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5 amazing stars we’ve discovered in space

5 of the most unusual, amazing and interesting stars we’ve discovered in our universe.

Red giants, supernovas, hybrid stars, orbiting binaries, large stars, old stars, small stars, we’ve discovered thousands of stars within our milky way galaxy. Astronomers use incredible tools to figure out the characteristics of a star. These are 5 of the most amazing stars we’ve ever discovered in our galaxy.

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Host/writer: Dianna Cowern

Editor: Jabril Ashe – sefdstuff.com/science

Graphics:

NASA/Goddard

Space Engine – http://en.spaceengine.org

Music: APM and YouTube

Lawrence Krauss Tweets about Insider Information That We Finally Found Gravitational Waves

Excited rumors began circulating on Twitter this morning that a major experiment designed to hunt for gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein—has observed them directly for the very first time. If confirmed, this would be one of the most significant physics discoveries of the last century.

Move a large mass very suddenly—or have two massive objects suddenly collide, or a supernova explode—and you would create ripples in space-time, much like tossing a stone in a still pond. The more massive the object, the more it will churn the surrounding spacetime, and the stronger the gravitational waves it should produce. Einstein predicted their existence in his general theory of relativity back in 1915, but he thought it would never be possible to test that prediction.

LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) is one of several experiments designed to hunt for these elusive ripples, and with its latest upgrade to Advanced LIGO, completed last year, it has the best chance of doing so. In fact, it topped our list of physics stories to watch in 2016.

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This Teenager’s Stomach Ache Turned Out To Be Something Completely Horrifying

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

Sanjay Pandey

Imagine the surprise of doctors in India who discovered a teenage boy’s stomach ache was caused by the malformed fetus of his unborn twin.

Female Beetles Prefer Small Males – For Their Personality

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

Nicrophorus vespilloides, a species of burying beetle, reverses the female preference for larger mates seen in so many species. D. Kucharski/K. Kucharska/Shuterstock

Female burrowing beetles think small is beautiful when choosing mates, a new study has found. Although the reasons can’t yet be determined with certainty, the authors of a paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology suspect the attraction is that smaller males are less likely to get into fights.

That Time Chris Hadfield Sang David Bowie’s Space Oddity on the ISS

A revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station in 2013.

The Ancestor’s Tale, chapter called Canterbury

Fire rivals breath as imagery for life. When we die, the fire of life goes out. Our ancestors who first tamed it probably thought fire a living thing, a god even. Staring into flames or embers, especially at night when the campfire warmed and protected them, did they commune in imagination with a glowing, dancing soul? Fire stays alive as long as you feed it. Fire breathes air; you can suffocate it by cutting off its oxygen supply, you can drown it with water. Wild fire devours the forest, driving animal prey before it with the speed and ruthlessness of a pack of wolves in (literally) hot pursuit. As with wolves, our ancestors could capture a fire cub as a useful pet, tame it, feed it regularly and clear away its ashy excreta. Before the art of firemaking was discovered, society would have prized the lesser art of husbanding a captured fire. Perhaps a live scion of the home fire was carried in a pot for barter to a neighbouring group whose own fire had unfortunately died.

Wild fires would have been observed giving birth to daughter fires, spitting sparks and live cinders up on the wind, like dandelion puffs, to land and seed the dry grass at a distance. Did ergastrine philosophers theorise that fire cannot spontaneously generate, but must always be born of a parent fire, either wild fire out on the plains, or domestic fire fenced in by hearthstones? And did the first firemaking sticks therefore rub out a world view?

Our ancestors might even have imagined a population of reproducing wild fires, or a pedigree of descent among domestic fires traced from a glowing ancestor bought from a distant clan and traded on to others. But still there was no true heredity. Why not? How can you have reproduction and a pedigree, yet no heredity? This is the lesson fire has for us here.

True heredity would mean the inheritance not of fire itself but of variations among fires. Some fires are yellower than others, some redder. Some roar, some crackle, some hiss, some smoke, some spit. Some have tinges of blue or green amongst the flames. Our ancestors, if they had studied their domesticated wolves, would have noticed a telling difference between dog pedigrees and fire pedigrees. With dogs, like begets like. At least some of what distinguishes one dog from another is handed down by its parents. Of course some comes in sideways too: from food, disease and accident. With fires, all the variation comes from the environment, none descends from the progenitive spark. It comes from the quality and dampness of the fuel, from the lie and strength of the wind, from the drawing qualities of the hearth, from the soil, from traces of copper and potassium that add touches of blue-green and lilac to sodium’s yellow flame. Unlike a dog, nothing about the quality of an adult fire arrives via the spark that gave it birth. Blue fires don’t beget blue fires. Crackling fires don’t inherit their crackle from the parent fire that threw up their initiating spark. Fires exhibit reproduction without heredity.

-Richard Dawkins, From The Ancestor’s Tale, chapter called Canterbury

Discuss!

36,000 Year Old Cave Art Shows Ancient Volcanic Eruption

Environment





Photo credit:

The Chauvet cave system has its own high-resolution replica, pictured here. Getty

Volcanology is a fairly ancient science, with descriptions of dramatic eruptions going back at least as far as the year 79 C.E., when Pliny the Elder sailed into the pyroclastic flows emerging from Vesuvius and his heir detailed the unfolding destruction. Now, a study in PLOS ONE has described what may be the earliest known images of erupting volcanoes. These paintings, found in the Chauvet caves of France, are at least 36,000 years old.

Man Receives Tumor Instead Of The Kindle He Ordered

Health and Medicine





Photo credit:

James Potten of Bristol received a package containing a tumor tissue sample, which was intended for the Royal Free Hospital in London. James Potten

A British man received quite a shock when the courier service that was supposed to be delivering a Kindle to his address sent him a package containing a tumor tissue sample from America instead.

The sample was supposed to be sent to the Royal Free Hospital in London, yet somehow ended up in Bristol at the home of James Potten, who had been expecting to receive the e-reader, which he had ordered online.

How Much Bacteria Does The Human Body Really Contain?

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

The idea that every person contains 10 times more bacteria than human body cells is something of a myth. Juan Gaertner/Shutterstock

The human body may contain around 10 times fewer bacteria than previously thought, with the average person being made up of roughly equal numbers of body cells and microbes. This information goes against the long-standing assumption that each living person is composed of around 10 times more bacteria than human cells, exposing this as something of a myth.

Powerball Lottery Winning Made Inevitable (If Not Easy)

“There’s a story in the book, a story about people who took advantage of the law of inevitability to win the lottery.” That’s mathematician David Hand, talking about his 2014 book The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles and Rare Events Happen Every Day. The law of inevitability comes into play in lottery drawings—some set of numbers will be drawn, so a potential winning combination is inevitable. The key word being potential, as nobody has yet won the multi-state Powerball lottery. Which means that the jackpot for the next drawing, the night of January 13th, is up to some $1.3 billion. You could buy a ticket and hope. Or, as you may have mused, you could buy every possible set of numbers to inevitably win.

“1992, Virginia State Lottery, the Virginia State Lottery is a 6/44 lottery, you have to choose six numbers out of 44, which means it’s a 1 in 7 million chance that a particular ticket will be the jackpot-winning ticket. Seven million. So if you bought all the tickets it would only cost you $7 million. So they waited until the rollover jackpot had built up to, hadn’t been won, so it built up over several weeks to $27 million. If you manage to spend $7 million and buy all the 7 million tickets you are guaranteed to hold the jackpot winning ticket. But there’s a lot of organization involved in this.  In fact, what happened was they put together a consortium of 2,500 people, each of whom paid $3,000 or thereabouts, so they had $7 million. And then in the few days’ window they had available they ran around buying—trying to buy all the 7 million tickets.”

Trying to buy. Because the consortium only managed to buy 5 million tickets. So winning was not inevitable, their chances were only five out of seven.   

“As it happened, however, they did have the winning ticket, so they were guaranteed winning the jackpot. The organization beforehand, the logistics of running around trying to buy these tickets, the nail-biting looking through the tickets, it’s easier just to get a job.”

So if you’re thinking of getting together a consortium for the Powerball, keep in mind that for this lottery there’s only a one in 292 million chance of winning. And tickets are two bucks a pop. So you and your buddies are going to have to come up with almost $600 million to buy every combo and take advantage of the law of inevitability. And if others pick the same winning numbers and you have to split the winnings you could basically break even or even lose money.

To put the frenzy in perspective, I like to recall the wisdom of statistician Michael Orkin, author of the book What Are the Odds? Chance in Everyday Life. Back in 2001, the Powerball jackpot had reached $295 million and the odds back then were better, only 175 million to one. Orkin told me, “if you have to drive 10 miles to buy a Powerball ticket, you’re 16 times more likely to get killed in a car crash on your way than you are to win.” So if you’re dead set on buying a lottery ticket, at least walk.

—Steve Mirsky

(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)