Another carnival! In space!

The 115th Carnival of Space is hanging out at New Frontiers News. The Carnival is a collection of the past week’s best posts in astronomy and space, and there’s some very cool stuff there. I read it every week so I can catch up on what’s what above our heads.

I’m glad, because somehow I missed out on Ian O’Neill’s article on WR-104, a potential gamma-ray burst that I have written quite a bit about, including in my book. Will this star kill us all? Well, no, but you can find out why at Ian’s post.

August 10th, 2009 4:23 PM by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Space | 8 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

8 Responses to “Another carnival! In space!”

1. IVAN3MAN Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

What book?
2. Larian LeQuella Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

Grr, IVAN3MAN must type faster than I do…..

There goes my “You wrote a book?” comment…
3. Ian O'Neill Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

Awesome, thanks Phil Glad you liked the article. Was a really cool interview with Dr Hill, I was even more enthused by WR 104 after chatting with him.

Plus he gets to study the Wolf-Rayet while living in Hawaiian paradise… how is that not in the top 10 jobs of all time?! (After blogging about space for a living, naturally.)

Cheers, Ian
4. Ivan Pankov Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

I thought we almost hit the edge of the universe with our telescopes, but apparently it is expanding faster than light and the big bang is 46 something light years away from us already
5. Mang Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 7:39 pm

Phil, I think it’s CoS#115 not 120.
6. Julio Vannini Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 8:13 pm

Ok… now all make sense: the 2012 catastrophe will be caused by this star!

Now seriously, I think we have to be ready for the amount of misinformation the media and conspiracy lovers will start to spread about this.

I think it is lovely to see Astronomers can make a better calculation with every observation made and to be performed. The pictured of the star is quiete impressive and beautiful.

I will read more about this type of stars. Definitively they are a very intriguing and fascinating objects!
7. Phil Plait Says:
August 10th, 2009 at 9:36 pm

Oops, Mang, you’re right. Thanks, fixed it.
8. Torbjörn Larsson, OM Says:
August 12th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

apparently it is expanding faster than light

But not locally, so the light we observe with will not be affected. For all purposes we see light that is nearly as old as the universe. That time is space equivalent “edge” of the observable universe, and the beginning of the big bang expansion.

[Never mind that the inflation period made us miss _a lot_ of the earlier volume that disappeared out of sight. Or that the ever more important acceleration of the expansion will eventually push all other galaxies over "the edge". Relativistic geometry is curious in that way.]

About Bad Astronomy

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.

Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com




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