Lmst

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Redwood National and State Parks on Saturday. Learn more at https://www.nps.gov/redw/index.htm and https://www.nps.gov/redw/planyourvisit/upload/ThreeTrees-2014-508.pdf and https://www.savetheredwoods.org/blog/wildflowers-of-the-redwood-forests/ and #nps #nationalparks #publiclands #photography #forest #trees #flowers #phenology Image credit Kurt Angersbach / Westernlabs #color #cawx #redwoods #rain #ocean #rhododendron

A visit to Redwood National and State Parks on Saturday, following just a bit of rain. The colors in the forest are different - perhaps the trees are still a little darker in color than on days not preceded by precipitation. The tree in the center, gently illuminated by the sun, is remarkably huge, especially when one considers that the neighboring trees are pretty much what could be called normal in size. The sky is blue and the needles, leaves, and vegetation are a variety of greens.

Rhododendron in the understory, Redwood National and State Parks, following a bit of rain. The pink and white colors of the flowers appeared here and there throughout the forest, none close enough for me to get a good picture, but hopefully this image provides a general idea of the scene. The green leaves of the rhododendron frame the flowers. Two large trees appear in the background along with a sliver of the day’s blue sky.

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Sunday adventure escaping summer’s heat #Husky

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Tafjord yesterday evening
#norway #landscape

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The greatest job alert! My team at EFF is hiring and you could be on it: https://www.paycomonline.net/v4/ats/web.php/jobs/ViewJobDetails?job=262470&clientkey=28620672D234BF368306CEB4A2746667

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You've probably heard the Oasis song Black Dwarf Supernova - but did you know that was a real thing?

More precisely, none exist *now*, but they may be among the last really exciting events in our universe. As a star the size of our Sun dies, it eventually shrink downs to a white dwarf, very hot and dense but held up by 'electron degeneracy pressure'. That's because electrons can't be in the same quantum state.

As a white dwarf cools, we expect it will dim and eventually become a 'black dwarf'. This hasn't happened yet. While there are already plenty of white dwarfs, they take a long time to cool down. The coldest white dwarfs found are about 12 billion years old, and they're still 3,600 °C. We expect that for a white dwarf to get *really* cold, like 5 °C above absolute zero, would take about a quadrillion years!

But eventually, it could explode.

The reason is that as it cools, its electron degeneracy pressure gets smaller and it shrinks. For white dwarfs heavier than 1.2 times the mass of our Sun, this may actually tip them over into collapsing entirely, becoming black holes. But just as with heavy stars today, this collapse should also liberate a huge amount of energy, shooting off the star's outer layers in a SUPERNOVA!

Stars that could do this account for just 1% of all stars in the observable universe. But that's 10²¹ stars - nothing to sneeze at.

These black hole supernovae may go off around 10¹¹⁰⁰ years from now, long after most other processes have settled down. However, it's possible that the protons in these stars will decay first. Protons could be stable, but we only know for sure that their half-life exceeds 10³² years.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02296

$https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.02296 Black Dwarf Supernova in the Far Future M. E. Caplan In the far future long after star formation has ceased the universe will be populated by sparse degenerate remnants, mostly white dwarfs, though their ultimate fate is an open question. These white dwarfs will cool and freeze solid into black dwarfs while pycnonuclear fusion will slowly process their composition to iron-56. However, due to the declining electron fraction the Chandrasekhar limit of these stars will be decreasing and will eventually be below that of the most massive black dwarfs. As such, isolated dwarf stars with masses greater than will collapse in the far future due to the slow accumulation of iron-56 in their cores. If proton decay does not occur then this is the ultimate fate of about 10^21 stars, approximately one percent of all stars in the observable universe. We present calculations of the internal structure of black dwarfs with iron cores as a model for progenitors. From pycnonuclear fusion rates we estimate their lifetime and thus delay time to be 10^1100 years. We speculate that high mass black dwarf supernovae resemble accretion induced collapse of O/Ne/Mg white dwarfs while later low mass transients will be similar to stripped-envelope core-collapse supernova, and may be the last interesting astrophysical transients to occur prior to heat death.$

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This is a neat article. I set my novella “The Warrior Within” on a tidally-locked world orbiting a K-class dwarf (one step up in brightness from the M-class stars discussed in this article). If I'd been able to read this article first, I might have made the environment in which the story takes place MUCH weirder.
https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/114551877059832507

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On this SISKO DAY, being every May 22 as the day Benjamin Sisko took command of Deep Space Nine...
Be vulnerable
Seek help
Engage with the wisdom of others
Move the station
Heal

#TheSiskoDay

Jake Sisko kisses the top of his father's head, Benjamin Sisko, in a still from the television show STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE.

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“Microsoft has simply given us no other option,” Signal says as it blocks Windows Recall

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/signal-resorts-to-weird-trick-to-block-windows-recall-in-desktop-app/

Signal Messenger is warning the users of its Windows Desktop version that the privacy of their messages is under threat by Recall, the AI tool rolling out in Windows 11 that will screenshot, index, and store almost everything a user does every three seconds.

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/antimatter-cern-france-physics-universe-b2754335.html

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#humor #memes #books #alt

Humorous Meme Painting The Discovered Love Letters by Carl Rudolph Sohn 1890. Young woman draped over a foot stool in dispair.

“Are you okay?" ~ Me: No. I don't have a bookshelf m with a rolling ladder.”

@Dylan Cool, I'd love to get one of these lenses + adapter someday! love the swirly look

Whatever pollen I'm most allergic to is certainly plentiful today!

Yesterday's hike was particularly peaceful.

#Photography #Hiking #Fujifilm #NorthCarolina

Vertical shot of evening sun hitting a tree and it's reflection in the Eno river

Sunlight illuminating a tree over a peaceful river

View from an overlook above a forest on a sunny evening

View of the sunset over the Eno river from an overlook

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@Unixbigot

Image of a hand-drawn pie chart titled "Where is the Thing?"
One half is labelled "Carelessly set down (I forget where)" and the other half is labelled "Deliberately put in special place (I forget where)".

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There are currently about 36 known satellite galaxies gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. There are the big, famous Magellanic Clouds, but a host of smaller, harder-to-find satellites. The upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory will be a satellite galaxy hunter, potentially finding 31-53 new galaxies according to new simulations. These are fainter and farther away, and will provide unique insights into dark matter, galaxy formation, and early Universe physics.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.16203

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Next #SETILive: Is Intelligent Life Easy?
TODAY, Thursday, Apr 24, 11:00 AM PDT

Join planetary astronomer Franck Marchis in an in-depth discussion with Dr. Dan Mills about why intelligent life may be common and how this could affect our search for life beyond Earth.

WATCH LIVE: https://youtube.com/live/hEQJfyW5yt4

#seti #science #scicomm

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Titan’s Sky, oil on canvas.

In the 1990s I created several digital space-related images for the US postal service, one of which was of two astronauts standing on Saturn's moon, Titan.

The software and hardware were primitive consequently the rendering was crude.
Despite that the image proved popular so it was fun to get a commission to recreate the image in oil, full circle, from trad to digital and back :)

Youtube process
https://youtu.be/AOWck6Bcw0c?si=ioFu8Bhlr1c6PBtU

#SciFi #illustration #oilpainting

Oil painting, two astronauts standing on Titans surface.

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7 years ago today @dansup started writing the first lines of code of what would become Pixelfed.

From that open-source spark to a thriving photo-sharing community connected to millions across the fediverse.

All without surveillance or algorithms controlling what you see.

Here's to 7 years of putting people before profit.

🎉 🥳

#PixelfedTurns7

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The blue star cluster shining in the center of the Tarantula Nebula—seen in this #NASAWebb image, was born within the ribbons of silk-like dust that surround it. In time, all of this dust will either be blown away by or absorbed into new stars and planets: https://bit.ly/4bI5Tv5

$A star-forming nebula. The nebula is composed of tan-colored clouds with rust-colored highlights, surrounding a black central area containing a bright cluster of sparkling pale blue stars that scatter outward from a densely packed center. The clouds toward the center are brighter than those toward the edge. The bottom left and the top right of the nebula appear more clear of any clouds of dust and gas. One bright yellow star stands out in the central open area, showing off Webb’s eight-pronged diffraction pattern.$

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The Milky Way is a mature grand spiral galaxy, the result of billions of years of mergers and galactic evolution. Now, astronomers have found a galaxy with a Milky Way-like spiral shape, but seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old. The discovery was made with Webb and shows how quickly a galaxy can develop a central old bulge, a large star-forming disk, and spiral arms, something we normally see in nearby galaxies.

https://www.unige.ch/medias/en/2025/la-plus-lointaine-cousine-de-la-voie-lactee-jamais-observee

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