Too cool, part 50: Hey sis!

Star formation is a long-drawn-out process, which we know from both basic physics and actually seeing it happening in telescopic views, though we can’t see change in real time. Gases and dust have to be pretty thick in some region of space, molecular clouds to provide the raw materials, which gradually coalesce under combined gravity and with the help of Core-Collapse Supernovae (CCSN,) which read more

More fossils

Just a quick one here. When my brother came to visit for the second time, he brought with him some of his fossil finds from central New York, ones with really intricate detail. We didn’t have the time to tackle detailed photos while he was here, so he left them with me for the time being, and I finally got the chance to feature them, with both still photos and video, which shows the contours read more

Our ignorance made it plausible

That’s a new phrase in my critical-thinking arsenal now. By itself, it seems counterintuitive, but that’s really the point. Let me explain.

A century or so ago, as telescopes got better and we began to understand more about our closest stellar neighbor Mars, we realized that it was not too much smaller than Earth and not too far away, and surmised that, given these conditions and the read more

Visibly different, part 43

A little too similar to last week’s entry, but hey – this is what I shoot, with these being very recent, only hours old.

I mentioned before that my family wasn’t at all ‘current’ with my pursuits, not being internet savvy (or having much interest when they were,) but my brother is getting better in that respect. So he’d never seen some of the older images where read more

Here’s why, part 5: G-g-g-ghosts!

Once again we delve into the question of why science doesn’t seem to take a particular subject seriously, and this one was appropriate for the month. Countless websites – some frivolously, some seriously – are featuring and soliciting their own selections of ghost stories, and of course there are (or were) various video series showing intrepid investigators sussing out the spirits read more

Visibly different, part 29

Slightly different take on things this time, and multiple meanings to the title. We open with an image from exactly ten years today, of a species that I was not familiar with at the time.

[I admit that I initially wrote this months ago, and then realized the dates would line up and shelved the post until now, because why not?]


Finding this by chance on the underside of the leaf, back read more

Well, that is good news

There’s a bit of sarcasm in that title, on multiple levels perhaps, but let’s take it from the beginning.

Almost four years ago, I had a paragraph within a post (down after the page break, here) that commented on the present state of cosmological physics and my ‘gut reaction’ read more

It’s that April busy season

Yes, indeed, like every year, we’re closing in on three principle events within April, and unlike some of the other ‘events’ that pop up around this time of year, these are not at all mythological.

First off, we’re already within the Lyrids Meteor Shower, read more

It’s still cool

It’s kinda funny how abruptly your perspective may change. I’ve been getting reminders of what today is the anniversary of all week, and to a distinct degree, I wasn’t all that motivated to recognize it – and then the rational part of my brain kicks the emotional part in the ass and tells it to go back to worrying about bad drivers.

What I’m talking about is that today read more

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