Beyond awesome for so many reasons…

Frothy Magnetic-Bubble Sea Found at Solar System’s Edge: “The edge of the solar system may be a frothy sea of giant magnetic “bubbles,” a new NASA study says.

The new findings may mean that our system’s magnetic barrier—once thought to be a smooth shield—may be letting in more harmful cosmic rays and energetic particles than previously thought.”

Head over and read the whole piece. Fascinating.

Think about the implications for astronauts traveling to Mars… how might this impact our ability to one day visit other planets?

Observations: Two New Superheavy Chemical Elements Formally Recognized: “The elements with atomic numbers of 114 and 116 have been recognized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which credited a Russia–U.S. collaboration with their discovery.”

Now, what to name them??

Hmm… squirrelium and griffinium sound good to me.

Here are the instructions:

X-Wing Fighter from Office Supplies

Fantastic.

Striving for the Speed of Light : Starts With A Bang: “It’s always easy to point out the difficulties with a dream. The stars, after all, are so incredibly far away, that the distances are, well, astronomical.”

Great post!

Aaron O’Connell: Making sense of a visible quantum object | Video on TED.com: “Physicists are used to the idea that subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, completely different to human-scale objects. In a breakthrough experiment, Aaron O’Connell has blurred that distinction by creating an object that is visible to the unaided eye, but provably in two places at the same time. In this talk he suggests an intriguing way of thinking about the result.”

My mind is blown.

CfA Press Room: “Cambridge, MA – Today, astronomers unveiled the most complete 3-D map of the local universe (out to a distance of 380 million light-years) ever created. Taking more than 10 years to complete, the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) also is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys – a region that’s generally obscured by dust.”

Wow! This took 10 years to complete and gives us realistic 3D coordinates of the 43,000 galaxies 380 light years from earth.

If you’re wondering where we are, we’re running on the X Axis (horizontal) through the middle of the map.

Amazing.

Supernova Sonata from Alex Parker on Vimeo.

Observations: The Real Explosions in the Sky: Supernovae Translated into Music [Video]: “What does a supernova sound like? Hopefully we will never find out directly—getting within earshot of an exploding star is probably a bad idea. “

Incredible! Head over to the link above and see how they did it.

WHAT shape is an electron? The standard model of particle physics predicts that electrons are egg-shaped, but that the amount of distortion from a perfect sphere is so tiny that no existing experiment could possibly detect it. However, a rival theory called supersymmetry predicts that this egg-shaped distortion should be large enough to be detectable.

Fascinating new data to ponder, especially in regards to supersymmetry… what do those things look like, anyway?

Wow!

Bye Bye Comet! [HD Video] | Flickr – Photo Sharing!: “SOHO watched as a fairly bright comet dove towards the Sun in a white streak and was not seen again after its close encounter (May 10-11, 2011). The comet, probably part of the Kreutz family of comets, was discovered by amateur astronomer Sergey Shurpakov. In this coronagraph the Sun (represented by a white circle) is blocked by the red occulting disk so that the faint structures in the Sun’s corona can be discerned. Interestingly, a coronal mass ejection blasted out to the right just as the comet is approaching the Sun.”

We live in a beautiful (and violent) universe!