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Scientists Find Doublehelix at Center of Milky Way
An anonymous reader writes "Astronomers report an unprecedented elongated double helix nebula near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, using observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The part of the nebula the astronomers observed stretches 80 light years in length."
It takes light about a second to make a roundtrip from the Earth to the Moon. It takes 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach the Earth. Light can travel around the Earth 7 times in 1 second.
While it may seem really fast, when broken down into comprehendable units, light is not really that fast. Sure, it's faster than anything else, but that just means that everything else is pretty slow too.
So this new nebula is 40 light years across. That's only 10 times the distance from the Earth to our second-closest star. It's like comparing the distance of the Earth to the Sun vs Pluto to the Sun. It may seem intractable, but it's really not that big.
You've not really made a clear comparison, as you have compared a measurement involving lightyears (the distance from Earth to Proxima Centauri) to another measurement involving lightyears (the length of the nebula). It would be like comparing an apple to a pea by saying that an orange is about the same size as an apple. You haven't really said anything...
So you've only given the appearance of an insightful comment... though I'm sure you'll hit +5 in no time.
You will see a large, light absorbing, black monolith - howling Ligeti - in the center of the nebula.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Maybe that's why he calls himself "BadAnalogyGuy".
We're just viruses infecting a milkyway cell.
--
make install -not war
Scientists have discovered a restaurant at the end of the universe.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Here is the Nature article abtract:
"A magnetic torsional wave near the Galactic Centre traced by a 'double helix' nebula"
The magnetic field in the central few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way has a dipolar geometry and is substantially stronger than elsewhere in the Galaxy, with estimates ranging up to a milligauss (refs 1-6). Characterization of the magnetic field at the Galactic Centre is important because it can affect the orbits of molecular clouds by exerting a drag on them, inhibit star formation, and could guide a wind of hot gas or cosmic rays away from the central region. Here we report observations of an infrared nebula having the morphology of an intertwined double helix about 100 parsecs from the Galaxy's dynamical centre, with its axis oriented perpendicular to the Galactic plane. The observed segment is about 25 parsecs in length, and contains about 1.25 full turns of each of the two continuous, helically wound strands. We interpret this feature as a torsional Alfvén wave propagating vertically away from the Galactic disk, driven by rotation of the magnetized circumnuclear gas disk. The direct connection between the circumnuclear disk and the double helix is ambiguous, but the images show a possible meandering channel that warrants further investigation.
I like the night sky, it always provokes deep thoughts. Like, what if the entire galaxy were just a single cell of a universe sized creature? If we were mere atoms, no not even on a scale that big; perhaps the tiniest of particles of particles of an atom, could we ever fully grasp the universe?
Could a single cell grasp, by which I mean sense, beyond its tiny neighbors to sense its place in the minute band of cells that make up even large tissues that in turn form the organ; themselves only part of the larger human creature. Still more, that human itself a seemingly insignificant speck in a sea of billions comprising the organism deemed 'Society.' That "insignificant" speck, like the cell that could be a white blood cell or a cancer cell, has the potential to help, harm or affect that gobal entity it is a part of.
What if the galaxy is not just a cell but an early cell; one undeveloped and still growing. Perhaps its culturing intelligent orders. Intelligents vast, streached thin between its stars; creating networks like those in a cell yet not governed by chemical interaction but in the perhaps equally predictable economics of cultural interaction. A growing cell; incubating intelligence that would mature the galatic cell in a way to interact with neighboring galactic cells, ultimatly tailoring (based on the surrounding galactic cells) the function of this galaxy.
A galaxy only a fraction of a fraction of a greater whole. A galaxy of intelect unaware beyond simple sensing of the galaxies beyond its neighbors, of its place; perhaps like a human cell. A universal organism ordered by a force greater and more mysterious than comprehensible; not unlike a comparison of the chemical interactions that govern a cell's behavior and the economical interactions that govern society. A Universal organism beyond conventions of the word. A Universal Organism that provokes its own environment and leads its own...
...deep thoughts.
Demented But Determined.
Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself. MANKIND. Basically, it's made up of two separate words "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery and that's why so is mankind.
Jack Handey
Deep Thoughts
Haha, he makes me chuckle
As the man in black explains to Roland in the first book of Stephen King's Dark Tower series, "The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size... ... For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe..?"
What great poetry in the universe, that we should gaze out into the infinite deep of space, only to see the same elegent beauty that we see when we probe the mysteries deep within ourselves.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
or does anyone else see Cthulhu looking out at them from this picture... Come to think about it I see Cthulhu looking at me from most pictures ... oh there he is now...oh my god!! he's everywhere!!!
Siggy Sig Sig? Where is the sig?
To answer my own question, here is the link.
hmmm... would corporate involvement disqualify this as "intelligent design" I wonder...
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
The speed of light in air is only marginally less than in a vacumn (refractive index of air at sea level: 1.0002926, says wikipedia) and the atmosphere drops in pressure very rapidly on a lunar scale. The exosphere starts at, at most 1000km from the earth's surface, and that's the "beginning of the end" of the atmosphere. The moon is around 400000km away. The light is travelling through the atmosphere for only 0.25% of its journey. The difference in light time from the surface of the earth and the exosphere would be a tiny fraction of a second.
Behold the predictive powers of ROCK!!!
...Double helix in the sky tonight
Throw out the hardware, let's do it right...
Steely Dan - Aja (1977)
What makes jokes funny is the way they are told. He didn't exactly tell it right. Here's the full thing about a horse having an infinte number of legs, and when told properly makes better sense, from /usr/games/fortune:
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
who thought of 2001 (and the Simpsons) when I read that headline.
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
So we start out with a strand of DNA, and the camera zooms out, and you see the cells, the organism, skip a few, then the earth, solar syste, galaxy, big DNA helix in space, and start over.
So if we're just in someone else's cells, how long until we're all wiped out in 'The Big Sneeze'?
You're describing a famous film short "Powers of Ten" by Ray & Charles Eames. I'm too lame to make a clicky link, so here is the URL:
http://www.powersof10.com/
Fantastic film, one of the few (good) films that most schoolchildren saw in the 1970's, along with "Our Mister Sun". If there is a better method of presenting The Relative Size of Things in the Universe, I've yet to see it. Ray & Charles were way ahead of their time.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
If that isn't a sign of an Intelligent Creator, I don't know what is.
*removes tongue from cheek*
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
They were pretty much identical in appearance before the semi made them 2D, give or take a big fuzzy tail.
It's most likely due to the fact that those stars are much, much closer to us in the forground of the shot and therefore are out of focus. Being out of focus means the flaws in the optics are exagerated. Remember, lens, mirrors, beam splitters, etc all need mounting elements and have edges that bounce or block light. That's what you are seeing in the out of focus stars.
It makes typical astronomers very uncomfortable when it is mentioned that this is precisely the expected form of an interstellar-scale Birkeland current.
t ml
. intro.html
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/elec_currents.h
These were predicted by Alfven, and have since been detected indirectly by noting self-segregation by mass of interstellar medium ion Doppler shifts.
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/CIV.html
Similar structures have been noted in radio-telescope images, albeit not with such textbook-perfect structure.
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/plasma.universe
The reason typical astronomers are uncomfortable with this is that the very active field of plasma dynamics is almost entirely neglected in their education. Most are ill-equipped to evaluate or contribute to work involving real-world plasma interactions. They are handicapped not only by this neglect, but by having been taught, early on, an entirely unphysical, if mathematically elegant, substitute for plasma dynamics under which all these phenomena are supposed to be impossible.
Plasma dynamics, as a field of study, is fundamentally hard because the mathematics that describe actual, natural phenomena is entirely untractable. Practitioners depend on fiendishly difficult scaled-down high-voltage laboratory vacuum-chamber experiments, and absolutely enormous computer simulations. Astrophysicists, by a natural process, are strongly self-selected from among those with a distaste for laboratory work, and a preference for abstract, elegant mathematical constructs, so it's hardly surprising to find them disinclined to fill in the gaps in their education. Instead, certain sorts of evidence are just considered impolite to mention in their company.
(Incidentally, it is precisely this phenomenon which makes press releases about "geysers" on Enceladus -- and two-mile-wide "lava tubes" on Mars and the moon -- especially comical.)