"Take Kappa Cassiopeiae, for example. It’s what’s called a runaway star, screaming through space at a terrifying 1,100 kilometers per second … 2.5 million miles per hour! As it happens, it’s also a blue supergiant, a massive, hot star. These kinds of stars tend to blow out a fast wind of subatomic particles, like the solar wind on steroids. As the star plows through space, its wind rams into the material around it, creating a vast shock wave like air off the nose of a supersonic fighter jet"

Gorgeous and Shocking: Bow Wave of a Runaway Star

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"Scientists have used spectrographic analyses to find water signatures on other alien planets before, but only when those worlds passed in front of their parent stars. Tau Boötis b does not transit in front of its parent star from our viewpoint on Earth, but Lockwood and colleagues were able to tease out the weak light emitted by the planet using the Near Infrared Echelle Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii."

Water Found in Atmosphere of Nearby Alien Planet : DNews

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Je ne savais pas que Turing etait (entre autres choses) l’inventeur de la decomposition LU. Je croyais cet algorithme beaucoup plus vieux… Shame on me! 😉

Who was Alan Turing?

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Devil’s Kettle Falls: The Falls to Nowhere

Just north of the shore of Lake Superior, an enormous piece of rock juts out and splits the Brule River into two smaller rivers. The east river continues its way to Lake Superior, and the other one (the west), falls into a wide hole and vanishes forever.

Learn about this amazing place at:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/devils-kettle-door-to-hell/

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Central Force

One of the clearest indications of a supermassive black hole in our galaxy is the motion of stars in that region.  In the image below, the motion of stars are tracked over about 15 years.  By calculating the orbits of these stars we can determine the mass of the central black hole, which is about 4 million solar masses.

What makes this particularly cool is that this region is obscured by dust, so we use radio astronomy to peer behind the dust and detect the stars.

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Giggles

I might have posted this one before, still makes me laugh!!!

Via: Meanwhile in Canada
#giggles #canada #canadian  

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This amazing video shows how even the smallest change can alter the course of the future, and it beautifully illustrates the ways in which all things on Earth are connected.

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Un cote de Kant que je ne connaissais pas.

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Immanuel Kant: Discoverer of Nebulae and the Multi-galaxy Universe

In the past, we have covered various scientists and their contributions to their respective professions, but we’ve never touched based on professors of philosophy. Not until now, that is.

Who is better to start with than Immanuel Kant: http://goo.gl/p4hCVn

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The Big What? New Model Eliminates Need for Big Bang

A new and daring cosmological model of the universe from a university in Taiwan describes the universe without a big bang – an eternal universe with NO beginning and NO end. This new and insane model for the universe is actually crazier than it sounds, so bear with me here while we delve into details.

Starting here: http://goo.gl/O3x4mG

#FQtQFavorite #WhyScienceIsCool

Image via: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

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"As a general rule, Americans think that science and engineering work is “dangerous” and that scientific work is more dangerous than engineering work."

"Just over half of the participants understand that antibiotics are not effective against viruses."

"The main issue seems to be the response to this question, “Does the Earth go around the sun, or does the sun go around the Earth?” When asked that question, 1 in 4 Americans surveyed answered incorrectly. Yes, that is 1 in 4. But before we get all bent out of shape about how ignorant Americans are,  only 66 percent of European Union residents answered this question correctly."

Je serais curieux d’avoir le meme sondage au Canada et au Quebec. Je ne pense pas que ca serait vraiment mieux…. 🙁

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1 in 4 Americans think the Sun Orbits the Earth?

So, in 2012 the National Science Foundation surveyed 2,200 people living in the United States on various issues of "common" scientific knowledge. The poll was released on Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and, as Saruman ironically said, "We have work to do."

But before we get all bent out of shape about how ignorant Americans are, the numbers are even worse for European Union residents.

See what the number say here:
http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/?p=18158

Image Credit: NASA

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