21 NOV 2017 by ideonexus
The Increasing Chemical Complexity of the Cosmos
The ancient origins of stars, planets and life may be viewed as a sequence of emergent events, each of which added to the chemical complexity of the cosmos. Stars, which formed from the primordial hydrogen of the Big Bang, underwent nucleosynthesis to produce all the elements of the Periodic Table. Those elements were dispersed during supernova events and provided the raw materials for planets and all their mineralogical diversity. Chemical evolution on Earth (and perhaps countless other plan...
1 04 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
Notes From the Cosmic Perspective
Culture is the things you do that you don’t notice. In Italy they have a pasta aisle. In America we have ready made cereal isle, Soft drink aisle.
Culture of discovery doesn't last forever
Backup mic display
Bad seats people
Periodic table flags
Top countries of element discovery, noble gases
Scientists on currency
Franklin outwitted god - Lightning rod, discharge electrons
9/11 vs a golden age of islam
Alhazen, optics, previously people thought sight was beaming, active
2/3 o... 1 
notes
notes30 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Your Birth Star
Name any event in history and you will find a star out there whose light
gives you a glimpse of something happening during the year of that event.
Provided you are not a very young child, somewhere up in the night sky
you can find your personal birth star. Its light is a thermonuclear glow
that heralds the year of your birth. Indeed, you can find quite a few such
stars (about 40 if you are 40; about 70 if you are 50; about 175 if you are
80 years old). When you look at one of your birth year ... 1 notes
notes21 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Universe is Just Right Intellectually
For myself, I like a universe that, includes much that is unknown and, at the same time, much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence. Not too easy to understand, not to impossible to understand.
05 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
The Universe is One Great Machine
Look round the world, contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to end... 1 notes
notesMade up of smaller machines.
06 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph
Here we go again, one of the epic documents of our time, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph, the deepest look into space ever. A random part of the sky, so small it could be covered by a pinhead held at arm's length. A part of the sky -- as NASA says -- that you'd see looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. A photo exposed over 400 orbits of the Hubble, a total exposure of 11.3 days. The telescope pointing precisely to the same point in space even as it whizzes around the Ear...
1 It would take 12.7 million such photos to cover our night sky, and there are 10,000 galaxies in this image.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Deep Space Implied Deep Time
Already in a paper of 1802 Herschel considered the idea that ‘deep space’ must also imply ‘deep time’. He wrote in his Preface: A telescope with a power of penetrating into space, like my 40 foot one, has also, as it may be called, a power of penetrating into time past … [from a remote nebula] the rays of light which convey its image to the eye, must have been more than 19 hundred and 10 thousand — that is — almost two million years on their way.’ The universe was therefore al... 1 notes
notesHerschel realized the very large universe required a very old universe.
02 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
The Realization That the Universe May End
In a bravura passage, Darwin also considers Herschel’s disturbing suggestion that the entire cosmos may eventually wither back into ‘one dark centre’. This implies that the universe not only had a beginning, but will have a physically destructive end, a ‘Big Crunch’. There are hints here too of Milton’s vision of the falling rebel angels dropping out of the firmament in Book I of Herschel’s favourite, Paradise Lost. This itself had possible political overtones for a reader in th... 1 notes
notesThe historical realization that the Universe might die in a "crunch" was followed by the idea that it might rise again like a phoenix.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Black Holes are Separate Universes
In fact, our own universe is very likely itself a vast black hole. We have no
knowledge of what lies outside our universe. This is true by definition, but also
because of the properties of black holes. Objects that reside in them cannot
ordinarily leave them. In a strange sense, our universe may be filled with objects that are not here. They are not separate universes. They do not have the mass of
our universe. But in their separateness and their isolation they are autonomous
universes. 1 notes
notesA strange conceptual idea, that implies our own Universe is a Black Hole as well.
01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
We Are Made of Star Stuff
The fate of individual human beings may not now be connected in a deep way
with the rest of the universe, but the matter out of which each of us is made is
intimately tied to processes that occurred immense intervals of time and
enormous distances in space away from us. Our Sun is a second- or third-generation
star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our
blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of
years ago in the interior of... 1 notes
notesThis might be the original source of this quote.
