Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Feb 4, 2012, 4:34 am
Classic Portrait of a Barred Spiral Galaxy (2/3/12) The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, which is found in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster). Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a similar barred spiral, and the study of galaxies such ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Nov 29, 2011, 8:36 pm
A Galaxy Full of Surprises — NGC 3621 is bulgeless but has three central black holes This image, from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows a truly remarkable galaxy known as NGC 3621. To begin with, it is a pure-disc galaxy. Like other spirals, it has a flat disc permeated by dark lanes of ma...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 19, 2011, 8:02 pm
Amino acid alphabet soupVia Astrobiology Magazine, 8/19/11 All living creatures on this planet use the same 20 amino acids, even though there are hundreds available in nature. Scientists therefore have wondered if life could have arisen based on a different set of amino acids. And what's more, ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 11, 2011, 2:59 am
A Spiral in Leo (8/10/11) This new picture from ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows NGC 3521, a spiral galaxy located about 35 million light years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). Spanning about 50 000 light-years, this spectacular object has a bright and compact nucleus, surrounded ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 6, 2011, 5:57 am
Dawn of the black holes (Science News) The seeds of the universe’s first black holes could have formed in gas halos much smaller than previously calculated, Canadian and American astronomers report online April 21 at arXiv.org. Simulated seeds about 100 times the sun’s mass were more common in m...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 6, 2011, 5:49 am
Black hole threesome revealed (Science News) Andy Warhol reportedly said, “One’s company, two’s a crowd and three’s a party.” New data reveal one heck of a black hole party, a U.S. team of researchers reports online April 19 at arXiv.org. Three supermassive black holes — humungous gravit...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 24, 2011, 11:44 pm
A Twisted Dust Web in the Galaxy IC 342 (7/20/11) Looking like a spiders web swirled into a spiral, the galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, the faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust f...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 9, 2011, 2:25 am
"Rose" of Galaxies (4/20/11) The newly released Hubble image shows a large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is t...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jun 4, 2011, 1:04 am
Wide Field Imager view of a Milky Way look-alike, NGC 6744 (6/1/11) This picture of the nearby galaxy NGC 6744 was taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla. The large spiral galaxy is similar to the Milky Way, making this image look like a picture postcard of o...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jun 4, 2011, 12:51 am
A Perfect Spiral with an Explosive Secret (5/30/11) This spiral galaxy was discovered back in the nineteenth century by French astronomer Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan, but in 2008 it became a prime target for observations thanks to the violent demise of a white dwarf star. The type Ia supernova known...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Apr 19, 2011, 4:19 am
Flocculent spiral NGC 2841 Star formation is one of the most important processes in shaping the Universe; it plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies and it is also in the earliest stages of star formation that planetary systems first appear. Yet there is still much that astronomers don’t...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Feb 27, 2011, 10:25 pm
Biologists are, at long last, beginning to understand the molecular processes responsible for aging in complex (multicellular) organisms – and to investigate ways to counteract these processes. We discussed one line of research in this recent article about a particular sirtuin (SIRT3) that helps r...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Feb 20, 2011, 11:35 pm
Supermassive black hole in a type of galaxy where nobody expected to find one? Henize 2-10 is a small, mostly unremarkable compact dwarf galaxy. Its estimated dynamical mass is about 1010 M⊙, only a few percent of our galaxy's mass, and its distance from us is about 30 million light years. It is i...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Feb 7, 2011, 3:50 am
♦ Sirtuin proteins (11/16/07) ♦ The discovery of sirtuins, part 1 (11/17/07) ♦ The discovery of sirtuins, part 2 (11/20/07) ♦ Sirtuin news (1/21/08) ♦ SIRT1 and cancer (10/26/08) ♦ Testing the Fountain of Youth in the lab (2/7/11)
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Feb 7, 2011, 3:45 am
It's been more than 10 years since it was noticed that certain enzymes – the sirtuins – had life-extending properties in organisms like yeast, and later nematodes, fruit flies, and mice. The excitement spread to other compounds, such as resveratrol, that seemed to activate or assist sirtuins. Ho...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jan 16, 2011, 11:05 pm
There's good evidence that massive black holes exist at the centers of most large galaxies having a central bulge, and even within galaxies that lack a central bulge, are small, or have an irregular form. Such black holes can range in size up to more than 10 billion solar masses (M⊙). Little is kn...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jan 5, 2011, 10:00 pm
In our previous article on cyclotomic fields we were talking about why the Galois group G of ℚ(μn)/ℚ is isomorphic to (ℤ/nℤ)×, where n∈ℤ and μn is the group of nth roots of unity, the roots of xn-1=0 in some extension of ℚ. (Check here for a list of previous articles on algebraic nu...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jan 3, 2011, 4:55 am
A Great Ball of Stars (10/25/10) The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has turned its sharp eye towards a tight collection of stars, first seen 174 years ago. The result is a sparkling image of NGC 1806, tens of thousands of stars gravitationally bound into a rich cluster. Commonly called globular clu...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Dec 28, 2010, 8:00 pm
M87 (Messier 87), also known as NGC 4486, is a giant elliptical galaxy, located about 53.5 million light-years away. It is noteworthy for several reasons, including the presence of an unusually large supermassive black hole (SMBH) in its active galactic nucleus, with an estimated mass of about 6.4×...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Dec 28, 2010, 12:27 am
Pinwheel of Star Birth (10/19/10) This face-on spiral galaxy, called NGC 3982, is striking for its rich tapestry of star birth, along with its winding arms. The arms are lined with pink star-forming regions of glowing hydrogen, newborn blue star clusters, and obscuring dust lanes that provide the ra...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Dec 17, 2010, 7:05 pm
In preparation for many good things that are to come, we need to have a talk about another important class of field extensions of ℚ – the cyclotomic extensions. (Check here for a list of previous articles on algebraic number theory.) A cyclotomic field in general is a field that is an extension ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Dec 13, 2010, 10:21 pm
*.overline {text-decoration: overline;}Our series of articles on algebraic number theory is back again. Maybe this time it won't be so sporadic. Stranger things have happened. The previous installment, of which this is a direct continuation, is here. All previous installments are listed here. When w...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Nov 28, 2010, 4:44 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. B...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Nov 21, 2010, 10:15 pm
Yesterday Tom Yulsman at CEJournal came across a story in Fog City Journal that led to a brief post, on which I commented there. The topic is the fraught question of what's the best way for scientists to respond to global warming Know-Nothingism. My first comment was followed by a response from Tom,...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Nov 1, 2010, 2:16 am
Young stars biting the cloud that feeds them (8/30/10) A billowing cloud of hydrogen in the Triangulum galaxy (Messier 33), about 2.7 million light-years away from Earth, glows with the energy released by hundreds of young, bright stars. This NASA/ESA Hubble Spare Telescope image provides the sharpe...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Oct 24, 2010, 6:40 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. T...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Oct 14, 2010, 3:38 am
An "Island Universe" in the Coma Cluster (8/10/10) A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, which lies 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy, known as NGC 4911...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Oct 4, 2010, 3:20 am
An Elegant Galaxy in an Unusual Light (9/22/10) A new image taken with the powerful HAWK-I camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile shows the beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 in infrared light. NGC 1365 is a member of the Fornax cluster of galaxies, and lies abou...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Sep 30, 2010, 4:13 am
A Galactic Spectacle (8/5/10) The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold and brown), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). The Antennae galaxies take their name...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Sep 28, 2010, 8:17 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. C...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 11, 2010, 2:19 am
Hubble captures bubbles and baby stars (6/22/10) The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region of energetic star birth is one of the most active in the nearby Universe. The Large ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 8, 2010, 10:39 pm
If you've ever taken up running as a form of exercise, or even thought about it, there's a certain paradox that may have occurred to you. The health benefits of aerobic exercise are well-documented. (See here, for example.) In particular such exercise has been shown to reduce risks of cardiovascular...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 1, 2010, 9:47 pm
VISTA Views the Sculptor Galaxy (6/16/10) A spectacular new image of the Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) has been taken with the ESO VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile as part of one of its first major observational campaigns. By observing in infrared light VISTA’s view is less affected...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Aug 1, 2010, 4:50 pm
I write like Cory DoctorowI Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing! Interesting. I know who Cory is, and have even heard him speak, but haven't ever read something he's written. So just for fun I analyzed another passage and got: I write like George OrwellI Write Like ...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 31, 2010, 6:10 am
A New Look into the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 was discovered by Charles Messier in 1773, but its outstanding spiral structure was first perceived by William Parsons (Earl of Rosse) in 1845, using his huge reflecting telescope, the Leviathan of Parsonstown. A large telescope is needed to see its intricate...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 25, 2010, 8:51 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. T...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 17, 2010, 11:35 pm
Quasars are powered by the gravitational (potential) energy of their central supermassive black holes. However, their distinctive features – their extremely high luminosity in particular – are very dependent on characteristics of matter close to the black hole. Most supermassive black holes (SM...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 14, 2010, 2:59 am
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. A...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 13, 2010, 1:22 am
Starburst Cluster Shows Celestial Fireworks (7/6/10) Like a July 4 fireworks display, a young, glittering collection of stars looks like an aerial burst. The cluster is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust—the raw material for new star formation. The nebula, located 20,000 light-years...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jul 7, 2010, 5:21 am
Starburst Galaxy NGC 1313 (5/24/10) The starburst galaxy NGC 1313 is a stellar incubator delivering stars on a scale rarely seen in a single galaxy of its size. Now a striking new Gemini Observatory image reveals the multitudes of glowing gas clouds in this galaxy’s arms. These colorful clouds ar...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jun 13, 2010, 1:44 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. A...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Jun 6, 2010, 10:14 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. E...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 31, 2010, 2:50 pm
Interesting reading and news items. Please leave some comments that indicate which articles you find most interesting or that identify topics you would like to read about, and I will try to include more articles of a similar nature in the future These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. S...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 29, 2010, 10:16 pm
The Glow of the Lagoon Nebula Gas and dust condense, beginning the process of creating new stars in this image of Messier 8, also known as the Lagoon Nebula. Located four to five thousand light-years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), the nebula is a giant interstellar cloud, on...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 13, 2010, 2:52 am
Soul Nebula (4/2/10) This WISE mosaic is of the Soul Nebula (a.k.a. the Embryo Nebula, IC 1848, or W5). It is an open cluster of stars surrounded by a cloud of dust and gas over 150 light-years across and located about 6,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, near the Heart Nebu...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 12, 2010, 11:23 pm
The object known simply as 3C 279 is rather distinctive for several reasons, in spite of the rather unassuming name. For one thing it's an active galaxy – that is, it has a supermassive black hole at its center, and that black hole is sucking in surrounding matter at a rate high enough to generate...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 9, 2010, 2:59 am
Interesting reading and news items. These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. The Search for Genes Leads to Unexpected Places Dr. Marcotte and his colleagues have discovered hundreds of other genes involved in human disorders by looking at distantly related species. They have found gene...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - May 3, 2010, 11:23 pm
VISTA’s infrared view of the Cat’s Paw Nebula The Cat’s Paw Nebula, NGC 6334, is a huge stellar nursery, the birthplace of hundreds of massive stars. In a magnificent new ESO image taken with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, t...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Apr 28, 2010, 8:00 pm
Interesting reading and news items. These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account. Cross-discipline Effort Tracks Evolution of Human Uniqueness and Modern Behavior A panel of scientists challenges what it is to be distinctly human and retraces the evolutionary steps that bipedal apes made to...
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Charles D. posted an article on Science and Reason - Apr 25, 2010, 11:41 pm
Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole in their center – sometimes even more than one. These black holes can have masses up to ten billion solar masses (1010 M⊙) or more. One of the largest known examples is part of a binary system, and it weighs in at 1.8×1010 M⊙ – see h...
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