepler mission, due for launch in March, should begin finding some of these Earth-like planets within the next few years.

Recent work at Edinburgh University tried to quantify how many intelligent civilisations might be out there. The research suggested there could be thousands of them.

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Cool Hubble contest

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Michael

NASA is asking the public to vote on what Hubble should image next.

The U.S. space agency is inviting the public to vote for one of six candidate astronomical objects for Hubble to observe in honor of the International Year of Astronomy, which began this month. The options, which Hubble has not previously photographed, range from far-flung galaxies to dying stars. Votes can be cast until March 1.

Hubble’s camera will take a high-resolution image revealing new details about the object that receives the most votes. The image will be released during the International Year of Astronomy’s “100 Hours of Astronomy” from April 2 to 5.

Everyone who votes also will be entered into a random drawing to receive one of 100 copies of the Hubble photograph made of the winning celestial body.

Voting can be done here. I personally cast my vote for the interacting galaxies. I find it exciting to see two massive, gravity-bound clusters of stars tear each other apart. But maybe I’m too mundane. The spiral galaxy is currently in the lead.

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This image is called “The Antennae Galaxies in Collision” (and is just eye-candy for this post; it doesn’t have anything to do with the voting).

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Hubba hubba

Posted on January 25, 2009 by Michael

Hubble dubble doo! (Read it as Fred Flintstone and it becomes far wittier.)

Hubble

I googled this one. Anyone know what it specifically is?

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Tendril in the Night

Posted on January 19, 2009 by Michael

Tendril in the Night

Because I like it.

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First glimpse of exoplanet atmosphere

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Michael

Two separate teams of scientists reported Wednesday the first-ever detection from Earth of the atmosphere of planets outside our solar system.

Taken together, the studies open a new frontier in the study of exoplanets, hard-to-detect celestial bodies circling stars beyond our own solar system.

Barely 300 exoplanets — some of which may have conditions similar to those that gave rise to life on Earth — have been identified so far, though astronomers assume that far more are waiting to be discovered.

Up to now, virtually everything known about the atmosphere of exoplanets has come from data collected by the space-based Spitzer infrared telescope.

But Spitzer will soon run out of the cryogens needed to keep its instruments cool, severely limiting its capabilities.

One team spotted a massive planet many times the size of Earth named OGLE-TR-56b, a so-called “hot Jupiter.”

Hot Jupiters are massive planets — many times the size of Earth — that orbit very close to their stars. Because they are so near, they are believed to be hot enough to emit radiation in optical and near-infrared wavelengths that would be visible from Earth.

“The successful recipe is a planet that emits a lot of heat and has little-to-no wind in its atmosphere,” said co-author Mercedes Lozez-Morales of the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C.

In addition, it must be a clear and calm night on Earth in order accurately measure the differences in thermal emissions when the exoplanet is eclipsed as it goes behind the star.

“The eclipse allows us to separate the emissions of the planet from those of the star,” she said in a statement.

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