Thursday, August 23, 2007

Veterans



A veteran - whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve - is someone who, at one point in their life, signed a blank check made payable to "The United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including my life." That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country nowadays who no longer understand it. -- Author Unknown

Monday, August 20, 2007

Cluster Crash Illuminates Dark Matter Conundrum


Credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC/ U. Victoria/ A. Mahdavi et al.
Optical/Lensing: CFHT/ U. Victoria/ A. Mahdavi et al.
Explanation: Huge clusters of galaxies are surely colliding in Abell 520 but astrophysicists aren't sure why the dark matter is becoming separated from the normal matter. The dark matter in the above multi-wavelength image is shown in false blue, determined by carefully detailing how the cluster distorts light emitted by more distant galaxies. Very hot gas, a form of normal matter, is shown in false red, determined by the X-rays detected by the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. Individual galaxies dominated by normal matter appear yellowish or white. Conventional wisdom holds that dark matter and normal matter are attracted the same gravitationally, and so should be distributed the same in Abell 520. Inspection of the above image, however, shows a surprising a lack of a concentration of visible galaxies along the dark matter. One hypothetical answer is that the discrepancy is caused by the large galaxies undergoing some sort of conventional gravitational slingshots. A more controversial hypothesis holds that the dark matter is colliding with itself in some non-gravitational way that has never been seen before. Further simulations and study of this cluster may resolve this scientific conundrum.

Friday, August 17, 2007


I like this drawing of Jesus. Don't you think when he was walking around on earth he must have been extremely charismatic?

Ecc 3:11-12
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.


Here's a good question: To whom does the Golden Rule not apply?

Were Jews wearing those little hats around 30AD? When did that tradition start?