It's about time.

[2dimes]

The last one way over stayed it's welcome.

[Votanic]

The last one way over stayed it's welcome.

Yeah, maybe.... but why Out, out, brief candle!...??

Wait! Is it supposed to be some kind of dick joke?!

[2dimes]

Like Duke thinks you're a Dick for not knowing about the nova?
Doubtful but I suppose it's possible.

[Votanic]

Like Duke thinks you're a Dick for not knowing about the nova?
Doubtful but I suppose it's possible.

Whaaat? You mean this:

Sometime between now and the end of the year, a giant stellar explosion is likely going to shine in the night sky. This blast, called a nova, is expected to be so bright that it will be visible even from major cities. The explosion won’t pose any danger to Earth — it’s too far away — but over a span of just days, the nova will unleash tens of thousands of times more energy than the Sun puts out over an entire year.

The outburst will come from the star system T Corona Borealis, which puts on a similar show every 80 years or so. Astronomers currently predict about a 70% chance that T Corona Borealis will go nova by September, and a 95% chance that it’ll go off by the end of the year. The nova will likely be the brightest one seen on Earth since 1975.

So somehow, I was supposed to tie together a morbid quote from Macbeth, a yet-to-happen astronomical event (very cool, btw), and the latest overwrought, yet random, moniker for this disfunctionally moribund forum?

[2dimes]

Don't you think a more important question is, will the nova be occurring this year, or is the star several light years away, so it went nova already, but we will only see it, when the extra photons get here?

[DirtyDishSoap]

If i remember how time relative distance works, is that if we're observing something ligh years away, we're viewing events that occurred centuries ago rather than the present. Has to do with gravity i think. Don't quote me, i just remember hearing/reading it about it in passing.

[DirtyDishSoap]

Alright, here's an article that explains it better, rather than me pulling it out of my ass.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-astronomy/chapter/consequences-of-light-travel-time/#:~:text=This%20sets%20a%20limit%20on,100%20years%20after%20the%20fact.

Tl;dr -

This sets a limit on how quickly we can learn about events in the universe. If a star is 100 light-years away, the light we see from it tonight left that star 100 years ago and is just now arriving in our neighborhood. The soonest we can learn about any changes in that star is 100 years after the fact. For a star 500 light-years away, the light we detect tonight left 500 years ago and is carrying 500-year-old news.

Edit - Reading into it further, it's coming from the T Coronae Borealis constellation. The distance measured is about 3000 light years away, so obviously it's an event that occurred 3000 years ago. It should be about as bright as the North Star.

[Votanic]

If i remember how time relative distance works, is that if we're observing something ligh years away, we're viewing events that occurred centuries ago rather than the present. Has to do with gravity i think. Don't quote me, i just remember hearing/reading it about it in passing.

Yes, of course, no need to brow-beat me with pedantry.
The nova in question already happened X light years ago, but just like with a movie or televison program that has already be filmed but not yet aired, the event on Earth is still in the future.

[DirtyDishSoap]

September or the end of this year

[Votanic]

Edit - Reading into it further, it's coming from the T Coronae Borealis constellation. The distance measured is about 3000 light years away, so obviously it's an event that occurred 3000 years ago. It should be about as bright as the North Star.

It's a recurrent nova that occurs every 80 years.
Interesting to imagine all the spherical pulses of light energy radiating out from the white dwarf star at 80 year intervals.
At first I imagined them as being concnetric but of course they wouldn't be because the star itself is moving through space too.

[2dimes]

I guess this adds a second two layered meaning to the title. Since we're going to see an effect that occured 80 years or more after the event, 3000ish years after it happened.

Interesting and somewhat incredible how it coincides with the short time we are physical beings on a planet so far away.

I know you said not to quote but it's for context to my beaking off here.

Has to do with gravity I think.

My understanding is fairly rudimentary also but... Gravity in most cases has very little effect on light. The reason it takes so long to see the light is just because it happened so far away it takes that long for the photons to reach us.

Take a moment to think about that. Light is so fast it's almost abstract to consider yet, some things are so far away, the light photons literally take years to get to us. In this case several thousand years.

Regular amounts of gravity might bend a photons trajectory but it won't affect it's speed enough to change how long it takes to get where it's going.

The exception to that is a black hole since they are so dense they have enough gravitational pull to absorb light.

[KoolBak]

You dorks sound a lot smarter when you're pissing about politics

[DirtyDishSoap]

You dorks sound a lot smarter when you're pissing about politics

VOTE FOR ME! I'LL STEAL YOUR LUNCH MONEY!

[Votanic]

Even Sol is 8.3 light minutes away.
Everything is old news by the time we get it.

[jusplay4fun]

Basically, what has been stated is correct; the reference to gravity has been corrected. Einstein, in his General Theory of Relativity, said that gravity (essentially) warps or distorts space, causing it and the light traveling through it, to curve. But light still travels at the same speed, no matter the curvature. (3.00 X 10^8 m/s, or more accurately, 2.99792 X 10^8).

And the key point: despite the immense speed of light, the great distances of space means that it takes light SO LONG to traverse that distance. (In fact, before measured by Ole Roemer, around 1620, some thought the speed of light was infinite.) key point #2: when you look at light in space, you are looking into the past. #3 Einstein postulated that the speed of light is constant, no matter how it is measured (assuming a vacuum), one of his two fundamental postulates in Special Relativity.

So time and light are inexorably linked.

[KoolBak]

If we're actually discussing this, what's truly fascinating is that the universe is expanding in a manner we can't understand and it appears as faster than the speed of light. We can't see the galaxies that are moving away from us. Huge scientific anomaly that's really interesting to read about, but not copy / paste here

[Votanic]

If we're actually discussing this, what's truly fascinating is that the universe is expanding in a manner we can't understand....

I don't know about you, ...I get it.

[jusplay4fun]

If we're actually discussing this, what's truly fascinating is that the universe is expanding in a manner we can't understand and it appears as faster than the speed of light. We can't see the galaxies that are moving away from us. Huge scientific anomaly that's really interesting to read about, but not copy / paste here

To explain this rapid expansion of space, referred to as inflation, physicists have developed a concept called Dark Energy. Dark Matter explains the “missing “ matter needed to explain the gravitation of the galaxy. Here is the really STRANGE part: Dark Matter and Dark Energy accounts for some 95% of our universe, so the matter we see (stars, dust, atoms, and planets) account for only 4-5% of the universe, according to these interpretations.

[HitRed]

Maybe God is what we can’t see.

[2dimes]

You dorks sound a lot smarter when you're pissing about politics

VOTE FOR ME! I'LL STEAL YOUR LUNCH MONEY!

OH yeah?

I was at a buffet and had four different colours of jello at lunch. Red, orange, blue and just a small square of green. I'm not a big fan of green but I wanted to get them all.

[Pack Rat]

If we're actually discussing this, what's truly fascinating is that the universe is expanding in a manner we can't understand and it appears as faster than the speed of light. We can't see the galaxies that are moving away from us. Huge scientific anomaly that's really interesting to read about, but not copy / paste here

To explain this rapid expansion of space, referred to as inflation, physicists have developed a concept called Dark Energy. Dark matter explains the “missing “ matter needed to explain the gravitation of the galaxy. Here is the really STRANGE part: Dark Matter and Dark Energy accounts for some 95% of our universe, so the matter we see (stars, dust, atoms, and planets) account for only 4-5% of the universe, according to these interpretations.

So, you are telling us that President Biden is responsible for inflation in space?

[KoolBak]

Maybe God is what we can’t see.

I love fiction too....

We're discussing fact, however.

[2dimes]

Currently the nova facts seem to be,

• The scientist guys can't predict when it will be visible.
• It might only be visible to the naked eye for half a day.
• most of the time it's cloudy.
• Nobody in this thread is skilled enough to know where to look.

https://www.astronomy.com/wp/https:/how ... eneration/

If I get clear sky on a night I'm awake, I intend to attempt to identify Corona Borealis. That's key to finding it.

The article states it is visible with a telescope.

[Dukasaur]

Currently the nova facts seem to be,

• The scientist guys can't predict when it will be visible.
• It might only be visible to the naked eye for half a day.
• most of the time it's cloudy.
• Nobody in this thread is skilled enough to know where to look.

https://www.astronomy.com/wp/https:/how ... eneration/

If I get clear sky on a night I'm awake, I intend to attempt to identify Corona Borealis. That's key to finding it.

The article states it is visible with a telescope.

It might only be half a day, but it could be two or three days. I'm hoping, anyway.

[2dimes]

Agreed, hopefully it will be a couple of days in August or September and there will be clear skies.