Jizz in my pants

Ok, so the guys from SNL made this and it already has 15 million views. But me, I watch this...



Granted it's not the most amazing video ever. But what makes it so cool is that it is totally real. It's not an artists rendering or imagined by mathematicians. Science and telescopes gathered the data from a dying star 330 years ago. I mean, this is the first time we are able to see one of the biggest explosions we as humans can comprehend. Oh crap, yea, I jizzed in my pants.

From Wired, more here.

Los Angeles Jungle

Snapped this cool shot during a hike in the Santa Monica mountains on Sunday. Looks more like the Brazilian rain forest or somewhere in SE Asia. It was this fog that uncharacteristically hung out in LA for a couple days and blocked my attempts to see the planets align. Blast! I can only hope I will be around for the next alignment in 2052, because these insignificant occurrences in astrological motion are representative of so much more for me!

Magnetic Portals

Today I thought I would share what I learned about Flux Transfer Events (or FTEs). Why? Because it's a crazy thing that exists...and I've been watching a lot of sci fi.

An FTE is an opening between the Sun's and the Earth's magnetic fields that allows particles to travel directly between the two. Particles are usually carried from Sun to Earth on the solar wind, which was thought to be relatively consistent, like a springtime breeze. These particles would either end up bouncing off the Earth's magnetic field or find their way into the atmosphere along a magnetic field line. But, scientists now can prove that there are actual portals that open (about every 8 minutes) when the magnetic fields of the Earth and Sun intersect, that allow huge amounts of particles to zip from Sun to Earth in ways that one scientist described, as only a scientist could, as "bursty." Why are these important? That question is addressed by my favorite line in the livescience.com article that inspired this post. These FTEs "form important conduits of energy for the Earth's magnetosphere."

Next week, WTF is an magnetosphere?

Word of the day

The "Goldilocks Zone" is the term astronomers use for a narrow band of space in the universe where the conditions exist for an Earth-like planet and therefore, Life. In other words, where conditions are "just right." More on how and why scientists are starting to postulate that may no longer be the case over at i09.