funsec mailing list archives
Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden
From: "Dude VanWinkle" <dudevanwinkle () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 3 May 2006 22:14:20 -0400
On 5/2/06, Fergie <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote:
Hey, Gadi! :-) Via The New York Times. [snip] THERE is something perversely satisfying about soaking in a tub of beer. First there is the yeasty aroma of malt and hops, followed by a warm and sticky sensation as the brown liquid envelopes your body. You think to yourself: this must be every lad's dream. Whatever comes next will surely have to involve a supermodel, an Aston Martin and a fat cigar. [snip]
Thats nothing, how about this 'little" gem http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/06/alcohol_cloud/ Astronomers at the UK's Jodrell Bank Observatory have discovered what is surely the strongest argument to date in favour of ploughing huge resources into space exploration: a giant "bridge" of methyl alcohol spanning around 288bn miles, within which is nestled a stellar nursery. The booze cloud was spotted using the UK's MERLIN radio telescopes in an area of our own galaxy rather uninspiringly called W3(OH). According to the Royal Astronomical Society blurb, this is a region where "stars are being formed by the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas and dust". Click Here The area is also a hotbed of "maser" activity - "clumps of interstellar gas in which radio waves are amplified many thousands of times, due to the molecular gases being excited by infra-red radiation from the nearby young stars", according to principal investigator Lisa Harvey-Smith, nicely dubbed "Radio Astronomer to the Stars" - and several maser spots had already been observed in W3(OH). However, the new data shows filaments of masing gas bridging the space between said maser spots. The largest, as noted above, is a whopping 463bn kilometres, for those of you who like your measures in metric, and appears to be "rotating as a disc around a central star, in a similar manner to the accretion discs in which planets form around young stars". The discovery is important because, as Dr Harvey-Smith put it: "There are still many unanswered questions about the birth of massive stars because the formation centres are shrouded by dust. The only radiation that can escape is at radio wavelengths and the upgraded MERLIN network is now giving us the first opportunity to look deep into these star forming regions and see what's really going on." Sadly, methyl alcohol is not currently suitable for human consumption, although we have no doubt that by the time mankind develops the technology necessary to reach W3(OH) it will also have evolved the capacity to successfully metabolise this molecule. In which case, last person to the masing gas bridge stumps up for the first round. See you there. -JP _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Fergie (May 02)
- Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Dude VanWinkle (May 03)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Fergie (May 03)
- Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Dude VanWinkle (May 03)
- Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Dude VanWinkle (May 03)
- Re: Headline of the Day: Beer Spas -- Yeast of Eden Valdis . Kletnieks (May 03)