Downstrike/astronomy

From the page:

"In the ekpyrotic model, when the two three-dimensional worlds collide and "stick," the kinetic energy in the collision is converted to the quarks, electrons, photons, etc. that are confined to move along three dimensions. The resulting temperature is finite, so the hot Big Bang phase begins without a singularity. The universe is homogeneous because the collision and initiation of the Big Bang phase occurs nearly simultaneously everywhere.

The energetically preferred geometry for the two worlds is flat, so their collision produces a flat Big Bang universe. According to Einstein's equations, this means that the total energy density of the universe is equal to the critical density. Massive magnetic monopoles, which are over-abundantly produced in the standard Big Bang theory, are not produced at all in this scenario because the temperature after collision is far too small to produce any of these massive particles.

Quantum effects cause the incoming three-dimensional world to ripple along the extra-dimension prior to collision so that the collision occurs in some places at slightly different times than others. By the time the collision is complete, the rippling leads to small variations in
temperature, which seed temperature fluctuations in the microwave background and the formation of galaxies. We have shown that the spectrum of energy density fluctuations is scale-invariant (the same amplitude on all scales). The production of a scale-invariant spectrum from hyper-expansion was one of the great triumphs of inflationary theory, and here we have repeated the feat using completely different physics."

SN2006gy

From the page:

'"This is the best-ever views we've ever received of Jupiter's rings," said Jeff Moore of the Ames Research Center in California, who led the science effort during the flyby. "By incredible good luck, we happened to be on the right trajectory with the right instruments."

After the flyby, the New Horizons took rearview photographs of sunlit dust particles in the rings.

The Little Red Spot formed over the last 10 years, when three smaller storms in Jupiter's atmosphere merged, and is now about half the diameter of the Great Red Spot that has swirled for 300 years. Over the last year, the smaller spot has become redder, presumably as it sucks up colored materials lower in the atmosphere.

From the page:

'Astronomers have been following the star since last September, when it was discovered in a galaxy 240 million light years away in the constellation Perseus by Robert Quimby, a University of Texas graduate student, who was using a small robotic telescope at McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Tex., to troll for supernovas.

The star bears an eerie resemblance to one in our own galaxy, Eta Carinae, which has been burbling and bubbling in the last few centuries as if getting ready for its own outburst. The observations suggest that the troubled and enigmatic star, thought to weigh in about 120 solar masses, could blow up sooner than theorists had thought. Mario Livio a theorist at the Space Telescope Science Institute who was not involved in the research, said the death of that star could be "the most spectacular star show in history."'

That's nice, but it took longer to DL than it did to play.

Caption: A powerful coronal mass ejection. But the energy of this event cannot compare to a spectacular
stellar eruption recently observed in space.