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#COSMIC DEBRIS
thetigers · 5 months
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Cosmic Elegance by Ceemko Art
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thegingerblaggard · 2 years
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Motorfuzzin' Adventures in Beer: Beach Street Beer Festival
On the 25th of March I attended the inaugural Beach Street Beer Festival. I also tried my hand at writing some kind of gonzo piece. Call it my first attempt!
Snow. It makes perfect sense for the UK of all places to be enveloped in sumptuously alarming March warmth one moment then receive a dusting of snow and plummeting near-freezing temperatures the next. Peering above my laptop towards the window now, snow is as much a distant memory as March 25th, a day of festive inebriation down on Felixstowe’s shoreline where for two days you could sample a…
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blasteffect · 2 months
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A “Green Monster” Lurks in Star’s Debris
For the first time, astronomers have combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope to study the well-known supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A). This work has helped explain an unusual structure in the debris from the destroyed star called the “Green Monster,” because of its resemblance to the wall in the left field of Fenway Park.
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScl; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScl/Milisavljevic et al., NASA/JPL/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt and K. Arcand
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blinkpen · 6 months
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presented without context
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aslisjournal · 1 year
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How much of pain is perception? I look back at my life now and I can pin the source of a lot of life’s heartbreaks to my perspective. I have to take accountability for the false expectations & beliefs I formed about life, death, how success arrives, how love comes and leaves, self-infallibility, the deepness of dark times…even if these beliefs were formed for me subconsciously through childhood or movies or ego or social media or wherever. When these false beliefs crash into the inevitable truth of Reality, it really hurts, but it’s a chance to uncover something: the truth
Once this crash occurs and the debris settles, you have to learn to be patient with the painful process of extracting these false beliefs. It takes time, like a surgical procedure….. as perception has neural networks that go from your eyes to your brain to your heart
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aethergate · 6 months
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tag dump 1 theres gonna be like 4 of these
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truegeorge · 2 years
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Abandon Ship
It has been a while since I checked out Cosmic Disclosure; where people who worked in or were affiliated with the Secret Space program disclose information about the program. The narrator was describing NAZI Germany’s pact with the Reptilians, and about the NAZI appropriation of a NORDIC operative that was working for the allies, and how that operative became involved in NAZI Germany building the…
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requiem-on-water · 7 months
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Mysterious Cosmic ‘Keyhole’: a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion is a relic of recent star formation – it is composed of debris left over from the formation of a newborn star and it's around 1,350 light-years from Earth. {image credit: Nasa}
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comicaurora · 1 year
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What other mythological creatures would be fun in space? If the answer is "most of them?", Then limit the scope of the question to what becomes *more* fun in space?
Still "most of them," unfortunately.
Deep in the bowels of a derelict, drifting hulk, so battered with cosmic rays and space debris all sign of its original function have eroded away, something that could have been human roams the labyrinthine halls. Who knows what terrible crime or tragedy spawned it? It is huge, and hungry, and terribly, terribly alone. All anyone knows is that the drifting hulk that screams to the void in a hundred looping distress calls is to be avoided at all costs, for the maze is deadly and its lone prisoner even deadlier.
An enchanting woman knocks on the porthole with a broad smile, hair flowing in beautiful curls and mouth moving soundlessly in the boiling vacuum. She seems unaware of the inch-thick tempered plasteel, or perhaps unaware of its necessity for the mortal and the fragile within. As she stares unblinking, whispers begin to crackle over the ship radio, half-parseable snatches in many voices - surnames, stardates, coordinates. The knowledge is so, so tempting.
The astronaut is standing just outside the airlock. The sun is starting to sink behind the lunar horizon, cutting razor-sharp shadows across the silvery dust. He's been standing, patiently, for over four hours. The crew in the lander are huddled as far away from the door as possible, unconacipusly avoiding the astronaut's cold and vacant bunk. They had buried him, after all, three rotations ago, the special kind of dead you only get after decompression-induced exsanguination. And yet here he stands, looking better than ever, a healthy blush in his cheeks clearly visible without that bulky reflective helmet in the way. His eyes catch the setting sun strangely, almost red.
Space is an ocean, they say; the analogy is imperfect, and yet persistent in its poetry. The seafarers of old coasted along the surface of a vast and unknowable deep and called it sailing, and the spacefarers of the new frontier do the same. They speed between the stars or cut through wormhole gates for the occasional shortcut, skimming the three-dimensional surface of the vast four-dimensional space that wormholes can only tentatively pierce, and they are satisfied. But there are strange shadows in the stars, twisting and slow - distortions that ripple out from the hyperdepth and mostly pass without incident, barring the sensitive instruments left screaming in their wake. Nobody has ever seen the four-dimensional leviathans that cast these three-dimensional shadows. At least, nobody who's come back.
They call it a dragon because it flies and it's the scariest thing they've ever seen. It doesn't do it justice. If anything, trying to give it a familiar name only highlights its horrible uncategorizability. It flies, yes - or at least it undulates through atmosphere, seemingly irrelevant to its own mass. It has a golden hoard and breathes poison and fire, or rather the nuclear furnace that boils in its sinuous belly vomits out great gouts of poison fire that leaves stone and flesh as glassy slag and metals fused into radioactive gold. The land all around its lair is blackened and sick, a vile caldera of strange-colored swampland and twisted, fungal trees. In the absolute terror and devastation of its wake, the colonists fall back on old, bad superstitions and offer it a girl…
The sorcerer took out his heart long ago, they say. This is true, but inadequate. His true body is shattered in closely guarded pieces to protect himself from a total death; the form he presents is only a projection of his will onto and through the nanite colony his machinations spawned, a body crafted by the immortal mind and will of one who sacrificed everything to be deathless. His heart is concealed in a small life support capsule in a long-forgotten laboratory in a satellite orbiting the moon of a quarantined colony world; his nervous system wires itself through the vast, organic computer that has taken the place of the planet's core. Backups of backups of backups, redundancies laced through every stolen system. He knows there was a purpose to this, once; a goal to all this sacrifice beyond a simple extension of life. He will never remember who he wanted this for. To be truly deathless, one cannot have a heart.
It's retroviral, they think. No other form of infection could've rewired her cells this fundamentally. It's irreversible without gene therapy, but at least she isn't deteriorating, they say. At least she's holding together while they look for a treatment. She can feel it, though, no matter what the medic says; sub-cellular or not, she can feel it boiling under her skin, sharpening her teeth, burning out from the site of the bite on her arm. And she can feel, with absolute certainty, the planet's two satellites slowly shifting into opposition with the sun, right through the windowless walls of the quarantine pod. She doesn't know what she'll become when the moons are full, but she doesn't speak her suspicions. A part of her - perhaps even a part that's always been there - is very, very eager to find out.
A colony was here once, a long, long time ago. Terraformed and everything, but those were the early days, before they realized you needed a magnetosphere to keep all that air and water from being wicked away by the solar wind. The loss was so gradual it didn't make sense until over a century later, and there wasn't anything they could do for them long-term - wrong kind of core for a polarization op. They did evac, of course, but the priority was low - and it was centuries deep into social development. Everybody on that world had been born there, and some of them didn't want to leave. Way I hear it, some of them insisted on staying - strongly and violently - and the folks in charge eventually got tired of losing troops in a dessicating backwater that was gonna solve itself in less than a century, so they just fudged the paperwork and washed their hands of the whole thing. It's near airless now - stopped being a viable colony world nigh on thirty years back when the last of the ice vanished. But that's not why we steer clear. We don't land there because the locals didn't have the decency to die right, and it can be damn unsettling to catch their shadows sneaking across the sand. They're drawn to ships, you know? Poor bastards still think they can leave.
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nasa · 2 years
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You Are Made of Stardust
Though the billions of people on Earth may come from different areas, we share a common heritage: we are all made of stardust! From the carbon in our DNA to the calcium in our bones, nearly all of the elements in our bodies were forged in the fiery hearts and death throes of stars.
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The building blocks for humans, and even our planet, wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for stars. If we could rewind the universe back almost to the very beginning, we would just see a sea of hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium.
The first generation of stars formed from this material. There’s so much heat and pressure in a star’s core that they can fuse atoms together, forming new elements. Our DNA is made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. All those elements (except hydrogen, which has existed since shortly after the big bang) are made by stars and released into the cosmos when the stars die.
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Each star comes with a limited fuel supply. When a medium-mass star runs out of fuel, it will swell up and shrug off its outer layers. Only a small, hot core called a white dwarf is left behind. The star’s cast-off debris includes elements like carbon and nitrogen. It expands out into the cosmos, possibly destined to be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. New life may be born from the ashes of stars.
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Massive stars are doomed to a more violent fate. For most of their lives, stars are balanced between the outward pressure created by nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When a massive star runs out of fuel and its nuclear processes die down, it completely throws the star out of balance. The result? An explosion!
Supernova explosions create such intense conditions that even more elements can form. The oxygen we breathe and essential minerals like magnesium and potassium are flung into space by these supernovas.
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Supernovas can also occur another way in binary, or double-star, systems. When a white dwarf steals material from its companion, it can throw everything off balance too and lead to another kind of cataclysmic supernova. Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study these stellar explosions to figure out what’s speeding up the universe’s expansion. 
This kind of explosion creates calcium – the mineral we need most in our bodies – and trace minerals that we only need a little of, like zinc and manganese. It also produces iron, which is found in our blood and also makes up the bulk of our planet’s mass!
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A supernova will either leave behind a black hole or a neutron star – the superdense core of an exploded star. When two neutron stars collide, it showers the cosmos in elements like silver, gold, iodine, uranium, and plutonium.
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Some elements only come from stars indirectly. Cosmic rays are nuclei (the central parts of atoms) that have been boosted to high speed by the most energetic events in the universe. When they collide with atoms, the impact can break them apart, forming simpler elements. That’s how we get boron and beryllium – from breaking star-made atoms into smaller ones.
Half a dozen other elements are created by radioactive decay. Some elements are radioactive, which means their nuclei are unstable. They naturally break down to form simpler elements by emitting radiation and particles. That’s how we get elements like radium. The rest are made by humans in labs by slamming atoms of lighter elements together at super high speeds to form heavier ones. We can fuse together elements made by stars to create exotic, short-lived elements like seaborgium and einsteinium.
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From some of the most cataclysmic events in the cosmos comes all of the beauty we see here on Earth. Life, and even our planet, wouldn’t have formed without them! But we still have lots of questions about these stellar factories. 
In 2006, our Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth containing tiny particles of interstellar dust that originated in distant stars, light-years away – the first star dust to ever be collected from space and returned for study. You can help us identify and study the composition of these tiny, elusive particles through our Stardust@Home Citizen Science project.
Our upcoming Roman Space Telescope will help us learn more about how elements were created and distributed throughout galaxies, all while exploring many other cosmic questions. Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
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falkonryderz · 2 years
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Listen/purchase: Cosmic Debris by Cosmic Debris
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apod · 5 months
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2023 November 9
M1: The Crab Nebula Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Tea Temim (Princeton University)
Explanation: The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first object on Charles Messier's famous 18th century list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, debris from the death explosion of a massive star witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) explores the eerie glow and fragmented strands of the still expanding cloud of interstellar debris in infrared light. One of the most exotic objects known to modern astronomers, the Crab Pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30 times a second, is visible as a bright spot near the nebula's center. Like a cosmic dynamo, this collapsed remnant of the stellar core powers the Crab's emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Spanning about 12 light-years, the Crab Nebula is a mere 6,500 light-years away in the head-strong constellation Taurus.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231109.html
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hunnylagoon · 4 months
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Wayfaring Stranger
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PREMISE: After your husband refuses to check a concerning sound outside, you do it yourself only to find a beautiful stranger bloodied up on the beaten road beneath moonlight. The events that follow soon after turn your once quiet world on its head.
DISCONTINUED
A/N: Forgive me if there are typos or confusing sentences. I was high asf writing this and I am high asf posting this. I have a series outline posted on my page right before this post, idk how link it, I’ll figure it out sometime. I’m releasing another Ellie fic tomorrow, it’s a modern AU and will be two parts. As always, thanks for reading!
WARNING: Murder, mentions of violence and injuries
The night hung heavy over the isolated homestead, a sea of inky darkness punctuated only by the sparse glow of stars scattered across the expansive canvas of the western sky. You, wrapped in a weathered shawl, stepped cautiously onto the creaking wood floorboards leading to your bedroom window. The pristine planks groaned under the subtle weight of your movement, echoing through the stillness of the night. "Sawyer, did you hear that?" You ask, turning your head to look at your husband who lay with his back to you, His blonde curls falling upon the satin pillowcases. "Sawyer!" You hiss, trying to capture his attention.
"It's just some cattle," He dismissed, not bothering to look at you; in fact, he pulled the covers even farther up his figure to conceal himself from you.
"Can you go look?"
"Why would I do that?" He groaned, it was a genuine question. He couldn't figure out why you would want to investigate a concerning sound.
"Because it sounded like gunshots and screaming, someone could be hurt!"
"All the more reason to stay inside."
"Well, I'm going to go see what it is if you refuse to." You spat, grabbing the oil lamp from the bedside stand and using your shawl to clear it of debris. You swipe a match across its box, watching it ignite, small sparks dancing around your fingertips. You move the match to light the exposed part of the wick before blowing it out and discarding it on the spruce floors.
"Okay, don't get hurt," He said flat, nuzzling back into the feather pillows.
A solitary oil lamp, its flame shifting with every step, cast feeble shadows that clung to the edges of the wall like silent sentinels. Under the flickering light, you made your way down the stairs and slipped on a pair of worn leather boots, dusty from the day's toil. As your boots met the uneven wooden surface of the porch, you shivered, you hadn't anticipated just how cold it would be.
The air was crisp, carrying the scent of sagebrush and the distant whispers of the unseen nocturnal creatures that inhabited the wilderness. A coyote's distant howl painted the night with an eerie soundtrack, a reminder that the untamed landscape surrounding your home was both beautiful and treacherous.
As you descended the porch steps, your eyes, accustomed to the darkness, scanned the horizon. The landscape unfolded before you in nothing but shadows and silhouettes, the distant outlines of distant hills and mesas barely visible beneath the cosmic tableau above. The isolation of your homestead, far removed from the flickering lights of the town, cocooned you in an otherworldly silence, a solitude that carried the weight of the untamed frontier.
You looked back towards your home as you moved down the dirt road; weathered limestone walls, adorned with ornate ironwork, bore witness to years of harsh sun, and dust storms, though the relentless passage of time wasn't easy to spot as Sawyer had constant maintenance on it. Standing proudly against the dark backdrop of endless prairie, the mansion's presence was a testament to opulence in the rugged west. The home sat on the top of a hill, the trip down being somewhat steep, though the main path was easy to trek, other ways down would send you tumbling.
A soft breeze rustled through the grass dunes, creating a gentle whistle that you liked to believe carried every secret ever whispered in the town.
With a deep breath, you ventured beyond the perimeter of the homestead, your silhouette becoming one with the night. The crunch of your footsteps on the gravel path echoed faintly, a lullaby for the wilderness that watched over you. You move with hesitation, trying to consider that your husband may be right and you should've ignored the clash and tucked yourself back into the king-sized bed, despite this, you keep moving, leaving only the echoes of your presence behind.
You were surrounded by almost nothing but darkness, you could only see the shapes of rocks and cacti reflecting the moonlight along with whatever was immediately around you, thanks to the shine of the oil lamp.
Writhing in the rocky dirt path you saw a figure. It hadn't been an animal or an article of clothing that somehow found its way to you, it had been the slender silhouette of a person, just as you suspected, someone was hurt. As you carefully approached you could hear their shaky breathes that made you sure it was a woman. Her chest rose and sunk as she shuddered in the cold air; she was soaked through with blood, you had never seen someone in worse shape. "Ma'am?" You ask, your heartbeat speeding up. She looked visibly startled, trying to grip the ground and crawl away from you out of fear. "I'm not going to hurt you, I promise, I can help you." Your eyebrows furrowed in skepticism at the sight before you.
"No," She shook her head, the woman could hardly get words out of her mouth, just ragged breaths.
"You're shivering," You slowly crouched down, gingerly sitting her up, she winced in pain when you did so "I'm sorry," You hooked an arm around her waist while she slid an arm behind your shoulders, she used her other arm to clutch at a wound in her stomach, you ignored your shaking at her additional weight leaning against your own, you just had to get her up the hill. "SAWYER!" You shouted as loud as your lungs allowed you "SAWYER!" You screamed again, waiting for your husband to be standing on the porch.
You hauled the woman to your porch just as Sawyer finally emerged "What do you- WHAT IS HAPPENING!" His annoyance quickly turned to panic when he saw who was clinging onto you, behind him the door was hanging open letting the light from the foyer break apart some of the darkness. In the light other than the moon you finally got a better look at her. You couldn't even tell what colour her hair was beneath the blood matting it to her head, streaks of red ran down her freckled face and soaked almost every inch of clothing she adorned.
"Ride into town, get the doctor and bring him back here." You ordered, pushing past him, into the living room where you laid her gingerly onto the white gold crested sofa, feeling relief of the added weight gone.
"Well, there goes my coach-
"Sawyer!" You yell again, urging him to leave, he finally does, slamming the door behind him. You run around, hastily lighting candles to brighten the room; you bring a bucket of clean water to her side, drenching a rag in the water, you bring it to her face and begin to wipe away the blood. You noticed her shudder at the touch of cold water on her raw flesh "It's okay," You muttered, in an attempt to comfort her. You weren't quite sure what to say, she must've been terrified but it's not like you were feeling okay with the whole situation, you just didn't want to worsen anything.
More than anything, you wanted to know what had happened to this woman. Of course, you weren't going to ask at that moment, you didn't have to ask though, it's like she read your mind.
"I'm, Ellie," She said between ragged heaves. Just when you were beginning to make up your own backstory for the wayfaring stranger. The picture you had formed in your mind was that her name was Maybelle and she had taken a loan from a gang, and gotten herself into some serious trouble. Nope. Her name was Ellie and what was most logical was that she had been robbed by bandits.
You smile softly, trying to put her at ease. You thought back to all of the ways your mother used to calm you and your little sister "Well, Ellie, doctors gonna be here any minute and you'll be stitched up, good."
Ellie could've sworn that she made you up inside her head. She had heard stories of people on the brink of death imagining an angel guiding them to security just to be told when they recovered that person never existed. She was sure that she would get some rest and would wake up in some clinic with you nowhere to be found. You looked like an angel too, features illuminated in the soft candlelight. "Are you real?"
Her words had you thinking she was ebbing closer to the brink of death, blood loss making her woozy. "I sure am," You said, indulging her "I can tell from your accent that you're from as far west as west goes."
"That you would be right about, ma'am," She smiled with half-lidded eyes, her head lulling back and forth from the spot it rested on the sofa arm.
You soaked the cloth again, wringing it out in the bucket, the once clear water already becoming a foggy reddish hue. You used your free hand to push hair away from Ellie's face, with your other hand you held the cloth and gently wiped the blood from her forehead, clearing the way for you to see more of her freckles. "There we go," You moved your free hand to the back of her head to support it, now using the rag to wash away at the grime on her cheeks and button nose. "I can finally see that pretty face."
"pretty," She murmured, eyelids fluttering.
In the dimly lit room, shadows danced across the walls like ghostly spectres, and the air hung heavy with the metallic scent of blood. The wounded figure lay sprawled on the once pristine white sofa, the echo of a recent struggle still reverberating through the stillness. Moonlight filtered through tattered curtains, casting an eerie glow on the scene of desperation.
A crimson pool formed beneath Ellie, soaking into Sawyer's beloved couch. The rhythmic breathing echoed in the silence, a macabre lullaby that seemed to accompany the fading pulse of life. Ellie against the encroaching darkness, the battle for consciousness etched across a face pale and drawn.
Every breath was a laborious effort, a struggle against the body's betrayal. Her once vibrant eyes, now dull and distant, glistened with a mixture of pain and determination. Beads of sweat clung to a furrowed brow, evidence of the fevered fight within.
Trembling hands clutched at the wound, desperate to stem the relentless flow of a life's essence escaping through her fingers. Each heartbeat sent fresh waves of pain through the body, threatening to pull the fragile thread of consciousness even thinner. The air seemed to thicken with the weight of mortality, and every passing moment whispered of the inevitability of the abyss.
Amid this struggle, fragmented memories flickered like distant stars in a fading night sky. Faces and places, fragments of life now hanging in the balance, flashed before weary eyes. The pulse, once strong and steady, faltered like a distant drumbeat threatening to fade into silence.
Yet, amidst the darkness, a fierce will to survive burned like a defiant flame. The wounded soul summoned reserves of strength, drawing upon reserves untapped in ordinary times. Each laboured breath was a testament to an indomitable spirit, a refusal to yield to the encroaching void.
The room itself seemed to pulse with a quiet urgency, bearing witness to a solitary struggle against the inevitable. Shadows clung to the edges of consciousness, threatening to pull the wounded figure into an abyss from which there might be no return. She saw your lips moving but the words fell upon death ears, she couldn't make out whatever you were frantically telling her, all she knew was that she was tired and she couldn't fight to stay awake much longer.
≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
Though Ellie had believed you to be an angel, you proved yourself to be real.
As the first rays of the Southern sun began to pierce through ornate curtains, casting a warm golden glow upon the opulent bedroom, she stirred beneath the layers of soft, embroidered linens. The mattress cradled her like a sanctuary, and the pillows plumped to perfection, offered a haven for dreams. The room itself exuded a rustic elegance, with intricately carved wooden furniture standing proudly against the walls adorned with rich tapestries. The air carried the subtle scent of cedar, a nod to the untamed wilderness just beyond the ornate windows. Lace curtains danced in the morning breeze, revealing a breathtaking view of the rolling hills and vast plains. The room, a luxurious oasis in the heart of the frontier, embraced her in a cocoon of comfort, providing a stark contrast to the rugged landscape outside. As she slowly opened her eyes, the lavish details of the room unfolded like a dream, and for a moment, she forgot about the events of the night before, until the throbbing pain of stitched wounds hit her once more.
Ellie was no longer in the drenched clothes from the previous night and was no longer nose-blinded by the sickly sweet stench of blood. Though she didn't remember everything from the night before, she remembered you
What had woken her up was the incredible smell filling whatever room she was in. Cast-iron fried bacon, its savoury perfume mingling with the tantalizing scent of freshly steeped tea that wafted through the air. The aroma of flapjacks, golden and perfectly griddled, hung thick, inviting all who caught wind of it to indulge in a culinary celebration of the morning.
A bounty of farm-fresh eggs scrambled to perfection, adorned the table alongside a bowl of vibrant, sun-ripened tomatoes and sliced avocados, their colours mirroring the vivid hues of the sunrise. A basket brimming with flaky biscuits, warm and buttery, beckoned with promises of melt-in-your-mouth goodness.
In the center of it all, a heaping pile of wild berries and succulent peaches offered a burst of sweetness, a reminder of nature's abundance even in the rugged expanse of the frontier. A jar of homemade preserves, bursting with the flavours of sun-ripened fruits, awaited its turn to grace the breakfast spread. All of it meticulously placed on the breakfast tray beside her.
She had never been blessed enough to get such a thoughtful breakfast, or meal, or anything for that matter. Ellie had grown up around ruffians who showed love through gunpowder and chewing tobacco.
Every bite tasted just as good as she had anticipated, most people wouldn't have thought it smart to eat a meal in a stranger's home that magically appeared to wake her up and maybe Ellie wasn't smart but she sure was hungry.
In the corridors, you hummed along to a song you used to sing on the piano when you were a girl while you rearranged and tidied bits and pieces of your shared home so everything was in its place. Your ears pricked up at the sound of rustling, it could have only been one thing. You knocked on the door of one of your guest rooms.
"Yeah?" She said through a mouthful of food.
You pushed the spruce door open, closing it behind you "Good mornin'," You smiled "Or afternoon, I suppose. Feelin' any better?"
She felt embarrassment well up in her throat, there you were looking so effortlessly stunning and she was a half-baked mess laying in one of your beds, swallowing back the food you slaved away to prepare. "Ma'am, I am so very sorry for imposin' on ya' last night, I will be out of your hair in no time."
"Stay as long as ya' need," You dismissed her "Truth be told, it gets a little lonely in this house, Sawyer goes away all day and when he's home he's too tired to speak, so it's just me."
She furrowed her eyebrows "You own a house this big and you haven't got a maid or servant or something?"
You shook your head "We used to have one but Sawyer fired her, said I needed some chores to keep me busy. We do have a stable boy, name's Jerry, nice kid just can't speak English all that well. He comes by a couple of days a week and has tea with me during his breaks. I won't keep ya' here if you don't want to though."
"I'd just feel too guilty eatin' your food and givin' you nothing," Didn’t seem guilty one minute ago. She moved the tray of food from its spot on her lap to the empty bedside table. She began to push the covers off of her, trying her best to ignore the ache in her bones. When her feet hit the ground she felt extreme agony course through her body like a million little knives swimming through her bloodstream. She crumbled over into herself on the ground.
You rushed over to help her back up "Easy," You say, your tone soft "You're hurt, remember?"
Ellie couldn't even stand on her own at that moment, her legs shook with each step she tried to take, you leading her gingerly. "Can't feel a thing," She lied through gritted teeth.
"Are you sure?"
"Nope, I need to sit back down," She said and you helped her to sit on the side of the cushioned bed. She couldn't remember feeling that weak for a very long time, not since she had been a child. Ellie almost wanted to laugh at how stupid she felt, needing you to help her take a few steps like she was elderly, instead, she looked up at you "How did I get so lucky as to have you take care of me?"
"Sometimes we just meet someone at the right time." You shrug. You were no longer able to bite back the question that had kept you up all night "If I may ask, what happened to you last night?"
She sighed, scootching herself back in the bed to get comfortable "I'm nothing more than a travelling merchant ya' see, last night while I was headed out of Palecliff, I was raided by a group of bandits, took my horse, my wagon, everything I've ever known gone in one night along with my dignity."
Your eyes went wide and you clasped a hand over your mouth "What did they look like?"
You had a million questions for her and you didn't waste time in showering her with them. It had been so long since you had someone to talk to, not your stoic husband, not a fourteen-year-old who didn't understand your language, but a woman your age who indulged your questions and laughed at your jokes, adding her witty remarks to them. When you married Sawyer it was like you were thrown into the life of someone you did not know, it went from sixteen-year-old you playing piano every night, serving food, chatting up locals to being isolated in a stark mansion on top of a hill, watching the ghost of what your life used to be from what felt like a cage. You were allowed to enter town once a month, beyond that you would sneak off to the creek and the far-off forest where there was no one to report to your husband, his father was the mayor so out of fear they would never keep their mouths shut.
It only made you ecstatic when Ellie had agreed to stay with the promise of doing house and stable work when she recovered to pay you back in whatever ways she could.
Mornings with Ellie began with the aroma of herbal tea and the comforting crackle of a wood-burning stove. You, now a dedicated caregiver, tended to the injured woman's wounds with gentle hands, your touch a balm for both body and soul.
Conversations flowed like the pages of a well-worn novel, each chapter revealing the layers of their respective histories. Shared laughter echoed through the homestead, a melody that resonated against the backdrop of the vast wild wind. In the quiet moments, as the injured woman gazed out of the window, she found peace in the sight of the rolling hills and endless skies.
Through the nuances of daily life—shared meals whispered confidences, and the unspoken understanding that transcended words—the two women became intertwined, bound to one another almost.
Sawyer wasn't fond of how his wife had come to spend her time. Something about the sound of her laughter echoing through the halls had angered him, knowing that he wasn't the one who made her laugh.
Sawyer, a figure of striking contradiction to his gentle and nurturing wife, cut a commanding presence beneath the harsh sunlight. His tousled locks, framed a face chiselled with the unforgiving lines of both nature and a life forged on the frontier. A mane of wheat-gold hair fell over piercing blue eyes, cold and calculating like the steel of a Colt revolver. His tall, lean form moved with the languid grace of a predator, exuding an effortless confidence that bordered on arrogance. Dressed in the finest of suits, Sawyer's appearance belied an innate cruelty that simmered beneath the surface. A well-defined jawline, framed by the hint of stubble, spoke of a man who had faced the harsh realities of the untamed West, and yet, it was the glint in his eyes that hinted at the darkness that mirrored the vast, shadowed canyons of the frontier. In the presence of Sawyer, the air seemed to thicken with an unspoken tension, a reminder that you belonged to him and him alone.
When Ellie had healed enough to hobble around the house and assist you with chores as well as join you and Sawyer at the dinner table, he had made sure to be vocal. "Ellie, I think you could ease up on the help a little as much as we appreciate it," He said across a table of food you spent hours preparing "I don't want my wife to forget to be grateful for the life that's been handed to her if she relaxes too much she just slips away into some progressive madness."
You look towards him, a subtle rage simmering inside of you "Sawyer, I'm not being ungrateful, I'm just tired from-
He raised a hand to stop your talking "I don't think we want those womanly emotions to get in the way, do we?"
You pushed yourself away from the table, slamming your serviette down and storming out.
Sawyer only chuckles at this, turning to look at Ellie who had found herself constantly having to bite her tongue around him "Just wait until she has children, she'll cry every day and make up even more things to complain about." Before Ellie, he had never felt such a sense of possession over you, typically he just treated you like an ornament.
All good things must come to an end and so they did; Ellie had healed almost completely after two months, the Southern winter had passed and spring was arriving. You both lied to yourself, pretending that it was still sensible for Ellie to be living in your house. You convinced her to let you take her to your favourite spot.
In the early embrace of spring, a hidden gem sat in the heart of nature—a beautiful creek that meandered through the landscape like a serpentine ribbon of liquid silver. The air, still sharp with the vestiges of winter, carried the invigorating scent of damp earth and awakening foliage. Along the banks, delicate shoots of vibrant green grass peeked through the remnants of melting snow, heralding the arrival of a season draped in renewal.
The creek itself murmured a gentle melody, a harmonious symphony composed by the bubbling riffles and the soft percussion of water cascading over smooth stones. The water, crystal clear and pure, reflected the azure canvas of the early spring sky, creating a mirror that captured the fleeting beauty of budding trees and the emerging wildflowers that lined the water's edge.
Beneath the surface, the creek harboured secrets—shimmering pebbles, polished by the tender caress of the water's passage, and tiny aquatic organisms that stirred with the promise of life. The sunlight filtered through the burgeoning leaves above, casting dappled patterns on the creek's surface like nature's stained glass adorning a cathedral of serenity.
On the banks, clusters of delicate wildflowers began to unfurl their petals, their hues ranging from the soft pastels of violets and blues to vivid bursts of yellow and pink, something you didn’t see much in the South. The air resonated with the hum of awakening insects, drawn by the allure of this watercourse oasis. Overhead, the first tentative flights of butterflies painted the air with ephemeral strokes of colour.
As the creek wound its way through the landscape, it carved miniature canyons and pools, inviting creatures to quench their thirst and revel in the burgeoning abundance of the season. The stones lining the creek bed, smoothed by centuries of flowing water, became stepping stones for adventurous critters and skipping stones for the whimsical heart.
The beauty of the early spring creek lay not just in its visual splendour, the soothing melody of flowing water, the caress of a gentle breeze, the fragrance of blossoming life, and the dance of sunlight playing upon its liquid surface. This pristine sanctuary embodied the very essence of renewal, inviting all who encountered it to immerse themselves in the sublime poetry of the changing seasons.
The pair of you just sat in silence, neither wanted to say what had to be said so you decided to drown beneath the weight of the words that went unsaid.
"I can't stay here anymore," Ellie said, her voice hardly above a whisper. She sat on the lush grass with her knees pulled into her chest. Her chestnut hair, the colour of fresh earth, cascaded in loose waves around her shoulders, occasionally stirred by the whispering winds that danced across the plains. Almond-shaped hazel eyes, reminiscent of the vast prairie skies, held a depth that spoke of an untamed spirit. Ellie's sun-kissed complexion bore the subtle traces of a life lived under the relentless Western sun, and a scattering of freckles across her cheeks hinted at days spent amidst the open range. Clad in practical yet well-worn attire she had borrowed from you, her hands, calloused from the rigours of the mysterious life she lived before meeting you, spoke of a resilience that mirrored the vast landscapes she navigated. In the unforgiving wilderness, where strength and grace were as vital as the air one breathed.
"I know," You said back just as quietly, you both looked at the creek ahead of you, not able to meet each other's eyes.
"I don't want to leave you."
"I can't leave." You said, a newfound sense of sadness washing over you. It had just hit that you would return to the dull life you lived before her, days filled with nothing more than silence, loneliness, and regret.
"I wish you could," She picked at the grass, unsure of what to do with her hands.
Silence stretched between you like birds on a wire "Just stay, one more night and then I'll let you go for good, I won't pester you anymore."
She smiled softly "Sure, I'll stay another night."
≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
You had left town at the crack of dawn that morning to gather supplies for Ellie before she left, and the night before you had babbled on and on to Sawyer about how excited you were for your plans before you turned in for the night. You had used the only day that month that you were permitted to leave to do something special for Ellie. After paying a brief visit to your father and sister you began the trek back up.
After you returned home from the short trip you had intended to go into the house and bundle up your goodies for Ellie but you had been detoured by a sound from the stable. You hadn't expected Jerry to be there, it was one of your days to man the stables, not his. Despite the confusion, you followed the crashes and bangs from the stables.
As you approached the stables, the familiar sounds of horses' hooves and distant howls of coyotes were overshadowed by an unfamiliar murmur and groan. A knot tightened in your stomach, foreboding lingering in the air like an impending storm. Pushing open the creaking door, your gaze fell upon a sight that froze her to the core.
In the muted light of the stable lanterns, you saw your husband, a man you slept beside every. night, entwined with another woman. The hay-strewn floor became an unwitting witness to the betrayal unfolding before your disbelieving eyes. The flickering lantern light cast shadows on their entangled forms, revealing a scene that would forever alter the course of your existence.
The air hung heavy with tension, the silence punctuated only by the stifled gasp that escaped your lips. The two figures, caught in an embrace that spoke of deceit, turned to face her with eyes filled with shock. The other woman, a fleeting presence in your life until this moment, bore the weight of her transgressions. Horror pushed tears from your eyes "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" You screamed, watching as the two shamefully and frantically dressed themselves.
"Can you blame me?" Sawyer buttoned up his trousers "You're always sad or angry around me, I love you, I just need a break sometimes-
"You make me feel that way!" You felt sick to your stomach like you were going to vomit "I have turned myself inside out trying to love you but I don't even like you!"
You could see your words hit him when his jaw began to tense up, the familiar tell that he would be raging soon "I don't even think you like me!"
"I don't!" You shout "I hate you I wake up every morning and I feel so empty when I have to look into those dull eyes of yours!"
"You won't even touch me."
"You only show me a sliver of kindness when you want your dick taken care of." You spat, the look of complete rage on his face made you smile; that was when he struck you. His backhand landed firmly on the side of your face, forcing you to stumble back, shuddering at the stinging sensation.
He put his hands up, trying to show you that he wouldn't hit you again "I'm sorry-
Before you could finish your sentence you were screaming, grabbing the shovel from its resting place on the stable wall and slamming it across his head. Sawyer didn't even stand for a moment, the second the shovel made contact with his head, he flopped to the ground. You audibly squeaked, watching blood ooze from the newly formed gash in his head.
"Sawyer?" You crouched down, poking at his limp body with the shovel to see if he would shift. Nothing. His eyes fell lifeless along with the rest of him. The shovel clattered to the ground as you brought both hands to cover your mouth.
You stood over his body, your actions registering in your head, you had killed him. You had taken the life of someone.
You were only snapped away from your thoughts when you heard a thud. Your head snapped to where the sound had come from, only to find the black-haired woman he was cheating on you with stumbling back up from her fall, she cast a look back at you, terror written across her pale face.
Feet moving faster than your mind, you ran after her, she had already got a good headstart on you. She was beginning to rush towards one of the steeper sides of the hill, you knew you wouldn't catch her in time; so instead of pursuing her, you grabbed the gun off the front porch and aimed it at the woman.
The metallic tang of gun oil hung in the air as you cradled the shotgun, the weight unfamiliar in your hands, you were only going off of what your father had shown you all those years ago. The overwhelming sun cast long shadows across the open range, painting the world in hues of amber and gold. With trepidation etched on her face, you squared your shoulders and took a deep breath. The gun felt cool against your trembling fingertips as she aimed at a distant woman. The tension in the air was palpable as you squeezed the trigger, the gunshot echoing through the vast expanse. The recoil startled you, and a mix of exhilaration and uncertainty danced in your eyes. At that moment, as the echoes of the shot reverberated through the silence of the frontier, you felt a seismic shift watching the raven-haired woman fall, now rolling down the hill.
Still gripping the shotgun, you ran over to the spot where you had seen the woman collapse.
When you bore down the hill, her body was nowhere to be found.
Your head shot up to search the plains for her but you didn't see a sign of where she had gone, aside from the small pool of blood, seeping into dead grass where she had initially fallen.
"What's wrong?" Ellie shouted, running over to where you stood, frozen in fear for what lay ahead of you "I heard a gunshot."
"Ellie I-" You were stiff where you stood, grasping the shotgun so tight that your knuckles had turned white "Sawyer was cheating on me in the stables and I saw him and I was just so mad that I-I hit him with a shovel, I didn't think he would die, I just wanted him to be as afraid of me as I was of him. That woman he was with, she saw me kill him so I shot her but she got away and now I'm good as dead."
Ellie didn't seem as mortified as you thought she would be, she took the shotgun away from you, slinging an arm around your waist with her free hand and guiding you back to the house "It's okay, not as bad as it could be, you took care of me now it's my turn to take care of you."
"It's not okay, I'm gonna be strung up at the gallows in front of everyone, I killed the mayors son." A breath hitched in your throat "My dad's gonna watch me hang."
"Only if they catch us," Ellie said nonchalantly, steering you up the porch "Pack what you need, we'll be out of here in no time. It only feels fair to tell you now that I’m not actually a travelling merchant.”
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spacenutspod · 2 months
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Water is the most common chemical molecule found throughout the entire universe. What water has going for it is that its constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, are also ridiculously common, and those two elements really enjoying bonding with each other. Oxygen has two open slots in its outmost electron orbital shell, making it very eager to find new friends, and each hydrogen comes with one spare electron, so the triple-bonding is a cinch. Hydrogen comes to us from the big bang itself, making it by both mass and number the #1 element in the cosmos. Seriously, the stuff is everywhere. About 75% of every star, every interstellar gas cloud, and every wandering bit of intergalactic space debris never to know the warmth of stellar fusion in 13.8 billion years of cosmic history is made of hydrogen. That hydrogen got its start when our universe was only about ten minutes old, and all the hydrogen that has ever existed (except for random radioactive decays and fission reactions, but that would come later) formed before our universe turned 20 minutes. A dozen minutes, 13.8 billion years ago. When you quench your thirst with a healthy glass, that’s what you’re consuming. We can understand this epoch of cosmic history, known as the nucleosynthesis era, because over the past century we’ve become rather skilled at dealing with nuclear reactions, and in one of the hallmarks of our species we have unleashed this radical understanding into the physical nature of reality and deployed it for both peacetime energy generation and wartime bombs. Our understanding of nuclear physics tells us that earlier than the ten-minute mark, our universe was too hot and too dense for protons and neutrons to form. Instead their subatomic parts, known as quarks, were unglued in a heaving maelstrom of nuclear forces, constantly binding and unbinding in a seething rage-filled sea of gluons, the force carriers of the strong nuclear force. Once the universe expanded and cooled enough, condensates of protons and neutrons formed like droplets on the windowpane, low-energy pockets capable of keeping themselves together despite the temperatures. Eventually, however, as soon as the party got going it fizzled out: when the universe became too large and too cool, a mere dozen minutes later, there wasn’t sufficient density to bring the quarks close enough together to perform their nuclear binding trick. Some protons and neutrons would find each other in those storm-filled days, though, forming heavier versions of hydrogen, some helium, and a small amount of lithium. And since then those hydrogen atoms have wandered about the cosmos; most lost in the intergalactic wastes, some participating in the glorious construction of stars and planets, and a lucky few finding themselves locked in a chemical dance with oxygen. The oxygen has another tale to tell, also a story of fusion, on its way to becoming water. But not the fusion of the first few heady minutes of the big bang, but in the dance within the hearts of stars. There, crushing pressures and violent temperatures slam hydrogen atoms together, forcing them to fuse into helium, in the process releasing an almost vanishingly small amount of energy. But that forced marriage happens millions of times every second, in every one of the trillions upon untold trillions of stars strewn about the cosmos, enough to light up the universe for all conscious observers to enjoy. Near the end of a star’s life, it turns to fusing the built-up ash of helium piled in its core, The fusion of helium produces two products: carbon and oxygen. Now this oxygen would end up forever closed off from the cosmos, locked behind a million-kilometer thick wall of plasma, if it were not for a trick of physics that happens when the star meets its final days. Our Sun will someday experience this fate, about four and a half billion years now. When it grows old and weary, it will swell and turn red, violently spasming as it draws its last fatal breaths. Those gargantuan shudders release material from the star, launching it into the surrounding system, billowed by gusty winds of fundamental particles streaming away at nearly the speed of light. Fit by ragged fit, the Sun will lose its own self, driving away over half its mass into a spreading nebula, the only sign that distant eyes can perceive of yet another noble star laying down its struggle against the all-consuming night. But in that gruesome death, a miracle. The cycle born anew: the hydrogen and helium, the primordial elements of the star, now mixed with carbon and oxygen drift off into the interstellar void, someday to take part in the formation of a new star, a new solar system, a new world wet with water, and, if the chances are perfect, a new life. The post Thirsty? Water is More Common than you Think appeared first on Universe Today.
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just--space · 1 year
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NGC 3521: Galaxy in a Bubble : Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the northern springtime constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. This deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in fainter, gigantic, bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past. via NASA
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jameswebb-discoveries · 3 months
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Discovery Alert! In a new discovery released on Jan 08, 2024 James Webb Telescope and Chandra Solve Cassiopeia A's Green Monster Riddle.
Discovery Alert! In a new discovery released on Jan 08, 2023 James Webb Telescope and Chandra Solve Cassiopeia A's Green Monster Riddle. Read more here
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Dive into the celestial wonders of Cassiopeia A as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory join forces to decode the enigma of the 'Green Monster.' 🌠✨ This collaboration has unveiled a mesmerizing image resembling an electric light show in space – think red clouds, glowing white streaks, fiery flames, and a central region that's practically a cosmic green lightning display. ⚡️💫
Chandra's X-rays in striking blue illuminate the hot gas, predominantly from the supernova debris, unveiling elements like silicon and iron. These elements form thin arcs in the outer reaches of the remnant, revealing the aftermath of a celestial explosion. 🌪️
Webb's infrared magic, painted in red, green, and blue, exposes the warmth of dust embedded in the hot gas seen by Chandra and the presence of cooler supernova debris. Meanwhile, the Hubble data adds a sprinkle of stars, turning this cosmic canvas into a dazzling tapestry. 🌈✨
Get ready to embark on a journey through the cosmos, where science meets art and the mysteries of Cassiopeia A are unraveled. 🌌💙 #WebbTelescope #ChandraObservatory #GreenMonsterMystery #CosmicDiscovery #SpaceArtistry
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