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A second comet tail is formed by the gases escaping from the comet’s nucleus rather than by the dust. Many of the gas molecules lose one or more of their electrons and by doing so become electrically charged ions. These glow in a color specific to the comet’s composition, often green or blue, rather than white as is the Sun’s light scattering off the dust tail.

As long as a comet is falling toward the Sun, the force of light pushes the tail in an arc behind it when looking in the direction of motion of the comet. Once the comet passes its point of closest approach to the Sun in its orbit and begins to move away from the Sun again, the radiation pressure pushes the dust away from the Sun slightly faster than the nucleus is moving.

For a comet moving toward the Sun, the force exerted by sunlight causes the dust to lag behind the comet’s nucleus and to drift slowly away from its original orbit into a wider one. In effect, the force of light acts such that the dust feels an effectively lower gravitational pull from the Sun.

Cosmic rays are accelerated by exploding stars and are composed of ultra-fast atomic nuclei that tear through space at near light speed and that create a radioactive background in the elements in the human body.

Cosmic rays are accelerated by exploding stars and are composed of ultra-fast atomic nuclei that tear through space at near light speed and that create a radioactive background in the elements in the human body.

Cosmic rays are nuclei from the interstellar gas, accelerated by shock- waves in areas of the Galaxy where heavy stars explode and become supernovas. These original cosmic rays are largely made up of the same mix of elements as the gas that is present throughout the Galaxy.

Turn back & find the book I left for us, filled
with all the colors of the sky
forgotten by gravediggers
Use it.
Use it to prove how stars
were always what we knew
they were: the exit wounds
of every misfired word.

He laughs but his eyes betray him. He laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him

I didn’t know the cost
of entering a song—was to lose
your way back.

So I entered. So I lost.
Il lost it all with my eyes
wide open.

All elements in our bodies heavier than hydrogen were formed by nuclear fusion inside stars. They have been ejected from dying stars throughout the history of the universe. We are made of elements with an age range of 4.6 to 14.6 billion years, mixed with a sprinkling of much younger isotopes, such as carbon-!4.

Most stars expire by permanently caving in onto themselves, but those more than eight times heavier than the Sun terminate in spectacular supernova explosions

Without that field, our atmosphere would have been efficiently stripped from the Earth by the solar wind, as has happened in the case of Mars, thereby eliminating the possibility of all life as we know it. This is one of the many conflicting lessons from the universe: a nearby supernova may wipe out life on Earth, but without the supernovae that came before, we would not have existed.

Without the radioactive materials formed in multiple supernovae prior to the formation of the solar system, the Earth would not have a hot core, and therefore would have been left without a magnetic field, or at least would have a much weaker one, with catastrophic consequences.

Once the matter becomes as dense as atomic nuclei, the collapse suddenly stops. That is the beginning of the spectacular end of the star in a magnificent explosion, called supernova.

It can happen so quickly, in part, because energy escapes from the stellar core in the form of neutrinos: as the matter becomes denser, all sorts of nuclear reactions happen that utilize energy as they form elements heavier than iron, with some of that energy radiating out in the form of unstopped neutrinos.

Stars heavier than approximately eight solar masses have a final surprise in store. When these stars run out of fuel for fusion in their cores— that is, when their cores finish fusing silicon into iron—nothing can stop the gravitational collapse, until matter becomes as dense as the nuclei of atoms themselves. That cataclysmic core collapse happens in a matter of seconds.

Some 4.5 billion years from now, the Sun will go through such a phase of thermonuclear pulsation, destroying Mercury, Venus, and the Earth in the process. Then it will become initially a white dwarf, but glowing ever fainter and redder as it cools.

The nuclear reactions during this pulsating phase generate lots of free-flying neutrons, which, one by one, merge into atomic nuclei, making elements even heavier than iron. Perhaps half of the total mass of elements heavier than iron in our Galaxy is created in, and subsequently expelled from, stars nearing their demise.

In the final throes of this phase in a star’s life—lasting less than 1% of its overall lifetime—much of the outer part of the star is eventually lost into interstellar space. Estimates suggest that as much as one-third of all of the carbon in our Galaxy, for example, was thrown off stars during this phase.

The density keeps increasing and the star works its fusion options through increasingly heavy elements, all fusing in outward-moving layers, one after the other. Eventually, it resorts to creating elements such as neon, magnesium, silicon, and sulfur, until eventually iron is created.

Even as the hydrogen-fusing shell moves outward, the core contracts under its gravity until it is dense enough for the helium there to fuse into heavier elements, including carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen.

Because the habitable zone in the solar system is not particularly wide, the unavoidable conclusion is that the Sun cannot have changed its brightness by much over the time that life has existed on the Earth: otherwise, the narrow habitable zone would have easily shifted away from the Earth’s orbit, leaving the Earth a dead, barren planet.

Carbon-14, present in every cell of our bodies, links us to powerful cosmic rays from deep within the Galaxy. Cosmic rays that penetrate the atmosphere induce high-energy nuclear reactions when they shatter atoms in their path. This creates carbon-14 and other products, including chlorine-36, which enters our bodies when we consume salt.

and every time I've passed by this place they decided to call “Monument to the Distant Brother,” the only thing it has done is excite my kidneys. It’s a masterpiece of the degradation of taste: a gigantic urinal constructed in appreciation of men in sombreros and chubby women who live in the United States loaded down with boxes replete with useless crap, said Vega

"Moya, it’s the most hair-raising thing I have ever seen; the so-called Monument to the Distant Brother actually seems like a gigantic urinal, this monument with its enormous wall of tiles doesn’t evoke anything other than a urinal, I swear to you, Moya, when I saw it for the first time I didn’t feel anything other than an urge to urinate, "

:D

The tropics are horrific, Moya, they convert men into putrid beings who live by their most basic instincts, like those people against whom I was forced to rub up against leaving the terminal area to look for a taxi

"It's an illiterate culture, Moya, a culture that denies itself the written word, without any vocation of record or historical memory, without any perception of the past, it’s a “gadfly culture” whose only horizon is the present, the immediate, a culture with the memory of a gadfly, crashing every two seconds against the same window glass because after two seconds it’s already forgotten that the glass existed."

You can imagine, Moya, as if I considered patriotism a virtue, as if I weren’t completely sure that patriotism is one of many stupidities invented by politicians, as if patriotism had anything to do with these fatty tortillas stuffed with chicharron that always destroy my intestines

I once refused in such a way that my brother suddenly understood I wasn't joking, I wasn't going to eat those repugnant pupusas and perhaps this was the first altercation we had, in Balboa Park he began to reproach my ingratitude and what he called my lack of patriotism.

The people of this country are fighting against knowledge and intellectual curiosity, Moya, I’m completely sure that this country is out of sync with time and the world, it only existed when it was a bloodbath, it only existed thanks to the thousands who were assassinated, thanks to the criminal capacity of the military and the communists