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Chandra Discovers Enormous 'Skull'
ActMatrix writes: "Just in time for Halloween, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has imaged a portion of the Perseus A Cluster that looks frightfully like an enormous skull. The "eyes" are apparently created by bubbles of gas created by electrons blasting out of a region near an enormous black hole, and the "mouth" is a galaxy with an estimated 20 billion stars. Chandra has snapped some amazing images so far, and this one is no exception. The Discovery.Com article has a good pic of the skull."
From the story "Oddly enough, there is a second coincidence in the skull discovery, says Wanjek. The constellation Perseus is named for the mythical Greek hero who slew the snake-haired Medusa, and is usually depicted in illustrations holding his shield and sword in one hand and Medusa's head in the other."
What is the coincidence? They found a picture a bit like a head, and the galaxy is named after someone who had a head (or two)? What (in the immortal words of Harry Hill) are the chances of that?
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
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^^^ < PH34R M3!!
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Check out the Flat Earth Society's Mars Project - it's hilarious. :-)
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Hey, do you realize that this is just plain, simple fun?
It's Halloween, so the researchers checked their library of images and looked for an image that fits the occasion. I for one prefer scientific projects where the researchers enjoy their work so much that they can do something like this.
I'm sure that the same scientists will check their library again for Christmas and see if they can find some Christmas-related picture, too.
It's a cute joke, that's it. Got it?
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This reminded me spookily of some of the sci-fi stories from the 30's or thereabout, in which the idea was propounded that what we see as atoms are in fact solar systems with planets surrounding them on a very much smaller scale, and in turn our solar systems and stars are just atoms in a much larger universe; in effect an infinite number of universes on different scales, all inside one another like Russian dolls. I know the science in these 'science-fiction' stories was bunkum, and that it's only the angle we're seeing this at that makes it look even vaguely like a human face, but I have to confess remembering the idea amused me...
Savant
Interesting. I hear they're currently engaged in a mad search for a Santa Claus-shaped galaxy by Christmas. What the space program won't do to look pertinent...
Well I like your new take on the monkeys in a room anecdote, but there is quite a bit of difference between these two situations.
For "privileged" vantage points, there are 360 degrees of possible azimuthal sight lines, times 180 for longitudinal (I know I'm not using very good terminoligy here, but you get the idea).
That's quite a bit of space to have a specific sight line (directly perpendicular to the plane of a binary star system's orbit for example) but not nearly as large as a random Hamlet. A work of literature as complicated as Hamlet will NEVER be randomly generated by a pack of monkeys, unless you want to wait many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe. We have many examples of star systems and galaxies, however, for which we view them nearly perpendicularly (or more likely, since any azimuthal angle is equivalent the probability is higher) along their plane.
Add the variety to the universe coupled with our mind's excellent image processing, which is eager to find order in chaos, and you find pictures such as this one.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
You know all the "Satan's Face Found In <insert weather pattern here>!!!" articles? They're going to have a field day with this one.
My guess is we'll also see either the formation or mass suicide of at least one doomsday cult, which the media will connect with this. Mass hysteria will follow, accompanied by loads of new material for late-night talk show comedians.
And finally, someone, somewhere is going to find a way to capitalize on this. Inside of two weeks we'll see "Space Skull" T-shirts, hats, etc.
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I think it sorta resembles one of those demon skulls that are burning and fly at you in Doom. It's pretty amusing, but I discount this to be the same as the "face" on Mars. But, just in case it is the monster that spits out the skulls on doom, I am going to go get my BFG ready just in case.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Of course it doesn't bother me. There could be a billion such objects in the universe, which we don't notice as special because they lack this chance alignment, making it look like a skull from our perspective.
In a universe as vast as ours, chance alignments are inevitable.
Doug
Venn ist das nurnstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ya! Beigerhund das oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
Looks more like a pig's snout to me...
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This is not my sandwich.
Oh my god its Ghost Rider and he's stuck in space! NASA please get him back, he fights on the side of good, regardless of his looks and I really need him for my halloween party. He looks so confused too, they much not teach much astronomy at Ghost Riding school.
But, according to the article on discovery.com they did not think anything of it as it had been held in a different rotation. Also, once they had rotated it around and found out it looked very much like a skull it was already mid-october, just in in time for Halloween.
The human brain is pre-programmed to infer human characteristics from visual inputs.
Remember the man in the moon?
Pray that we won't be seeing Cthulhu anythime soon, but be on the lookout for fungi from Yuggoth.
Poor Yorick...
I knew him, Horatio...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Something else for the UFO obsessed to point at. First, a face on Mars, now this!
Reminds me of those oh-so-profound calculations that Bill Gates = 666. Yeah right. I fancy just about anyone's name can be made into 666, you just hafta find a suitable contortion and strange way of calculation.
Isn't it odd that modern, so-called scientific, man still finds fascination in such things?
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mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
"The "eyes" are apparently created by bubbles of gas created by electrons blasting out of a region near an enormous black hole"
I know the feeling all too well. Felt like that the day after a Happy Hour session....
It's Bill The Cat's skull, can't you tell?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Other cool space images from Yahoo on the Soyuz launch:
Transport
Launch pad
Liftoff
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The point is, in Latin, "nebula" means "cloud", as in cloud in the sky. Astronomers simply took the Latin word to refer to the astronomical object.
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