More Galaxies Than Ever Imagined

The Universe is a vast place, filled with more galaxies than we’ve ever been able to count, even in just the portion we’ve been able to observe. Some 40 years ago, Carl Sagan taught the world that there were hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way alone, and perhaps as many as 100 billion galaxies within the observable Universe. 

Although he never said it in his famous television series, Cosmos, the phrase “billions and billions” has become synonymous with his name, and also with the number of stars we think of as being inherent to each galaxy, as well as the number of galaxies contained within the visible Universe.

But when it comes to the number of galaxies that are actually out there, we’ve learned a number of important facts that have led us to revise that number upwards, and not just by a little bit. Our most detailed observations of the distant Universe, from the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, gave us an estimate of 170 billion galaxies. 

A theoretical calculation from a few years ago — the first to account for galaxies too small, faint, and distant to be seen — put the estimate far higher: at 2 trillion. But even that estimate is too low. There ought to be at least 6 trillion, and perhaps more like 20 trillion, galaxies, if we’re ever able to count them all. Here’s how we got there.

The first thing you have to realize about estimating the number of galaxies in the Universe is that the part of the Universe we can see — both today and ever, even into the infinite future — is and will always be finite. The Universe, as we know and perceive it, began with the hot Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. 

With some 1080 atoms within it, about five times as much mass in the form of dark matter, as well as billions of times as many photons and neutrinos, gravitation has had plenty of time to pull the matter into clumps, collections, groups, and clusters. This has led to the formation of stars and galaxies with a variety of different properties: masses, sizes, brightnesses and more.  READ MORE...

Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

First of It's Kind

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn.--Tennessee's Soaky Mountain Waterpark in Sevierville will debut a water coaster promising to be the first-of-its-kind.

Soaky Mountain Waterpark announced the opening of the water coaster which will be known as "The Edge" will open to the public on Wednesday after first being announced last November. The slide will feature two lanes on a 70 foot tower.

The two slides will have riders sit on double tubes before they are dropped three stories into a valley. Riders will then be propelled up a hill into an enclosed tube and dropped again where they will blast up a wall and dropped once again feeling extreme G forces.

At the end of the line, riders will see which of the two is the winner of the duel. In a statement release when the attraction was first announced, Soaky Mountain GM Dave Andrews says "Our new water coaster, fittingly named, ‘The Edge’ is going to be a showstopper! 

It will be perched on the edge of our waterpark, and span two football fields in length. It’s fusing together WhiteWater’s Master Blaster water coaster with their iconic Boomerango. But, we are not adding just one slide, we are doubling it for a dueling thrill!”  READ MORE...

Rock & Roll

 

Visit a Museum to Eliminate Stress

It turns out that visiting a museum is good for your health: New research from the University of Pennsylvania found reductions in anxiety and depression and increases in cognitive function and empathy, among a number of other promising outcomes.

“Art museums have great potential to positively impact people, including reducing their stress, enhancing positive emotional experiences, and helping people to feel less lonely and more connected,” researcher Katherine Cotter told Hyperallergic.

The study, titled “Art Museums As Institutions for Human Flourishing,” was published in the Journal of Positive Psychology by Cotter and James O. Pawelski of the University of Pennsylvania.

Their work is encompassed in the burgeoning field of positive psychology, which studies “the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive.”

Drawing on research from different academic disciplines, the study is part of an initiative that examines how the arts and humanities affect “human flourishing” — a comprehensive framework that takes into account both “ill-being” (living with disease, disorders, or in negative states) and “well-being” (practicing positive health habits).

“We believe our collaborative and interdisciplinary work is all the more vital at a time when so many individuals and communities lack the levels of well-being they need to thrive,” Pawelski said.  READ MORE...

Sometime You Need Help...

 

Supreme Court Decision

 

I am part of the Hippy Movement of the sixties and while I have shaved my beard, the radical, revolutionary thoughts inside my head have not changed unfortunately...

I believe that our bodies belong to us and not to our Federal Government.  Our Federal Government should not tell us:

• who to marry
• how many children to have
• when and where to defecate
• how much we should eat
• and whether or not we want to smoke marijuana or not...

Therefore, our Federal Government should not tell us whether or not a female should have an abortion...  that is her right and only her right...

Our government should stay the hell out of our business.

Our US Constitution states that those laws and powers not given to the Federal Government shall be the responsibility of the State Governments...

The Supreme Court agrees with that and yesterday took that power away from our Federal Government and gave it back to our State governments where it belongs...

NOW, since we elect our state representatives too, we can now tell those sons of bitches that we want the state to allow abortions...  it is that simple...

It's just the church that doesn't want abortions and since the church is allowing gays to stand up and be counted, then there is no reason why we cannot persuade all states to grant abortions regardless of what the church wants...

However, while I support a woman's right to chose, I personally am against abortions unless the pregnancy result as a byproduct of a crime...   even then, it is a flip of the coin, but abortion is understandable...  putting the child up for adoption is also an option.

No person should take another person's life...  regardless of the justification.

Here Comes the Sun

 

Ending Civilization

TO A PHOTON, the sun is like a crowded nightclub. It’s 27 million degrees inside and packed with excited bodies—helium atoms fusing, nuclei colliding, positrons sneaking off with neutrinos. 

When the photon heads for the exit, the journey there will take, on average, 100,000 years. (There’s no quick way to jostle past 10 septillion dancers, even if you do move at the speed of light.) 

Once at the surface, the photon might set off solo into the night. Or, if it emerges in the wrong place at the wrong time, it might find itself stuck inside a coronal mass ejection, a mob of charged particles with the power to upend civilizations.

The cause of the ruckus is the sun’s magnetic field. Generated by the churning of particles in the core, it originates as a series of orderly north-to-south lines. But different latitudes on the molten star rotate at different rates—36 days at the poles, and only 25 days at the equator. 

Very quickly, those lines stretch and tangle, forming magnetic knots that can puncture the surface and trap matter beneath them. From afar, the resulting patches appear dark. They’re known as sunspots. Typically, the trapped matter cools, condenses into plasma clouds, and falls back to the surface in a fiery coronal rain. 

Sometimes, though, the knots untangle spontaneously, violently. The sunspot turns into the muzzle of a gun: Photons flare in every direction, and a slug of magnetized plasma fires outward like a bullet.  READ MORE...

The End

 

Stone Blocks at Heliopolis

A joint German/Egyptian archaeological mission has discovered stone blocks from the reign of King Khufu in Heliopolis, Egypt.

Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch, the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty in the first half of the Old Kingdom period (26th century BC). Khufu is generally accepted for commissioning the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The mission was excavating in the ancient city of Heliopolis, the capital of the 13th or Heliopolite Nome of Lower Egypt and a major religious centre. Archaeologists uncovered large blocks of granite in the ruins of the Sun Temple near the obelisk of Senusret I, representing the first discovery from the period of King Khufu in the Ain Shams region.

Mustafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Archaeology announced the discovery in a press release, suggesting that the stone may have been part of a building once situated at the Pyramids of Giza and later moved and repurposed during the Ramesside era (19th and 20th Dynasty).

Excavations also revealed the sarcophagi and altars from the era of Amenemhat IV, Sobekhotep IV, Ay, Seti I, Osorkon I, Takelot I, and Psamtik I, in addition to a sculptural model of quartz in the form of the Sphinx of King Amenhotep II, the base of a statue of King Amasis (Ahmose II), and the base of a colossal monkey statue of pink granite of a baboon.  READ MORE...

The Garden of Eden

 

Diagnosing Alzheimer's Quickly

A new machine learning algorithm can diagnose Alzheimer’s disease from a single MRI brain scan, 

using a standard MRI machine available in most hospitals.

New research breakthrough uses machine learning technology to look at structural features within the brain, including in regions not previously associated with Alzheimer’s. The advantage of the technique is its simplicity and the fact that it can identify the disease at an early stage when it can be very difficult to diagnose.

Although there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, getting a diagnosis quickly at an early stage helps patients. It allows them to access help and support, get treatment to manage their symptoms and plan for the future. Being able to accurately identify patients at an early stage of the disease will also help researchers to understand the brain changes that trigger the disease, and support development and trials of new treatments.

The research was published today (June 20, 2022) in the Nature Portfolio Journal, Communications Medicine, and funded through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Center.


Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting over half a million people in the UK. Although most people with Alzheimer’s disease develop it after the age of 65, people under this age can develop it too. The most frequent symptoms of dementia are memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem solving and language.  READ MORE...

Brown Sugar

 

Big Yellow Taxi

 

Off My Rocker...

•  $5/gallon gasoline
• Empty Grocery Store Shelves
• Increase in Crime & Violence
• Teaching Young People to be Gay
• CRT Taught in K-12
• Illegal Immigration Escalating
• Illegal Protests in Front of Supreme Court Justices Homes with families
• Uncontrollable Inflation Leading to Recession
• Afghanistan Withdrawal Catastrophe
• Claims the Economy is Healthy are False
• Hiding Questionable Business Practices of Hunter Biden
• War on the Fossil Fuel Industry to Promote EV Purchases
• BLM Illegal Activitys
• Defunding the Police Movement
• WOKE Movement
• Blacks saying Whites are Supremacists
• No Longer a Country of Law & Order
• Trying to Silence the Conservative Views/Opinions
• Bident Blames Trump For His Problems
• Biden Blames Russia For His Problems
• Biden Blames COVID For His Problems
• Biden Blames Truckers For His Problems
• Biden Blames Gouging Gas Companies For His Problems
• Biden Blames the Republicans For His Problems

First of all...  a LEADER does not blame others...

Second of all...  the Dems wanted Trump out so bad that they were willing to elect an INCOMPETENT to replace him...

Third of all...  WE ARE EXPERIENCING EXACTLY WHAT WE DESERVE...

I am not supportive of the Democrats/Liberals

I am not supportive of the Republicans/Conservatives

I am not supportive of the Progressives/Socialists

I AM SUPPORTIVE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE...  and, all politicians are born liars...  it is a pre-requisite for the job.

DO YOU QUESTION THIS?

Why do we have the same social problems in 2022 that we had in 1962...   60 years ago...  I am 74 years old so I have been witness to both time frames...  if you don't believe me because of unknown credibility, then do a GOOGLE search and find out for yourself.

Politicians PLAY the American people as being relatively stupid...  and, while it is the American people who put them into office, it is the WEALTHY with hidden agendas that pay for their campaigns, newspaper articles, and TV or Social Media coverage...  You don't know this because you don't want to know this...  it makes your head hurt knowing this shit is going on in this country.

Remember Joni Mitchel's song???

Passing Train

 

Preventing Cancer

A new theory suggests that mutations have few straightforward ways to establish themselves in cells and cause tumors.

For many researchers, the road to cancer prevention is long and difficult, but a recent study by Rice University scientists suggests that there may be shortcuts.

A theoretical framework is being developed by Rice scientist Anatoly Kolomeisky, postdoctoral researcher Hamid Teimouri, and research assistant Cade Spaulding that will explain how cancers brought on by several genetic mutations might be more readily recognized and perhaps prevented.

It does this by detecting and ignoring transition pathways that don’t significantly contribute to the fixation of mutations in a cell that later becomes a tumor.

The study, which was published on May 13th, 2022 in the Biophysical Journal, details their analysis of the effective energy landscapes of cellular transformation pathways connected to a number of cancers. 

The ability to narrow the number of paths to those most likely to initiate cancer could help in the development of strategies to interrupt the process before it begins.

“In some sense, cancer is a bad-luck story,” said Kolomeisky, a professor of chemistry and of chemical and biomolecular engineering. 

“We think we can decrease the probability of this bad luck by looking for low-probability collections of mutations that typically lead to cancer. Depending on the type of cancer, this can range between two mutations and 10.”

Calculating the effective energies that govern interactions in biomolecular systems may help anticipate how they will behave. The theory is widely used to anticipate how a protein will fold based on the sequence of its constituent atoms and how they interact.    READ MORE...

Walk on Water

 

Droughts Pave Way for Islam

Extreme dry conditions contributed to the decline of the ancient South Arabian kingdom of Himyar.

Combined with political unrest and war, the droughts left behind a region in disarray, thereby creating the conditions on the Arabian peninsula that made possible the spread of the newly emerging religion of Islam.

On the plateaus of Yemen, traces of the Himyarite Kingdom can still be found today: terraced fields and dams formed part of a particularly sophisticated irrigation system, transforming the semi-desert into fertile fields. Himyar was an established part of South Arabia for several centuries.

However, despite its former strength, during the sixth century AD the kingdom entered into a period of crisis, which culminated in its conquest by the neighboring kingdom of Aksum (now Ethiopia). A previously overlooked factor, namely extreme drought, may have been decisive in contributing to the upheavals in ancient Arabia from which Islam emerged during the seventh century. These findings were recently reported by researchers led by Professor Dominik Fleitmann in the journal Science.

Petrified water acts as climate record
Fleitmann’s team analyzed the layers of a stalagmite from the Al Hoota Cave in present-day Oman. The stalagmite’s growth rate and the chemical composition of its layers (see box) are directly related to how much precipitation falls above the cave. As a result, the shape and isotopic composition of the deposited layers of a stalagmite represent a valuable record of historical climate.  READ MORE...