nPostednon August 6, 2014
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nItnwas one of the biggest kinds of ka-booms in the universe: ansupernova.
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nAngigantic star dying in an enormous explosion – almost all of thenstar’s material shooting outwards at 30 thousand kilometers pernsecond – driving a shock wave into the mostly-empty spaces betweennstars – leaving behind a super-dense pulsar (or neutron star) thatnwhips around its axis at the incredible speed of 15 revolutions PERnSECOND!
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nOfncourse, the ancient Chinese and Japanese astronomers who spotted thensupernova didn’t know all that. They just thought it was a new starn(which is what nova basically means). n
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nThenyear was 1181. A new glint of light appeared in the night skies wherenno other star had appeared before – and stayed there for sixnmonths! Chinese and Japanese astronomers not only noticed the “newnstar,” they also kept records good enough so that modernnastronomers could find what they had been looking at – even thoughnthe star / pulsar / shock wave faded to invisibility almost anthousand years ago.
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What scientists found is now called 3C58. (Isn’t that a poetic name?)
What scientists found is now called 3C58. (Isn’t that a poetic name?)n
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nAndnwhat they found is that 3C58 is cooling down a lot faster thannexpected.
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nHowncool is it?
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nThensurface of the neutron star is apparently just less than a millionndegrees Celsius. Seems pretty hot, right? But apparently scientistsnexpect a neutron star as young as this one to be even hotter.
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nWaitn– did you call 3C58 young? But…this pulsar was born in 1181!
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nMorenthan 800 years old may seem pretty old…but some neutron stars arenmore than ten BILLION years old.
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n800nyears – 10,000,000,000 years – that’s a pretty huge range!
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| One of the things that we can wonder about supernovas is, do the exploding stars have planets? And, if so, do the planets have life? For sure, life couldn’t live through its sun |
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nMostnneutron stars that we can detect as pulsars are from 100,000 ton300,000,000 years old. And there may be a lot of older “silent”nneutron stars, way older than ten billion years old, that we cannotndetect, because we cannot measure their period of rotation and theirnperiod derivative.
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nAlsonon this date:
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Hiroshima Day and Peace Celebrationn
Hiroshima Day and Peace Celebrationn
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nAuthornAlfred, Lord Tennyson’s birthday
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nArtistnAndy Warhol’s birthday
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nIndependencenDay in Bolivia and Jamaica
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nPlannahead:
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nChecknout my Pinterest boards for:
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nAugustn holidays
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nAugustn birthdays
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nHistoricaln anniversaries in August
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nAndnhere are my Pinterest boards for:
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nSeptembern holidays
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nSeptembern birthdays
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nHistoricaln anniversaries in September
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