h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well yes that is the point, but I didn't expect this site to work.

Wow, that is really quite an issue then. I see whay you are interested in education in Astronomy. Seems like a sort of 'some small town in mid US' type of view (I'm sure that is a very narrow minded view).

Guess we're lucky in England, only a few 'quirky' folk who still think that Moon landings were a fake.

Yes, my dear, it works. I am deeply thanful to people like you, and the other members of the AS, that worry about issues like explaining science and technology, because I feel no one can really take part in his society if they do not understand the forces that move it, and Science is one of them. The critical sense should be an integral part of a worthy citizen, and science is a wonderful way to develop it and to understand our reality and the very nature of our existence.
You are not lucky. You are _educated_. Your society in some measure was able to understand that good education is the key to the future, and you had the resources to work it out. This talks very favourably
of you. We have neither the comprehension nor the resources...
I am interested in education, not only in astronomy, because we will never be a good society if we don't understand the world, the other people and ourselves.
So I thank you all again for trying to help people to enjoy the sensation of knowing something, to discuss the production of knowledge, how it is applied, to wonder about this Universe so complex, but so simple compared to the human mind...

Your studying magnetars are you not? I've just found a recent article on them on the Astronomy Now website. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0012/09magnetars/

Yes I do reserach magnetars.
Interesting article. I have a comment: the glitch that happened with the burst can be unrelated to the magnetic field, as other pulsars glitch, but these glitching pulsars are not the ones with strongest magnetic field. And a big problem arouse from that same glitch, because after it the SGR seemed to be slowing down faster than before, and this would require the magnetic field _doubled_ its already impresive intensity...Where so much magnetic energy comes from?
I suspect of the answer...Wait for me in Nature (HA!)...
Actually i'm writing an article showing that the SGRs and AXPs can be explained as not being magnetars, and at the same time explaining other features of pulsars.
There is a www.magnetars.com.

I have read some Stephen Jay Gould's articles, and they are just that i was talking about. He explains how the different theories were applied to the subject and how they developed to the modern explanation. He's GREAT!

Oh dear. I'm a bit late coming in on this discussion and you seem to have moved on from the Horizon program but I've only just found time to watch my video of it and I was fascinated and frustrated in equal measure. Fascinated by the subject - as nothing more than an interested but ignorant astronomical amateur I'd always thought of black holes as things that existed 'out there' somewhere in the deepest reaches of space, isolated because they'd devoured everything within reach. I now have to completely modify that because I learn there's probably a supermassive one at the heart of each galaxy. It's SO frustrating to have your interest piqued by a programme like this and then find they've spent so much time on the basic background, pretty graphics, spooky music and scaremongering that there's not enough time left to devote to the really interesting debate on what it all means. Still it's good news that the TV schedulers still find time for science programmes between all the quiz shows and soap operas. The good old BBC at least still pays some attention to the educational aspect of its existence.

Very true, oh my new pictures are just uploaded, I'll go and put them on the AS page. Sorry I haven't updated recently. Arg.

Also the latest Astronomy Now magazine has an article 9and front page) about magnetars, I think I ubderstand them slightly more now.

Just a note, could everyone sign onto the mailing list for the h2g2AS. The address is on the AS front page.


Thank you kindly,

Nick

CHANDRA FINDS EVIDENCE OF BLACK HOLE 'EVENT HORIZONS'
-----------------------------------------------------
Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to study some
of the darkest black holes yet observed. Their work strongly confirms
the reality of the "event horizon," the one-way membrane around black
holes predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity.

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