Science

Danger Will Robinson Huge Solar Eruption

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Maybe I should reconsider that idea I had..

Is the quiet period over?

A major solar flare erupted from the sun Saturday — one of the most powerful in years — sending an energetic blast of X-rays from a hotspot of activity that may still belch more solar storms in the days to come.

The X-ray blast occurred Nov. 6 at about 11:36 EDT (1536 GMT) from an active group of sunspots called 1121. It was the third major flare from the solar hotspot and registered a Class M 5.4 on the scale forsun storms, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by NOAA.

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08 December 2010 | science | science, solar power, supernature | View Comments

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Tick-Tock

You and I don’t experience the same sense of time. Apparently we don’t even perceive time consistently minute to minute. It expands and contracts depending on where we focus our attention.

In a series of experiments, Van Wassenhove and her colleagues found that what you see can change time perception. For example, if an object is looming in your vision and appears to be getting closer, perceptive time gets slower. The same goes for a sound that gets louder. The reason for this is simple: When you pay close attention to something, time is distorted.

It seems that paying attention to visual inputs can even distort the meaning of sounds. Say you’re looking at an enormous airplane zooming toward you. Time will dilate even if you hear a sound that suggests the object is receding, such as the engine getting fainter.

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19 November 2010 | science, weirdness | consciousness, science, time travel | View Comments

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Galactic Bubbles Bigger Than You Can Comprehend

It’s not dark matter. That’s as disturbing to scientists as it is clarifying. Many theorists were hoping it was the illusive and still unproven substance. It might have solved the mystery of why galaxies spin without flying apart. Instead it turns out to be something more detectable that sends researchers scratching their heads and scifi writers scrambling to speculate it’s meaning: gamma ray bubbles. Not only is at massively incomprehensible field of gamma ray energy it seems to be contained within a a tightly defined shape as if it were inside an invisible balloon. The size and intensity of the energy is scarcely within the imagination of most of us. My mind is boggled by their energy, one estimate calculated they are as big and as strong as 100,000 supernovae.