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mysticstronomy · 26 days

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HOW DOES A NEUTRON STAR FORM??

Blog#390

Saturday, April 6th, 2024.

Welcome back,

When a massive star explodes as a supernova at the end of its life, its core can collapse into a tiny and superdense object with not much more than our sun’s mass. These small, incredibly dense cores of exploded stars are neutron stars. They’re among the most bizarre objects in the universe.

A typical neutron star has about 1.4 times our sun’s mass. And they can range up to about two solar masses.

Now consider that our sun has over 100 times Earth’s diameter. In a neutron star, all that mass is squeezed into a sphere that’s only about 12-25 miles (20-40 km) across, or about the size of an earthly city.

So perhaps you can see that neutron stars are very, very dense! A tablespoon of a neutron star material would weigh more than 1 billion U.S. tons (900 billion kg). That’s more than the weight of Mount Everest, Earth’s highest mountain.

Throughout much of their lives, stars maintain a delicate balancing act. Gravity tries to compress the star while the star’s internal pressure exerts an outward push. And nuclear fusion at the star’s core causes the outer pressure. In fact, this fusion burning is the process by which stars shine.

In a supernova explosion, gravity suddenly and catastrophically gets the upper hand in the war it has been waging with the star’s internal pressure for millions or billions of years.

With its nuclear fuel exhausted and the outward pressure removed, gravity suddenly compresses the star inward. A shock wave travels to the core and rebounds, blowing the star apart. This whole process takes perhaps a couple of seconds.

But gravity’s victory is not yet complete. With most of the star blown into space, the core remains, which may only be twice our sun’s mass. Gravity continues to compress it, to a point where the atoms become so compacted and so close together that electrons are violently thrust into their parent nuclei, combining with the protons to form neutrons.

Thus the neutron star gets its name from its composition. What gravity has created is a superdense, neutron-rich material – called neutronium – in a city-sized sphere. The exact internal structure of this sphere is the subject of much debate. Current thinking is that the star possesses a thin crust of iron, perhaps a mile or so thick. Under that, the composition is largely neutrons, taking various forms the further down in the neutron star they are located.

Originally published on https://earthsky.org/

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, April 10th, 2024)

"WHY IS VOYAGER 1 SENDING GIBBERISH??"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography

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liminal-station · 8 days

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[ Missile Mail! The zubat lets out a bit of a confused squeak, but sets the package down regardless. ]

[ The dish inside is a platter. Several slices of Slowpoke tail are layered over each other. The meat is seared, and the fat has been caramelized expertly, the taste pleasant and rich with the oils from fat. A bowl to the side is filled with mashed potatoes and drizzled with gravy and sliced chives. Placed around the bottom of the bowl are a few berries with spicy flavors. A small dish of sea-salt, as well as a ziplock-baggy filled with various piece of broken plastic, is included as seasoning. ]

[ A note is folded in with the meal: ]

Not quite sure what you wanted with the micro-macro plastics but here you go. Hope you enjoy?

-Proton

Ingo: Mm… yes, all these flavors, these spices, these oils… crunchy and melty, sweet and spicy all at once like some kind of culinary paradox…

Emmet: Truly, human food must have been passed down directly from the gods!!! Dear bird-thing, bring the chef all our deepest gratitude!

Ingo: And bring this as well, as a physical token of our thanks.

[Ingo puts a handful of polygonal something-or-other in the Zubat’s mouth.]

#submas au #submas #ena joel g #subway bosses #ena dream bbq #au ask blog #pokemon au #send asks #pokemon askblog #pokemon ingo

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blackswaneuroparedux · 9 months

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Three quarks for Muster Mark! Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

At first, scientists thought the nucleus was composed of electrons and a positively charged particle called a proton. The word proton, like atom, has Greek roots. It stems from the word prōtos, meaning “first,” because protons were thought to be the fundamental unit of matter—until about halfway through the 20th century, that is, when a physicist made a teeny, tiny discovery.

When Caltech physicist Murray Gell-Mann predicted the existence of an even smaller set of particles in 1964, he playfully dubbed them quarks. There’s a rich tradition of whimsical naming in the world of physics, as is the case with “the God particle,” “flavor,” and “charm.”

But according to Gell-Mann’s book, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex, the tail was wagging the dog. “When I assigned the name “quark” to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon,” he writes, “I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been ‘kwork.’

Luckily, Gell-Mann had a bit of a literary bent. In one of his occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, he came across the word ‘quark.’

Gell-Mann also predicted the existence of a particle called the omega-minus, which was confirmed in 1964. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969 for his work on the theory of elementary particles.

Gell-Mann was a child prodigy who entered Yale University at the age of 15 and graduated with a B.S. in physics in 1948. He introduced the concept of strangeness, a quantum property that accounted for previously puzzling decay patterns of certain mesons, in 1953.

He also proposed a scheme for classifying subatomic particles into simple orderly arrangements of families, called the Eightfold Way, after Buddha’s Eightfold Path to Enlightenment and bliss, in 1961.

Murray Gell-Mann has significant contributions to the development and understanding of particle physics.

#joyce #james joyce #quote #gell-martin #murray gell-martin #physics #physicist #quark #quantam physics #science #particle physics #particle #theory

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chounaifu · 2 months

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His relationship with Archer.

Ask my muse questions about their relationship with other muses. // @exnusquam @reiketsui

Proton's eyes dart over, pupils sharpening. He bites the inside of his lip, not saying a word out loud; his mind is flooded with thoughts he wouldn't dare put to word so easily.

'His hatred was conditional and confusing. I don't recognize either of us when we're alone together. He takes a piece of my ruined soul every time we meet. Soon I won't have anything left.'

'It hasn't always been like this.'

'I hated him the way a starved man scorns the gods for keep the stomachs of rich men filled.'

Slowly spinning his balisong on one finger, Proton glances up to the ceiling, watching the flickering of the fluorescent lights, listening to the buzzing of electricity between his ears, that awful metal-on-metal sound that had burrowed into his cranium and never left.

"He's the first one I saw when I woke up from my coma," Proton reveals, his eyes moving back and forth, following the pattern of the flickering. Silent images manifest at the front of his mind. There he had been, barely clinging to life, his body mangled and ruined, while nobody was certain that he would even be capable of being revived-- he'd opened his eyes, every single cell in his body full of agony-- and he saw the color blue.

"Fuckin' shocked me, we hated each other back then, but he still showed up, and he always does when I need him," he admits, his thoughts trailing to shouting matches and snide remarks-- to judgmental glares and mocking laughter. They couldn't be any MORE opposite of one another-- pride versus shame, chaos versus order-- Proton had existed as a ghoul, a source of frustration, a walking antagonist for the frigid man as he effortlessly approached the pedestal he had situated himself on top of, the one that Archer looked down upon others while flaunting his superiority.

"And I'll always show up when he needs me too," just as he had done when Archer had spiraled when their leader abandoned them. Proton had fought against paranoia with both words and weapons in order to bring the second-in-command back to reality, so that he could press the kiss of loyalty to his trembling knuckles.

One man attempts to muzzle another. A leash is tied around a neck. Blades are pressed to a throat. Their mutual hatred morphed into a monstrous, obsessive need to prove superiority over one another, until the madness seeped deeper into the bone marrow than ANY chronic illness could ever reach. They needed each other the way that the ocean needs the moon in order to churn and be alive.

'I won't let anybody make you bleed.' 'I'm the only one who is allowed to kill you.' 'But first, I'll kill all of the shame in you.'

Eventually, a symbolic prince is cast aside-- when the black and the white swan are not forced to contend against one another for a crown forged with invisible expectations-- when they do not feel the need to wear the identity of a society that did not see them as human, they find themselves unable to resist each other.

The repo man chuckles, and sighs, the sound echoing against the walls of the warehouse. The butterfly knife spins, and spins, and spins.

"I don't think you have the stomach to hear the full extent of what he means to me. You wouldn't get it."

Opposites certainly attract, once the opposing force no longer has control over their perceptions of each other.

The hatred vanished mutually without a word an extremely long time ago, and was replaced with something else.

It's grotesque, vulnerable, and burns like hunger. And he refuses to starve.

#➤ 《 𝟗𝟎 𝐃𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐭; 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 》 In Character #➤ 《 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐌𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐌𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐄𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 》 Answered #♡ 《 𝐏𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫; 𝑾𝒆’𝒍𝒍 𝑵𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝑮𝒆𝒕 𝑩𝒆𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 》 Aʀᴄʜᴇʀ #➤ 《 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐞 》 Verse One #reiketsui #{ As soon as you sent me this ask I was like 'oh god here we go.' }

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ljones41 · 4 months

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"STAR TREK VOYAGER" Retrospective: (5.12) "Bride of Chaotica!"

One of the aspects of "STAR TREK VOYAGER" that I have truly enjoyed over the other TREK shows were the holo programs featured or the episodes centered in the two Holodecks. One such holo program was "The Adventures of Captain Proton" stories created by Voyager’s Chief Pilot, Tom Paris. Captain Proton was featured in at least four episodes – three in Season Five and one in Season Seven. But without a doubt, my favorite happened to be the third Proton story titled, (5.12) "Bride of Chaotica!".

In short, "Bride of Chaotica!" began when Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeil) and Harry Kim (Garrett Wang) are enjoying the latest chapter of his Captain Proton program in one of the Holodecks. They are forced to leave it running when spatial distortions trap the ship and disrupt their control over the computer. Voyager’s command staff attempted to discover a way to free the ship from the spatial distortions. Unfortunately, extra-dimensional aliens that exist in a photonic state cross over from their own dimension through a distortion located in the holodeck. They are detected and attacked by Proton’s archenemy, Dr. Chaotica (Martin Rayner), who believes them to be from the Fifth Dimension, and whose holographic (photonic) weaponry - though harmless to humans - is deadly to the aliens. Eventually, the crew discover the war being waged between Chaotica and the Fifth Dimension and must defeat him by playing out their roles as the fictional Captain Proton (played by Tom Paris), his sidekick Buster Kincaid (Harry Kim), and Arachnia, Queen of the Spider People. Paris convinced Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) to take on the latter role.

I might as well be frank. I LOVE "Bride of Chaotica!". I adore it. It is one of my favorite TREK episodes of all time. What am I saying? It is my favoriteTREK episode of all time. Screenwriters Bryan Fuller (creator of "DEAD LIKE ME" and "PUSHING DAISIES") and Michael Taylor created a first-rate episode filled with imagination, action and humor. Having the characters of Tom Paris’ Captain Proton holoprogram get drawn into a galactic war with an actual group of actual aliens that are photonic was a stroke of genius. And Fuller and Taylor, along with director Allan Kroeker, did an excellent job combining an original story with great characterization.

The cast was excellent, as always. Robbie McNeill and Garrett Wang revived their old magic as Tom and Harry – the two crewmembers who got more out of the Captain Proton holoprogram than anyone. Come to think of it, McNeill also managed to generate strong chemistry with Tim Russ (Lieutenant-Commander Tuvok) and Kate Mulgrew. The latter was superb as Queen Arachnia, although I think she may have been a little guilty of too much mugging, while expressing Janeway’s disregard for the Proton holoprogram. However, I loved her scene with Neelix (Ethan Phillips) that showcased Janeway’s caffine addiction. With that scene, she may have truly earned the nickname - Queen of the Delta Quadrant:

JANEWAY: "Coffee, black." NEELIX: "I'm sorry, Captain. We've lost another two replicators –" JANEWAY: "Listen to me very carefully because I'm only going to say this once. Coffee – black." NEELIX: (To replicator)"Coffee, black. While I've got your attention there are –" JANEWAY: (Holds up hand)"Coffee first."(drinks/inhales)"...Now, what's the problem?"

And then there is Dr. Chaotica, portrayed with great relish by Martin Rayner. The promise he had shown as a rich and over-the-top character in the Season Five premiere, (5.01) "Night" was fulfilled in this episode. The late Nicholas Worth ably supported both Mulgrew and Rayner as Chaotica’s ruthless, obsequious henchman, Lonzak.

As much as I love "Bride of Chaotica!", there is one aspect about it that disturbed me – namely the crew’s reaction to the Captain Proton hologram. It is quite apparent that they view it as nothing more than a childish piece of fiction for those of the immature mind. And it is quite apparent that they also view Tom Paris’ participation in it as childish. And they are not the only ones. I have read some reviews of the episodes. While most tend to sneer at it, along with anything else labeled "STAR TREK VOYAGER", at least two of them did not. Julia Houston seemed to view the holo program not only as Tom Paris’ personal fantasy, but also as an example of his imagination. Like me, she seemed annoyed by the inability of others to appreciate Paris' imagination . . . and his right to his own fantasy. Now Jim Wright did seem to enjoy the holo program and appreciate its uniqueness. But it also seemed that he viewed it as a sign of Paris’ immaturity . . . and as something that the Chief Pilot would have to give up in order to develop as an adult and ideal Starfleet officer.

Quite frankly, I agree with Julia Houston. I was very annoyed by the other Voyager crewmen’s snobbish reaction to Captain Proton. Okay, perhaps they did not care for it very much. But was there really any need for them to openly sneer at what he considered recreation and fantasy? What law was there that Tom’s pursuit of recreation had to be culturally high-brow or meaningful? Janeway, of all people, had no business to sneer. This is a woman who had spent two seasons indulging in her Lambada One holo program – a "Jane Eyre"/"Rebecca" Gothic romance. I must also admit that I was a little put-off by Jim Wright's assumption that Tom needed to give up the Proton program in order to become more mature as an adult. To me, this attitude seemed like a clear lack of appreciation for Tom’s vivid imagination. Perhaps it was more important to him and other "VOYAGER” fans that Tom become the stand-up Starfleet officer that Owen Paris and Janeway wanted him to be. Happily, Tom never stuck to his declaration of giving up the Proton program. He and Harry were still using it in the early Season Six episode called (6.05) "Alice". And a late Season Seven episode called (7.23) "Homestead" revealed that Tom had created another B-movie style program called "Invaders from the Ninth Dimension".

Personally, I like the idea that Tom Paris would eventually become that successful holonovelist sometime in his future. But in the VOYAGER relaunch novels, he became a permanent Starfleet officer, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Commander and Voyager’s new first officer. Ugh. What a waste of a vivid imagination that created the likes of the Proton holoprograms. In real life, I would compare Tom to the likes of George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, J. Michael Stracynski and the two writers who had created this wonderfully imaginative episode – Fuller and Taylor. A girl can imagine - can't she?

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juleskelleybooks · 4 months

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I shut down my Patreon a while back because updating something on a regular schedule is kind of the antithesis of me as a person

but I'm having so much fun working on the worldbuilding and early parts of Blackthorn that I'm being seduced by the siren song of the idea: what if I put updates of the rough draft of Blackthorn behind a paywall on Patreon and people could read along as I wrote it but then I could still publish the whole novel when it was ready (and Patreon subscribers would get a free download of the ebook)

idk idk - would anyone be interested in this, even? (caveat: I know Patreon has made some changes since the last time I was there so if it's become unusable now, feel free to chime in and tell me what a good alternative is for a paid subscription like this)

Opening behind the cut to give you an idea of what the rough draft currently looks like.

Nate Dubarr hadn’t been around horses much, but even he could tell the team’s demeanor was changing as they approached a narrow stretch of road lined on either side by shrubby, stout trees frothing with white blossoms. Was it just the wind in the branches that had the animals spooked, or did they sense something he couldn’t hear yet? He adjusted his grip on the proton rifle in his lap and looked over his shoulder. It was a damn good place to ambush a vulnerable transport, and Sun Mountain probably wouldn’t have paid for his services as a gunman if they weren’t needed.

“Hear somethin’?” Willa, the driver, shouted over dusty plodding hoofbeats and the rattling creak of the wooden transport pod, and Nate shook his head.

“Not yet,” he yelled back, squinting into the rippling heat.

Aulis was mostly a farming and ranching planet, he knew, some areas thickly wooded and others rich with sprawling grass prairies, but the part he was riding through now, toward the little town of Blackthorn, was arid enough that he could feel his skin cracking and peeling as they went.

“Nothin’ grows here anymore,” the customs officer in Pryor had said as she looked over the crates marked for Blackthorn. “Probably why they’re tryin’ so hard to get that mine back in working shape out past the canyons. They’ll sure be happy to see y’all.”

Willa clucked gently to the horses, pulling up on the reins, and Nate braced himself on the warm wood of the transport pod. He hadn’t understood at first why they weren’t using one of the self-driving metal ones, but the heat and the dust had answered that question for him in the first half-hour. The gears would have gotten locked up in short order, if the metal hadn’t cooked them in their seats first.

The team of horses slowed now, snorting and blowing and tossing their heads, and Nate realized they were picking their way carefully over wooden bars embedded parallel to each other across the road.

“What’s that?” he asked Willa, alert to the possibility of a trap. Would it fall out from under them, taking the pod and the horses all at once?

“Cattle grate,” Willa muttered, her wrinkled, leathery hands steady on the reins as she coaxed the team slower. “Coupla ranches used to keep herds out here and would move ’em to different pastures on this road. The grate was to keep them from stampeding. The blackthorns were to keep them from just going around it.” She inclined her head toward the flowering trees, and Nate squinted, realizing the blooms hid the trees’ real feature: Thick, sharp spines as long as his hand.

“How do you keep cattle where there’s nothing for them to graze?” Nate asked, but before Willa could answer, there was a high-pitched buzz from behind them, and one of the horses tossed its head, eyes rolling so far Nate could see the whites. Fuck. It was a trap.

“Steady,” Willa crooned to the horses. “Don’t want them bolting,” she explained to Nate. “They’ll break their damn legs and then we’ll just be out here ’til the buzzards or the bandits get us.”

Nate lifted the proton rifle as he turned to look back down the road they’d already traveled, siting down the barrel, and fitted his goggles to keep his eyes clear.

He didn’t see anything yet, but the buzzing was getting closer, and he recognized it as the whine of a bike’s engine. Shit. It was a trap.

#tumblr isn't letting me format italics on this post for some reason so sorry about that #interest check

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defrostedsilversoul · 8 days

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[ Missile Mail! The Zubat drops the package off, landing on Silver's shoulder to give his ear an affectionate (Non-puncturing) nibble before flying off. ]

[ The dish inside is a large one, with several different containers. The first is filled with an assortment of sauteed vegetables; brussels sprouts, green beans, and carrots mainly. They have a slightly sweet taste to them, apparently having been cooked in oil from the Slowpoke tail. There's a pile of small roasted potatoes as well, garnished with rosemary. It all pairs nicely with the salt and shredded cheese that's been sprinkled over.

The largest has a platter holding a Tauros brisket. The meat is savory and rich, pulling apart nicely. There's a bowl of Slowpoke tail cubes included as well, left raw. The fat has been cut away, and the meat has a surprisingly fresh taste to it without the mellow sweetness the fat brings.

Other than just the food, there's a few small jars filled with oil. They're labelled with either 'Tauros' or 'Slowpoke'. There's also a note, which reads: ]

Hope you enjoy, loser. I didn't have anything to do with all the leftover fat, so I rendered it for you. Use it to cook something or make a candle or whatever. I don't care.

-Proton

(// PS: Yes, he did put extra food and extra effort into this one. )

[ Silver fumbles to take all of the containers, thanking the Zubat hastily as he sets all of it down near the hearth. Unfortunately, it's still cold- not being able to light it definitely makes him sad. But that doesn't matter. He peels the lid off of the containers with a shiver. He didn't know he was this hungry. Without waiting any longer, Silver dug in- shutting his eyes and letting out a pleasant sigh at the flavors. It's very filling, making him lay back in contentment quickly. ]

Tha k you so much that was so good oh myfreaking lugia ohhhug

#rotomblr #asks #silver posts #anon #[ THATS SO CUTE ....... ]

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ariel-seagull-wings · 10 months

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Why Richard Mueller is Probably my Favorite Writer for the Ghostbusters Franchise

@bixiebeet @stantzed @moonbeamelf @angelixgutz @thealmightyemprex @themousefromfantasyland @professorlehnsherr-almashy @amalthea9

01. He knows how to integrate family dinamics with the science fantasy elements. When he wrote the novelization based on the earlier script drafts, he would go on to explore the family past of the main four Ghostbusters, Janine and Dana, and when called to write for the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, he came up with the episodes including Peter's father Jim Venkman, Winston's father Edward and Ray's Aunt Lois as important characters.

02. The foes that he came up with included the Ghosts of Circus Animals posessing an Amusement Park, a Monster from Alaska, a Jersey Shore Paralelogram that Makes Boats Disapear and a Money Obsessed Millionaire who Wanted to Take Away his Riches and Servants to the Afterlife after dying and opened a barrier to hundreds of ghosts in the proccess. He knows how to be creative with the Villains.

03. Speaking of the Amusement Park, the episode shows that sayed park uses the image of the Ghostbusters to boost sails without their consent, and Egon considers suing them but Peter, who worked in a Carnival before, warns him that these law suits take so long that it becomes nothing but a headache. The episode aproaches the business side of the Ghostbusters along with the adventures they get involved with, showing great respect for the audience's inteligence.

04. How in the novelization he uses the characters of Harlan Bojay and Robert Learned Coombs, two street bums originally meant to appear in only one scene that ended up deleted, as a species of comedic greek chorus who watch all the events from the outside and comment on them with their own logic.

05. In the novelization, he is able to insert elements of queerness, by creating the character of Jean Stantz, Ray's sister who is openly bisexual and polyamorous, and paraleling the two straight romances of Peter x Dana and Egon x Janine with a implied blooming romance between Ray and Winston, including the aproval of Winston's mother of that relationship (yay Mrs Lucille Zeddemore)!

06. He frequently includes Janine in roles vital to saving the day even if she’s not wearing the suit and proton pack, specially as the source of important information about a new Ghost.

#richard mueller #ghostbusters the supernatural spectacular #the real ghostbusters

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thirdchoiceurl · 6 months

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so I just watched BobbyBroccoli's video on Victor Ninov, and the whole "element hunt" has me wondering: what factors dictate whether an atom—when introduced to another atom with considerable force—either splits or fuses?

Oh hell yeah, this is a meaty one

The short answer to what determines whether a bound nucleus is formed and a new element is created is the total binding energy. It takes energy to remove a proton or neutron from an atom, and that energy is a nuclear potential energy similar to the potentials you encounter in other parts of physics. The nuclear force is not a fundamental force, but is instead regarded as its own composite force created by the interaction of strong and weak nuclear force effects (you can look into pion exchange and the quark sea for more on that, but in essence we can describe the total forces acting on a particle in the nucleus quite well without considering the complex individual processes that create it)

This nuclear binding potential is referred to as a “potential well”, because it’s a massive negative potential energy (which gives rise to an attractive force) that’s mostly consistent within the nucleus holding neutrons and protons together. Outside the nucleus, the positive charge of the protons within creates a strong electrostatic field, which strongly repels protons and other nuclei, creating this general map of potential energy:

The vertical axis is total potential energy, the horizontal axis is distance from the center of the nucleus, V0 is the nuclear potential, VC is the electrostatic Coulomb potential, and Eα is illustrating an alpha decay which we’re not going into rn. Sourced from this paper

The goal of atom smashing to hunt for new elements is to cram as many protons into that central potential well as possible. Seems straightforward in theory - if you have enough energy to overcome the peak of the Coulomb barrier, you can just slam protons into the center, right?

There’s a few key factors that make this dramatically more difficult to achieve in practice, especially with the superheavy transactinides that Ninov was claiming to have created. In order of importance:

You need a lot of neutrons. The attracting component of the nuclear force has a very short range, on the order of < 1 fm, which means that one can say with fairly accurate results that each proton and neutron only interacts with its immediate neighbors. This means that beyond a certain size of nucleus, the contribution of an individual nucleon to the strength of the overall nuclear binding force felt by any other nucleon is fairly small.

However, if the added nucleon is a proton, the added repulsive electric charge extends through the whole nucleus, affecting every other proton and making the nucleus less stable. This causes several effects in heavy high-Z nuclei, including deformation of nucleus shape and instability towards fission, but most importantly it means that as an element becomes heavier it needs more and more neutrons to space out the protons and remain relatively stable. If an element is too far from this ideal balance, it will undergo beta decay and transmute as protons change into neutrons or vice versa.

For the superheavy transactinides, this ideal neutron balance lies above 1.5n:1p, which is a serious issue - light elements simply don’t have the neutrons to contribute, which means you will always wind up with beta-unstable neutron-deficient product isotopes. The most popular remedies are to use multiple neutron-rich medium-weight isotopes like Zinc-70 or Lead-208, or to use the abnormally neutron-rich (1.4n:1p) Calcium-48 as a projectile, fired at long-lived neutron-rich actinides like Uranium-238 (1.58n:1p) to produce new nuclei. But that reaction only has enough protons to get you to Copernicum (Z = 92+20), and to get beyond that you need heavier targets. Which leads to the next issue…

You need a sample to hit for a long time. We can get a little bit heavier than Uranium without too much difficulty - Plutonium and Curium especially have long half-lives and are readily available in target quantities from high-flux isotope production reactors, but as the numbers get higher, the difficulty of production begins sharply increasing and the half-lives of isotopes rapidly fall. Fermium (Z=100) has a half life on the order of days, not years, and are prohibitively rare even when you have a isotope breeder on site that can make them.

If these high energy reactions were common, this wouldn’t be such a big problem. We only need one atom to be formed and observed, and even nanograms or picograms of target isotopes have billions and billions of atoms to transmute. But that’s the real problem - these heavy fusions are actually quite rare, and in the time it takes for one to occur, these heavy unstable target isotopes can undergo significant decay. Of course, even if you do form a fused nucleus, you have to deal with…

Fused nuclei are inherently less stable than they should be. This may seem odd considering that in common experience, identical isotopes are indistinguishable - an atom of deuterium is the same as any other atom of deuterium. But this is only true when your nucleus is in the ground state, and these atoms certainly are not. In the instant of fusion, multiple things immediately cause significant instability. The impact leaves the new fused compound nucleus in a highly excited state, with many nucleons in high, excited energy levels.

This causes a “boil off” effect, where the chaotic random energy exchanges between nucleons push some out of the nuclear potential and into free space. The mathematical modeling of this is actually very close to the models of vapor evaporating from hot water, and the Fermion Gas model of Neutron Evaporation is one of the best tools we have for analyzing these reactions.

And of course, it’s always neutrons that evaporate. The lighter mass, lack of Coulomb barrier, and mostly filled energy levels below the binding barrier mean that neutrons preferentially take up the majority of excitation energy and evaporate from the new nucleus, which leads to a neutron deficiency and thus even more instability.

This is part of why, even though these elements are in the island of stability, their measured half lives are so short - they are formed drastically lacking in neutrons, placing them far from peak stability, and their excited state leads to even more rapid decay than a ground state nucleus would exhibit. The high energy may also boil off or precipitate alpha particle emissions, reducing the mass of the compound atom further, and the neutron imbalance results in several beta decays in very fast succession.

Worse still, the geometry of the impact results in the compound nucleus having a terribly distorted, pancake-like state. This deformed state further reduces binding energy, further incentivizes decay, and frequently leads to the newly bound isotope undergoing immediate fission before its characteristics are observed. The impact angle of the projectile on the target nucleus plays a huge role in this process, and the actual point of impact is also highly important. In the fusion beam, glancing blows strange high energy exchanges occur, such as

⁴⁸Ca + ²³⁸U ➝ ⁸⁷Br* + ¹⁹⁷Ir + 2n (note no intermediate composite nucleus here!)

Due to these tremendously unfavorable conditions, new elements at the end of the periodic table are produced only after sources undergo months or years of constant bombardment with high-energy ions, as the minuscule chance of individual interactions producing a surviving nucleus eventually pays off. The worst part is that none of these effects can really be avoided - colliding heavy nuclei in hot fusion results in better neutron density but requires massively higher energy and often breaks interacting nuclei into several smaller pieces, while direct neutron irradiation requires dozens of sequential captures in isotopes of decreasing cross section. Attempts to rein in the energy excesses have been somewhat effective, but results are limited by the inherent energy release from forming a new bound state.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking bit is that we're there - we've arrived on the lower shores of the Island Of Stability, the energies and half-lives telling us its shape and position, but also showing us how far off course our navigation is.

This is an image from the IAEA Chart Of Nuclides, a great source for data on isotopes, colored by half-life (blue is longest, red is shortest, black is stable). You can see a clear blue line of long-lived, stable isotopes carving through the center of the chart, curving slightly down as it proceeds to the right...and then it disappears. The end of the line of stability on the chart corresponds to Fermium, the last element produced by neutron irradiation rather than heavy isotope fusion. As the fusion era of the element hunt began, the actual isotopes discovered departed from that line of stability, drifting further and further into neutron-deficient territory, away from any stability that could theoretically be observed.

I don't know what the future holds for element hunting. Oganesson required months of continuous bombardment to produce three atoms. Element 119 (Eka-Francium) is too heavy to make with Calcium-48 due to the fact that the required target, Einsteinium, has a maximum half-life of sightly more than a month and a predicted fusion cross section 100 times smaller than the Californium targets that produced the Oganesson atoms. Future isotope hunting should focus on creating more neutron-rich isotopes of existing elements to explore the limits of stability and refine nuclear models, but the glory simply isn't there to get such projects going.

#neutronposting #physics #asks

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linuxgamenews · 2 months

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Discover the Exciting World of Creatures of Ava

Creatures of Ava action adventure creature saver game aims at Linux via Proton with Windows PC. Exciting additional information has been shared by the skilled team at Inverge Studios. Due to making its way onto both Steam and GOG. 11 bit studios just dropped a major announcement: Creatures of Ava, a new title co-developed by Inverge and Chibig, is due to launch in 2024. What's unique is that it's not just another action adventure; it has a unique twist. Players get to tame creatures to save their world from an ominous infection. And yes, it's hitting Linux via Proton with Windows 11 PC.

...we believe it will be compatible through the Steam Proton layer.

Inverge Studios, while not developing a native build, is prioritizing Proton support for their upcoming Unreal Engine 5 game, Creatures of Ava. Now, let's dive into what makes Creatures of Ava stand out. Taking place in a world where wild beings are in trouble due to a mysterious infection. These creatures, once peaceful, are now unpredictable. But your role isn't about fighting; it's about healing. You cure these creatures, and in return, they bond with you. This bond is more than just emotional; it helps you navigate the planet, solve environmental puzzles, and more. The focus on healing, while topped with the use of indigenous Flute melodies to tame the creatures, adds a unique layer to the experience.

Creatures of Ava | Announcement Trailer

youtube

You play as Vic, a 22 year old adventurer. Alongside a researcher named Tabitha, you're due to tackle this infection, known as "the withering," affecting the planet's inhabitants. The Naam, the local population, are deeply impacted by this crisis. The setting is due to be a mix of vibrant and mysterious locations, like the Nari jungle or the Mâruba swamp, making exploration a key part of the game. The storyline, crafted with input from renowned writer Rhianna Pratchett. While offering a journey filled with wonder, mystery, and discovery. There's a deeper message too: stepping out of our human centric views to understand the broader impact of the infection on Ava's primal beauty. All in all, Creatures of Ava" isn't just another release. It's an action adventure creature saver that lets you explore, bond, and heal in a rich, interconnected world. And it's coming to Linux via Proton with Windows 11 PC in 2024, which is something to look forward to. Can't wait to see how it unfolds and the impact it has on the community. Be sure to Wishlist it on Steam and GOG.

#creatures of ava #action adventure #creature saver #linux #gaming news #inverge studios #ubuntu #windows #pc #unreal engine 5 #Youtube

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mysticstronomy · 2 months

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COULD THERE BE A 'DARK MIRROR' UNIVERSE WITHIN OURS??

Blog#378

Saturday, February 24th, 2024.

Welcome back,

What if the world of dark matter was a mirror of our own, just with a broken set of rules? That might explain why dark matter appears to be so abundant yet invisible, a new theory suggests.

Dark matter is the mysterious, unknown substance that seems to make up the bulk of all the mass in the universe; for every 2 pounds (1 kilogram) of regular matter, there's roughly 10 pounds (5 kg) of dark matter. It doesn't interact with light or normal matter.

The only way scientists can detect it is through its subtle gravitational influence on normal matter, such as the motions of stars within galaxies and the growth of super-large structures in cosmic time.

It might be easy to think that because matter and dark matter operate with different rules, one would be totally dominant over the other. But despite having wildly different properties, the amounts of normal matter and dark matter are still in the same ballpark. That seems like a strange coincidence.

To explain this, scientists proposed there could be some sort of hidden link between them. They published their research Jan. 22 on the preprint journal arXiv.

The researchers posited that for every physical interaction in normal matter, there's a mirror of it in the world of dark matter. This would be a new kind of symmetry in nature, connecting the normal and dark matter worlds, the researchers said.

This symmetry would help explain why dark matter and regular matter have roughly the same abundances.

In the paper, the researchers point out another strange coincidence. In the physics of normal matter, a neutron and proton have almost exactly the same mass, which enables them to bind together and form stable atoms. If a proton was just a little bit heavier, it would be totally unstable and decay in only a few minutes, making the formation of atoms impossible. In this imaginary scenario, the universe would be left with a sea of free-floating neutrons.

Perhaps, the researchers suggest, this imaginary, broken cosmos may be a reality in the dark matter mirror version of our universe. A special combination of physics led to a proton having roughly the same mass as a neutron; perhaps in the dark matter mirror, that combination of physics played out differently, causing the "dark proton" to evaporate and leave behind a sea of "dark neutrons" — what we identify as dark matter.

While this proposed mirror model allows for the possibility of rich interactions among dark matter particles — dark atoms, dark chemistry and a dark periodic table of dark elements — there can't be too much interaction, the researchers noted. If the dark matter interacts with itself a lot, it would tend to clump up far more than scientists think it does. So most of the dark matter has to be relatively simple — a sea of free-floating, neutral particles.

These additional interactions, which would be a dark mirror of our chemical world, may enable future scientists to test this theory. In the early universe, normal matter underwent nucleosynthesis, when the first elements formed in a nuclear plasma. If this new idea is correct, then there was a mirror nucleosynthesis also happening in dark matter.

In those chaotic early days, channels may have opened up between the two worlds, enabling them to affect each other.

By carefully measuring the rate of element formation — something that the next generation of cosmological observatories hope to do — scientists may be able to find evidence for one of these channels and get a glimpse into the mirror dark universe.

Originally published on www.livescience.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, February 28th, 2024)

"THE OLDEST BLACK HOLE IN THE UNIVERSE!!"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography

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starwarsweaponssystems · 6 months

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A guide to galactic ships: TIE fighter

Due to recent supply chain issues and the destruction of the first Death Star,

and the second Death Star,

along with the destruction of Alderaan,

buying a ship isn’t nearly as easy and as cheap as it used to be. Heck, back in my day, you used to be able to get a Z-95 Headhunter for well under the MSRP’s sticker price and the dealer would still throw in an extra deflector shield and some proton torpedoes to sweeten the deal. I actually fondly remember the government used to have a scheme called “Credits for Junkers” which paid people to actually trade in their old rocket propulsion starships for the new and more clean and environmentally friendly ion-engine-powered starships. So now most of us aren’t thinking about buying our dream starship, we’re being more careful and pragmatic without economic choices. In economic times like this, it’s all about finding a good economical starship that has good resale value. This way when you decide to sell or upgrade your starfighter, you can minimize your loss. So we’ll be taking a look at the TIE fighter.

You guys know that I would never take a standard TIE into a dogfight. I hate the solar panel design that gives you massive blindspots, the lack of shields, hyperdrive, and heck, there isn’t even life support on this thing. But when it comes to resale value, it’s not always about performance, instead, you have to look at the market and what individuals are willing to buy and the TIE fighter has a lot of really good features that might attract your more budget buyers You see, TIE fighters are relatively cheap, to begin with at around 60,000 credits each and at around 25,000 credits used so they won’t really break the bank when you purchase one. There are some reasons why the TIE fighter is an extremely smart buy from a resale point of view. First of all, it was one of the mass-produced starfighters in galactic history.

While other starfighters focus more on performance and features, the designers of the TIE fighter first focused on the manufacturing process and how to build things cheaply. The TIE fighter is an engineering marvel, it has no moving parts and it has a very low maintenance cost. The point is the TIE fighter was extremely reliable and well-built. Sure it was fragile even when compared to an A-wing, but you could still keep a TIE fighter running even decades after the empire collapsed and they stopped manufacturing parts for them. When the New Republic arose, so did a new market for old TIE fighters. You see, you had the centrist faction in the government, they basically supported stronger feral control over the galaxy and they have a really unhealthy nostalgia for Imperial memorabilia so a full-on TIE fighter would fetch you top dollar. So remember guys, resale is all about demand, and with this in mind, I’m sure you’ll be rich in no time.

#star wars #tie fighter #resale #stonks

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 5 months

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Physicists discover molecule-like structure of nuclear ground state

Scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), along with their collaborators, have recently discovered a molecular-type structure in the ground state of atomic nuclei. The study was published in Physical Review Letters and highlighted as a "Featured in Physics" article.

The atomic nucleus, a quantum many-body system composed of protons and neutrons, is incredibly small (only about one-ten-thousandth the size of an atom), but it houses over 99.9% of an atom’s total mass. Interactions between nucleons create various intriguing nuclear structures, ranging from spherical to deformed nuclei and even neutron halos with sparse surface density. The emergence of cluster structures within these formations is a captivating phenomenon.

Cluster structures are rarely seen in the ground state of atomic nuclei. Discussions on ground-state cluster structures can be traced back to 1938 when theoretical physicists, through the analysis of binding energies in α-conjugate nuclei, suggested the possible existence of α-molecule-like cluster structures in the ground states of nuclei such as beryllium-8, carbon-12, and oxygen-16. However, due to the popularity of the classical shell model’s single-particle description, this theoretical hypothesis remained unverified.

Using a novel experimental method involving the inverse kinematics knockout reaction, scientists from IMP and their collaborators have validated the presence of a molecular-type structure in the ground state of beryllium-10, a neutron-rich nucleus.

The experiment was conducted at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at the RIKEN Nishina Center in Japan. In the experiment, a secondary beam of beryllium-10, traveling at half the speed of light, bombarded a 2-millimeter-thick solid hydrogen target. The α-clusters bound within beryllium-10 nuclei were knocked out by protons—with almost no momentum transferred to the residual nucleus—thus preserving information about the cluster structure in the ground state of beryllium-10.

The experimental results demonstrated a remarkable agreement between the experimental cross-sections of knockout reactions and theoretical predictions under microscopic models. This verification supports the long-standing hypothesis regarding the molecular-state structure of beryllium-10’s ground state, suggesting the formation of an α–α dumbbell-shaped core with two valence neutrons rotating perpendicular to the core axis.

"Similar structures can be found on the atomic scale, but they are exceptionally rare in the ground state of atomic nuclei," said Dr. LI Pengjie from IMP, first author of the paper.

This study provides the first experimental evidence for the theoretical description of molecular-state structures in the ground state of atomic nuclei and paves the way for further exploration of the evolution of α-cluster structures in neutron-rich nuclear ground states.

The study was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Hong Kong, Paris-Saclay University in France, RIKEN and Osaka University in Japan, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and 22 other research institutions worldwide.

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

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