In love with the moon.

find all the endings!

Paul sent me a pretty hilarious note last night:

So I read your article on Gamma Ray Bursts and it made me laugh cause over 10 years ago I was at some geeky science camp where we actually looked at old satellite data of gamma ray bursts. If you want a quick laugh I actually had to make a website about it. Unfortunately they won’t take it down and spare me the humiliation of my high school self being on the internet.

http://espg.sr.unh.edu/tof/Smart/Students/P_Novello/mainpage.html

Paul

Well done Paul. We at MikeDiDonato.com take joy in spreading your awkward high school pictures to the masses.

80′s hair-metal rockers Twisted Sister announce that they ‘are now going to take it.’

Check out the inside scoop here.

Whenever I’m wheeling a cart around the grocery store or the shop floor at work I am hard pressed not to kick off, jump on, and ride that cart for a few meters.

I hope I never grow out of this desire.

This past weekend was absurdly classful. Thursday night 6-9pm, Friday night 5:30-9:30, Saturday 8-5. Following those 16 hours of class I spent my Sunday breathing a bit.

Vibrations is that sneaky class that the University of New Haven surprisingly forced upon me. I attended on Thursday (having missed the first two classes) and quickly learned that we have a quiz next week. This will add to the mayhem of this first week of October.

I did get a little fun time this weekend. Saturday night I hung out with Darcy and Schuyler which is always fun. Darcy and I played scrabble. She won. Then we ate delicious foods.

Sunday, I hit up the climbing gym with Irene and also watched the first two episodes of Dexter – a showtime series about a serial killer who kills serial killers. It’s a pretty well put together television show. I approve.

Looking ahead, this week will be a bit more stressful than usual with the looming quiz on Thursday and a moderate sized presentation on Friday.

I’m going to have to get a big cup of coffee at work this morning.

Gamma Ray Bursts (GRB) are celestial events that are overwhelmingly intense. As a star dies a couple things could happen. Two scenarios are Supernovas and GRBs. During these dying processes, the inner core of the star collapses into a black hole and the outer core of the star explodes. Occasionally the forces work in such a way that two beams of terrifying power fire out of the ex-sun. These are Gamma Ray Bursts.

What is ‘terrifying power’?

Well, for one, GRB’s are visible across the universe. That in itself is pretty intense, but the power of a GRB is absurd. If one hit us squarely, and we were close enough to it, it would tear our atmosphere to bits, boil all our oceans, and impose one million times the lethal dose of x-rays and gamma rays upon us.

Thankfully for us, there are two characteristics of Gamma Ray Bursts that make them dramatically less dangerous.

Firstly, the beams are narrow. Very Narrow. only .4 degrees. As soon as you escape the hallway of fire, you’re safe.

Secondly, they have to be close to hurt us: no further than 1000 light years away.

Well, on March 18th, 2008 we witnessed one. We were staring right down the throat of a GRB. Thankfully, it was 8000 light years away so we didn’t fry. But it’s scary that we were hit at all. The likelihood of that is just so slim. So what happened on the 18th of March? Some of our big satellites quickly noticed the event and told all the other satellites to check it out. That they did and we got all sorts of information about Gamma Ray Bursts. It was visible to the naked eye and stands as the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humankind.

To be wittnessed so far away GRB’s must released a lot of energy. According to Bad Astronomy* a GRB releases “as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will over its entire 10 billion year lifetime.”

Dang.

So do we have anything to worry about? Not really… Although there is one star, WR 104, that is within the 1000 light-year radius. It appears to be of the right age to go supernova, but even if it did… not ever star that explodes emits a Gamma Ray Burst. Also, we’d have to be aligned with the star in order for their to be a problem. Unfortunately… we are aligned with the star – within 16 degrees (wikipedia). Now, 16 degrees is a wide range for a mere 0.4 degree beam of untold death – still though, a little too close for comfort.

Don’t lose sleep on it though, we’re not in any immediate risk. Though if you wake up tomorrow and the oceans are boiling, you can probably suspect that WR 104 is the culprit.

(with the exception of one WR 104… which, if you suddenly notice that the oceans are boiling… WR 104 is probably the culprit)

*that astronomy link is where I got most of the data for this post.

They’re awesome.

Video.

Last night I whipped up a little Kung Fu comic.

Check it out here.

I thought of this concept in the middle of my kung fu class on Wednesday. Sure enough, we have a door along the side wall of our workout space that is labeled just like that one. When the thought hit me, it really took some effort to keep myself from breaking out into crazy laughter in the middle of class.

(It should be noted, in real life the room is full of first aid supplies, extra uniforms, wood to break, and various folded chairs and tables to pull out if we need them.)