NASA Press Conference

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I’m sitting at my computer listening to watered-down classical music at 64 Kbps.  Not without reason though–NASA has shitty hold music.

NASA has announced that astronomers have found an object in our galaxy that they have been hunting for half a century.  They will reveal the object soon and I will be covering the events of the press teleconference as they happen in this post.

Despite the crappy quality of the hold music, I’m excited.  Did we find bacteria on one of Saturn’s moons?  Did we find a reclusive binary companion of our sun?  Did we discover a new black hole close enough to obliterate us one day?  Am I going to be disappointed for having too high of an expectation?  The voice that just interrupted the cheesy classical music says I’ll find out in “one to two minutes.”  Woot.

This music sounds familiar.  Is it a Vivaldi that I’ve forgotten the name of?  Is it the same hold music that COX Cable has that I listened to for hours yesterday?  Oh geez… I hope the cable and Internet don’t go out again today while I’m listening to the conference.

Yay!  It started!

Ooo!  We’ve discovered the age (<140 yrs.) of the remains of the most recent supernovae in our galaxy!  We’ve apparently not had our galaxy’s “share” of supernovae, but “a dozen or so” have been reported over the past millineum.  The supernova is ~26,000 ly away in the direction of the centre of our galaxy and has thus been obscured from our vision except with very large telescope.  After a lot of talking about particles and the new Large Hadron Collider in Europe, the first speaker basically said it’s a bigass muthafucka (or, the energy of the particles of the supernova is more than we’ll ever be able to create on Earth, even with the LHC).

The last speaker is explaining how supernovae create heavy elements from lighter elements.  He theorises that our interest in supernovae is a self-interest.  The heavy elements, “like the iron in our blood,” are very important to us, so supernovae are very important to us.  Line of the day:  “We’re all stardust.”  ♪This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Aquariuuuuuuuuuus!♫

He’s now explaining how if we sat on the crust of a giant pizza, we wouldn’t normally see a mushroom toward the middle of the pizza due to all the mozzarella cheese in the way.  I’m guessing he’s hungry, but the analogy is good.

“It’s like one of those crime scene shows where they study a death.  It’s a stellar death, alright, and the corpse is still warm.”

I like this guy.

On to some questions!

What can we find out from this supernova that we can’t find out from others?

It’s close enough to be followed for more than a couple years, unlike the recent supernova that we saw explode in the Large Magellenic Cloud.  This is the first supernova we’ve seen between the explosion state and the dying remnant state. It’s a rare find.

Does this discovery pave the way to have the moon crickets shipped off of Earth?  Does it have anything to do with the [racist term] supernova of 2007?

Pass.

How is it expanding so fast?

14 KM per second is unprecedented for the expansion of a supernovae remnant after 140 years.  This must mean the density of the matter around it is very low.   It’s a bit unusual to see one moving so fast 140 years later, but it’s not impossible.

This brings the total of young supernovae remnants to 10.  Where are we going to find the other 50?

And then my cable cut out.  Dammit!

Well, it’s back to the shitty hold music from COX Cable.

The conference will be replayed on a loop for the rest of the week.  You can access it toll-free at 866-501-2957; 203-369-1825 for the international crowd.

It’s not moon bacteria or green space vixens, but it’s still pretty damn cool.  Thanks, NASA, for making life awesome again.  Thanks, COX Communications for sucking the awesome back out of it.

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