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North Star May Be Wasting Away
sciencehabit writes "The North Star, a celestial beacon to navigators for centuries, may be slowly shrinking, according to a new analysis of more than 160 years of observations. The data suggest that the familiar fixture in the northern sky is shedding an Earth's mass worth of gas each year."
It's where Jimmy and Walon go !!
A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-american football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths. I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and married -- and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with him.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated, hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat, stiff, and ruggedly textured.
The real prize was a great feast of turd -- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's handsomest young stud.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit without the benefit of a digestive tract? I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock, beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily, sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with the rich bitterness of shit.
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished them out, rolled them into my hankerchief, and stashed them in my briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom. I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six orgasms in the process.
I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could, and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.
AW NO!!! how will be ever be able to find north now???
Polaris must be losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass—or a little under a millionth of its own mass—each year,
In a little over a million years, we won't be able to use that particular star to navigate any more. IT'LL BE CHAOS!
That's not exactly a lot. I'm sure our own dear Sun is losing that much mass every year and you still see 5 Billion on its birthday card.
Slow astrophysical news day, I guess.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's probably losing all that mass due to heat from friction. It must be under tremendous pressure, seeing as how the entire night sky pivots on that single point. Long-term this will have huge consequences - when the North Star finally wears through completely the entire universe will ricochet off into nothingness like a spinning top.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
Thank God its not shedding the amount of gas a politician evacuates each year. It would be barley visible.
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
After decades of overselling the North Star, is there any wonder there's so little of it left?
that's going to suck when all our compasses stop working.
North Star has been gone for a couple decades now.
Does this mean victory for the Southern Cross fighting style? Or am I just too much of a nerd so no one will understand the reference?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I was brought up Catholic and part of the mythos is that the north star was born when Christ was born. It's what led the three wise men too Him. When the north star is gone will that symbolize that Christ is dead?
All stars shrink just like our sun but not that fast to be noticeable after such a long period of time of observation. A more realistic idea (to me anyway) is that light pollution is simply making it appear to be shrinking. That is unless it was observed by something like Hubble from space.
too much fiber?
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
...make our own star in the sky.
But really, it could be done.
There is a semi-stable orbit up there that isn't too large that it couldn't replace it
All it needs to be is a huge lens and some magical arrangement of mirrors to allow pretty much omni-directional capture of sunlight with no moving parts, but semi-directional output down towards Earth.
You COULD have moving parts, but it would be more complicated than it need be. All it needs is some fuel and corrective orbit systems so it doesn't break away and end up spiraling away to a horrible death.
Sounds like my Uncle Fred...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
just forward all AOL disks and discount mortgage mailers to it.
Table-ized A.I.
Just combine it with the star Pushlaris, and it will all balance out
Table-ized A.I.
There's a grain (or at least a germ) of truth in each of those posts. Kind of a cereal furrow of truthiness, just plowing along, planting seeds of doubt, perhaps to just lie farro, but then again, maybe knot.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For celestial navigation after it has waned away, you can use the new spiffy Dark Matter Detector 5000 (Copyright Garmin). It points whichever way the scientific wind is blowing.
Silence is a state of mime.
It found out we invented GPS and don't need celestial navigation any longer. :)
I hope the rest of the starts don't follow the lead.
A solar mass is over 300,000 Earths, and Polaris is atleast 7 solar masses, adjusting for the most conservative of all estimates. It's apparent magnitude is about 1.9, while the magnitude of drop off (nolonger visible to the human eye) is defined at 7 (with 6 being relatively hard except under good conditions).
Setting aside the nuclear chemistry that will occur in the meantime (which tends to increase brightness), that Polaris is, in fact, multiple stars and the overall reduction of radiative and mass pressure that will be reducing the production/consumption rate*, I would posit even losing half of its mass, it would likely still be visible in 2000 years, which means the Northern Star will have since switched to Gamma Cephei.
So, no big loss here. Personally, I, for one, welcome our new Alrainian OverStar.
****
*You know what, I'm actually going to do these in the coming weeks. This is sound like a fun problem, even though I do a lot more in theoretical particle physics than cosmology.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
global warming.
...then this would surely take the prize.
Stars convert matter to energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation as a result of nuclear fusion reactions in the core. Ergo, they shed mass - our own Sun sheds mass at the rate of some 4.2 million tonnes per second (citation). This converts to pure energy, incident at Earths equator at around 1000W/m^-2.
But don't worry, if the iron cycle weren't endothermic then the Sun would be good for another 600 billion years or so...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
From the article:
So is it getting faster or slower?
Hokuto Shinken is invincible!
There is some more interesting trivia about the "Star of Bethlehem" mythology.
1. The "Star of Bethlehem" was supposed to be in the east. We all know that the stars appear to move from the east to west through the night. Stars appearing in the north appear to circle around the north star. and really can't be describes as appearing in the east. How can it be that any star, except Polaris, can appear to be fixed in the sky?
2. According to legend, the magi were wise men that came from the orient, and followed the "Star of Bethlehem". If the magi came from a location that was somewhere east of Bethlehem, and they were following a star that appeared in the east, they would be going in a westward direction. How did they get to Bethlehem? They would have to circle the globe to do that!
Just some riddles to think about. The story of the "Star of Bethlehem" is not an important belief of Christianity. However for fundies, it is in the Bible so they have to believe that it is exactly the way it happened. They have some explaining to do. There are more inconsistencies in that story, if you just think about it a bit.
Full of Gas and spewing on for years . . .
Explains so much about Star Trek VI
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Didn't I just say that?
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
But I will accept useful supplements, such as this...for now...muah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum