Saturn’s moon Enceladus, covered in snow and ice, resembles a perfectly packed snowball in this image from NASA’s Cassini mission.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
the fact that stars even exist and we can look at them every night for free just makes me go !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Andromeda Galaxy Floats Above the Dawn Clouds - May 6, 2017
Joseph Brimacombe
Pluto Found - January 23, 1930
“Every star will someday run out of fuel in its core, bringing an end to its run as natural source of nuclear fusion in the Universe. While stars like our Sun will fuse hydrogen into helium and then – swelling into a red giant – helium into carbon, there are other, more massive stars which can achieve hot enough temperatures to further fuse carbon into even heavier elements. Under those intense conditions, the star will swell into a red supergiant, destined for an eventual supernova after around 100,000 years or so. And the brightest red supergiant in our entire night sky? That’s Betelgeuse, which could go supernova at any time.”
One of the most sobering cosmic truths is that every star in the Universe will someday run out of fuel and die. Once its core fuel is exhausted, all it can do is contract under its own gravitational pull, fusing heavier and heavier elements until it can go no further. Only the most massive stars, capable of continuing to fuse carbon (and even heavier elements) will ever create the Universe’s ultimate cataclysmic event: a Type II, or core collapse, supernova. Stars that are fusing carbon (and up) appear to us today as red supergiants, and the brightest red supergiant as seen from Earth is Betelgeuse. Sometime in the next 100,000 years or so, Betelgeuse will go supernova. When it does, it will emit incredible amounts of radiation, become intrinsically brighter than a billion suns and and be easily visible from Earth during the day. But that’s not all.
What’s the full story on what will happen when Betelgeuse goes supernova? Come get the science today!
SNR 0509-67.5: a remnant from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Team/Kevin M. Gill
The real reason mankind went to the Moon is this lady. Amazing. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsfnmjshAA3/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=p1ybbxv208af
Liquid oxygen is magnetic
Liquid oxygen sticks between the poles of a strong magnet until it boils away into its gas state. This is because it has unpaired electrons, which make each oxygen molecule a tiny magnet with a dipole. Normally, when oxygen is in a flask or in the air, these microscopic magnets point in all directions, cancelling out and meaning that there’s no net magnetic field. When it pours over the permanent magnet, the magnetic molecules all slightly align, creating an induced magnetic field, which reacts with the permanent magnet, making the oxygen stick to the poles. This is called paramagnetism. Click here to watch the video.
The cloud chamber, also known as the Wilson chamber, is a particle detector used for detecting ionizing radiation.
In its most basic form, a cloud chamber is a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapor of water or alcohol. When a charged particle (for example, an alpha or beta particle) interacts with the mixture, the fluid is ionized. The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is on the point of condensation).
The high energies of alpha and beta particles mean that a trail is left, due to many ions being produced along the path of the charged particle. These tracks have distinctive shapes, for example, an alpha particle’s track is broad and shows more evidence of deflection by collisions, while an electron’s is thinner and straight. -(x)
More science and gifs on my blog: rudescience Gif made from: This video by The Royal Institution References: (x), (x).