How To Ingite A Cosmic Lighthouse

Silver Surfer created by Jack Kirby but © Marvel Comics

Researchers have been able to show that all supernovae of a certain type explode with the same mass and the same energy - the brightness depends only on how much nickel the supernova contains. This knowledge has allowed the researchers to calibrate the brightness of supernovae with greater precision. This means that in the future, they will use the brightness of a supernova that they are observing through their telescopes to determine more accurately how far away from the Earth the cosmic lighthouse is emitting its rays.


The arrow points to the supernova 2002bo, the explosion of a white dwarf in the galaxy NGC 3190 in the Leo constellation--60 million light years away from earth.Image: Benetti et al., MNRAS 384:261-278 (2004)

All supernovae have low-velocity cores of stable iron-group elements. Outside this core, nickel-56 dominates the supernova ejecta. The outer extent of the iron-group material depends on the amount of nickel-56 and coincides with the inner extent of silicon, the principal product of incomplete burning. The outer extent of the bulk of silicon is similar in all supernovae, having an expansion velocity of 11,000 kilometers per second and corresponding to a mass of slightly over one solar mass. This indicates that all the supernovae considered here burned similar masses and suggests that their progenitors had the same mass. link

A Common Explosion Mechanism for Type Ia Supernovae. 2007. P.A. Mazzali et al. Science.

Hey, Where's Capt. Kirk!?

Chilean Army Reveals UFO Data

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More than 1,000 enthusiasts and experts gathered in Viña del Mar for the Tenth International Ufology Conference, organized by the Chile’s Ufology Investigation Group (Aion). The highlight of the meeting was a display of photographs taken by members of Chile’s Armed Forces.

The military photographs and videos were revealed late Tuesday evening. They included a photograph of a spherical metallic object captured flying over Antarctica and a video of Navy ships being pursued by a luminous object in 2000.

Also presented at the conference was a report by Rodrigo Bravo, Captain of the Army’s Fifth Division, who talked to a rapt audience about his thesis, entitled “Observations of unidentified aerial phenomena identified by the Civil Air Force.” While Bravo’s talk was not technically representative of the institution’s position on UFOs, he had been authorized to give it by his commander-in-chief.

“Captain Bravo gave his talk from the point of view of the importance of UFOs as a phenomenon,” said Fuenzalida. “He talked about encounters such as that of three helicopters near La Unión, when a UFO was spotted parked on the ground, and what happened in 2000, when five people were pursued by a luminous object that did not show up on radar screens.”

Fuenzalida denied the existence of “secret investigations” being carried out by the Armed Forces about extraterrestrial activity. link via the Fortean Times

S.H.A.D.O. battles the U.F.O’.s!


But here’s the real reason we watched Gerry Anderson’s “U.F.O.”


Little known fact is that Lt. Ellis was Nick Drake’s sister.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra

On this date in 2001 The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra premiered. That’s all you need to know!

Watch the trailer….Now!

The Hyborian Age: Chapter Four

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Script by Roy Thomas; Art © Walt Simonson;
The Hyborian Age and Conan © their current copyright holders.

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Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

Building The Creature From The Black Lagoon

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Brain-Munchingly Good Valentines!

Both Kipling West (above) and Tom Bagley from over at the 7 Deadly Sinners blog have art in the Zombie Valentines show at Calgary’s Carbon Media Design. Go check it out now!

Seeing 10th Dimensional Space

Peering backward in time to an instant after the big bang, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.

A new study demonstrates that the shapes of extra dimensions can be "seen" by deciphering their influence on cosmic energy released by the violent birth of the universe 13 billion years ago. The method provides evidence that physicists can use experimental data to discern the nature of these elusive dimensions - the existence of which is a critical but as yet unproven element of string theory, the leading contender for a unified "theory of everything."

Don't worry if you can't picture a 10-dimensional world. Our minds are accustomed to only three spatial dimensions and lack a frame of reference for the other six. Though scientists use computers to visualize what these six-dimensional geometries could look like, no one really knows for sure what shape they take.

To learn how to read telltale signs of the six-dimensional geometry from the cosmic map, they worked backward. Starting with two different types of mathematically simple geometries, called warped throats, they calculated the predicted energy map that would be seen in the universe described by each shape. When they compared the two maps, they found small but significant differences between them. link