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

Time is a component of motion. No motion, no time. If there is motion, time comes in the package.

true, but time (forgive the pun)as we know it, was only "invented" by mankind counting the sun/moon going round and for the universe it's all guesswork, as in X billion of years etc

Time has always been measured in terms of relative motion and there is no absolute metrical framework of orientation... ...so far as anyone knows.

I'll still never comes to terms with Einstein's theory of relativity etc

away to kip, take care my friend and sleep well as your time comes round

...harve a good one...

(Sam Adams beer on the last by the way. They even beat Miller and Michelob on smoooth!)

The Milky Way is in the process of devouring another dwarf galaxy at this moment and is surround by the debris of previous dinners. There was also a study a while ago I think showing that quite a few of the known star clusters in our galaxy aren;t actually native

Oh and we're pretty darn close to one of the intersect points between our galaxy and the Sagittarius dwarf we're consuming.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/dwarf-galaxy-remnants-invading-milky-way.html

for but one reference.

Reflections on time and Galileo's revolution:

Though it's a point little noted, Galileo's shifting of time measurement to a standard founded on oscillatory motion was a revolutionary breakthrough, since a pendulum swing, as with many other kinds of oscillatory motion, takes place with an invariant time, depending on the length of the pendulum and the gravity driving it, irrespective of the distance between the extreme limits of the pendulum swing: a very short pendulum swing takes just the same amount of time as a much longer one, just so long as nothing else changes.

The same principle obtains with modern atomic clocks, its just that oscillating sub-atomic particles bound to individual atoms have taken the place of pendulums.

Has anyone seen the brand new and Venus, in the blue sky? (look south)

Brand new moon? What did they do with the old one?

recycled it?

was it a toyota moon ?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312292/Cannibal-star-engulfed-nearby-stars-planets-spotted.html

feeding time

lunchtime

BTW has enyone spotted the comet I mentioned in my last BATS yet? It was too cloudy last night but the night before was very clear and lots of sparklyI even saw the moons of Jupiter

No comet though

Twentieth birthday gift from Hubble features another look at Carina courtesy of Wired Magazine:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/hubble-20th-anniversary/

Nearly as breathtaking as the Pillars of Creation from 1995.

the size beggars belief, as in 3 light years etc

http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/All/search?p=Galaxy%2C+animated&search.x=9&search.y=8

missed us again

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

First med-res pictures of the comet taken by EPOXI:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/04/amazing-close-ups-of-comet-hartley-2/

Pretty close...

Oh My God. How wonderful. I've had a quick peek, but I'm going out to a themed pub quiz. DON'T GO ANYWHERE

I'll be back