Recent content by Cecil

Easy. Stop imagining.

It seems to me that as a planet ages and its core cools off, tectonic activity would decrease. The mantle wouldn't be as active, and eventually the plates would lose their momentum and fuse. Erosion would then take care of the rest and homogenize the planet's surface.

1 - Europa, in a heartbeat. A great view of Jupiter and the rest of its moon system, and miles upon miles of ice. 2 - I'd like to see a globular cluster from the inside. Millions of stars all within 10pc or so. The sky would be filled with brilliant points of light. 3 - Anywhere in the...

I think you're right. I'll try reading this post again this weekend and maybe it will make more sense. :wink:

I believe a strong magnetic field would almost eliminate any radiation received on the surface. There is no upper limit on the semi-major axis of a stable orbit. The only thing you'd have to take into account would be gravitational influnces from the central star. Any distance from the gas...

***Pedantic mode on*** The geographic north pole of a planet is defined such that the planet rotates west to east. Magnetic north may - and will - shift sooner or later, but the Atlantic Ocean will always be off the east coast.

Your flaw is here. The centre of the sun is the slowest place relative to the center of the galaxy because the sun is revolving around it. The galaxy is not revolving around the "centre of the universe"; rather, it is moving away from all other galaxies, like raisins in an expanding muffin.

Or maybe they didn't measure any methane and the rumors are just that - rumors. Is this the strongest evidence you can find? Evidence? A quick google turns up no relevant results.

Okay. Is it possible for a pulsar to spin so fast that it breaks up, and are there any known mechanisms for this? How fast (% of c) does the surface need to be going for this to happen?

I believe these stars are termed "blue stragglers". They are stars in a globular cluster that are on the main sequence, but to the left of the turn-off point. This means that they should have already burned out into red giants, but haven't yet evolved. In some sense, they appear to be normal...

Well actually 4-space would be expanding ana-wards, but close enough. :wink:

My guess would be that galaxies are planar for the same reason as star systems - they formed out of large rotating clouds of gas and dust. As the gas condenses, it retains its angular momentum and "settles down" to a plane. It's similar to the oblateness of the Earth due to its rotation, but...

So I was playing around with Celestia and watching last year's transit of Mercury and this year's transit of Venus. They seemed pretty accurate to diagrams I've seen for ingress/egress locations. Then I got an idea. I flew to Mars and went looking for a transit of Earth, and to my surprise I...

And we'd have no advance warning. In fact, maybe there was a GRB there 24,999 years 364 days 23 hours 59 minutes ago and we'll all die in the next minute.

Agreed 110%. I love just sitting outside with my scope at night for a few hours and just thinking. :D