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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;line-height:14.25pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>An exploding star had been sighted in M82, one of the nearest big galaxies. The "supernova" a "Type Ia" -- the kind that led to the Nobel-worthy discovery of dark energy….</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/24/opinion/urry-exploding-supernova/index.html?hpt=hp_c3" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/24/opinion/urry-exploding-supernova/index.html?hpt=hp_c3</a></span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark<br><b>Sent:</b> Saturday, January 25, 2014 10:02 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] excellent! a nearby 1a has been found, before peak brightness!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>That is cool. Even cooler would be when Betelgeuse goes supernova, and that could happen tomorrow or in a million years and it's only 643 light years away verses 11,400,000 for this one. Of course Betelgeuse wouldn't be a Type 1a supernova but a core collapse Type 2. Cooler still will be when Eta Carinea blows up, it's 7500 light years away but when it blows it will probably be a photon pair instability style Hypernova. That would really be something to see!<o:p></o:p></p></div><p class=MsoNormal> John K Clark<o:p></o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal><br><br><o:p></o:p></p></div></div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>John, this is all giving me some very pleasant nostalgia from when I was less than half the age I am now. It caused me to marvel at how much things have changed since then.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>What were you doing in 1987? What was the big event of that year? Do you have specific memories? I sure do. We had a close-by type II irregular, in late February 1987. It was the biiiiig deeeealll that year for those of us who were into that sort of thing, but some things were very different back then. I remember specifics about it: my astronomy buddy called me with a breathless report of a nearby biggie, and we were going to have a meeting of the astronomy club at the usual place over at the public library. My young friends, back in those benighted times, a chat group had to literally “travel” to a common geographical “location.” Chat required use of physical “vocal cords” and face-to-meat-face contact. It was horrifying. Actually it wasn’t that bad. We enjoyed each other’s physical presence. We met. The usual suspects at those meeting were about a couple dozen guys, but that evening we had about 50, and our meeting room wasn’t big enough, so the librarian came by and opened the main library for us. It was too cold and windy, but guys were milling about in the parking lot, talking supernovae. So fun!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>We went about reviewing the mechanisms behind the various types of SNe. For several weeks I scrounged around for everything I could find, magazines, books, anything we could get our hands on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Tuesday evening I hear of the type 1a, discovered well before peak brightness. I marvel at hooooowwww muuuuch stuuuuufff has been discovered since 1987, and how easy it is to get to it. We know waaaay more now than we did then. In 1987, we treated the carbon/oxygen interface as a sphere, but since then, 3D turbulence modelling has explained why the 1a seems to detonate slightly before it reaches the Chandrasekhar Limit, by about 1%, and why the explosions usually appear asymmetrical. All this stuff we can now find online, all of it free, such good high quality information, oh my. Is this a great time, or what?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>All this has a point beyond the pleasant memories of an exciting time 27 yrs ago.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Using these flighty information-browsing techniques most of us have developed, I was able to review and find more and absorb more and better information in two exciting evenings than I did in several weeks back in 1987. We had to go get scholarly articles, collect books (most of which were outdated or written incompetently), we brought in a physics lecturer from Cal-Tech (Murray Gell-Mann came out to remote little Ridgecrest California! Oh that was cool. What a guy!) But it was all so slow. I think I was studying for about a month, learning the details on the various types of supernovae. Now we can do it all so quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Other examples of contrast between now and pre-internet please? What does this mean for the future of humanity? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div></body></html>