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“The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance”, translated by Sookja Cho

The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance, Sookja Cho (trans) (Columbia University Press, November 2018) The Tale of Cho Ung: A Classic of Vengeance, Loyalty, and Romance, Sookja Cho (trans) (Columbia University Press, November 2018)

What do you do when you’re given a magic sword and a “dragon horse”? You sally out into the wicked world, of course, rescue maidens in distress, overthrow evil kings and chop off a great deal of heads while shouting over and over again variations of “Stretch out your neck and receive my sword!” However, as you fight manfully to restore your Crown Prince to his throne, which has been usurped by a wicked, scheming Prime Minister, you demonstrate at the same time the supreme Confucian virtues of filial piety and loyalty as well as respecting your teachers and learning how to become a good judge of people.

As with Western classics like Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, this fast-paced Korean martial classic features a hero who must learn about himself before he can achieve his great status, and serve others before he can become great himself. As the short verse at the end says, “Let us study and learn so that we can be loyal to our country,” the proper desire of a selfless hero like Cho Ung (“Ung” actually means “hero”) will prove himself to be. All this is delivered to us in a fluent, engaging translation by Sookja Cho, who teaches Korean at Arizona State University. She also supplies a fascinating introduction which fills in everything a Western reader needs, as well as quite copious end-notes which will satisfy scholars.

The Tale of Cho Ung is splendid entertainment, bildungsroman and a serious commentary on human morality all rolled into one.

The genesis of this anonymous tale, which (by the way) takes place in medieval China, is interesting. Apparently, as Sookja Cho tells us, someone was listening to a story (it could well have been this one) in a tobacco shop and was so caught up in the tale that he actually attacked the storyteller! This shows just how important public storytelling was to Korean audiences in late Chosŏn (17th-19th centuries) times, and how prone some people were to “losing track of the line between the real world and the imaginary one.”

It was the listening rather than reading audience who influenced these tales as they were handed down from one storyteller to another, and for them the stories they heard supplied them with wisdom, “reconfirmed their norms and values, and helped them make sense of their world.”

If we need a Western parallel, we need look no further than Beowulf, where the values of the warriors, such as loyalty to rulers and kinsmen, and the duties of the rulers towards those warriors are set out, reinforcing through the hero’s actions what people wished to believe about their society. What Cho Ung fights for in this book is not that dissimilar to what Beowulf was fighting for. And his life is also similar to that of a knight such as we might find in Arthurian legends like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, setting off on a quest, surmounting all kinds of obstacles and endlessly fighting for the good, encountering supernatural beings, wise hermits, strong evil warriors, and eventually, if he’s lucky, settling down with the woman he loves, herself a chaste heroine, whose loyalty to Cho Ung even leads her to advise him at the end to take a second wife.

It’s interesting how familiar the pattern of Cho Ung’s adventures actually might be for Western readers, who will recognise in them many parallels to their own cultures. As noted above, evil kings, maidens in distress and warriors going through tough childhoods may be found everywhere in literature, expressed through the same stories and literary tropes, of which we never seem to tire.

In some ways Cho Ung is a generic hero; he embodies all the virtues that were considered desirable in a society largely governed by Confucian morals. He respects his emperor, his elders and teachers, he is fiercely loyal to his mother and to the memory of his father, and he is patriotic. Above all he is a tough warrior who also knows, at least on a few occasions, that he needs to be merciful, and not all his enemies lose their heads or get bludgeoned to death.

His tender side emerges as he falls in love with Maiden Chang, and he expresses his sorrow in poetry when he is parted from her; the less martial side of Cho Ung serves to show readers that he isn’t just a one-dimensional hero with no flaws. He is often impetuous or angry, but he also expresses sorrow and longing when it comes to his family or his beloved. For example, he beheads Woltae, the beautiful girl who has been sent to suborn him by the treacherous king of Sŏbŏn, who wants to keep Cho Ung where he can watch him and decide what to do with him. The king sends another girl and Cho Ung decides to take her with him when he leaves Sŏbŏn because she wants to be reunited with her mother, a sentiment which appeals to his sense of filial piety. Far from whipping out his magic sword and shortening her by a head, Cho Ung “asked her about her lineage and her deeds … and then he slept with her.”

Cho Ung was, as we have noted, a shrewd reader of people. Also, in spite of the various supernatural elements which punctuate the story (as they do in Western heroic sagas, too), the protagonist emerges by the end of the book as a human figure who can operate under his own steam, someone perhaps readers might wish to emulate in their everyday lives. After all, doesn’t everyone want to be Superman, or at least catch a little fragment of his superpowers? And, perhaps, we live in days when it would be good if someone came along to “repair the world,” as Sookja Cho puts it.

This book was painstakingly constructed by Sookja Cho from many different versions, beginning with the Wansan editions of 1857, which are considered the “representative commercial versions” of the story and are the longest, the shorter Seoul version, and a number of others. No one knows who the author might have been, but there are many editions of it, and at the time they circulated through a book-rental system. In short, it could have been described as a best-seller, although, as Sookja Cho points out, its popularity declined and it did not attract much scholarly interest over subsequent years.

Professor Cho has therefore done a great service to Korean literature by translating this once-popular work and offering it to an English-speaking audience, likely not as familiar with Korean writing as with Japanese or Chinese, especially in regard to literature produced before the twentieth century.

She has skilfully navigated the difficulties posed by a work that mixes didacticism and moralising with elements of poetry (there is quite a lot of this in the book) and the colloquial tone of an orally-transmitted story. It’s probably the latter which helps persuade readers that Cho Ung is a flesh-and-blood human being as well as a military hero and moral exemplar. There is, for example, no love-interest or sex in a heroic saga such as Beowulf, and the eponymous hero, for all the magnificent poetry, is somehow rather one-dimensional or symbolic, a sense which is reinforced by the formal structure of the poetry. Cho Ung, on the other hand, is just as much a person as an embodiment, and this element is what makes the work exciting and readable.

The Tale of Cho Ung is splendid entertainment, bildungsroman and a serious commentary on human morality all rolled into one, which makes it a book for all kinds of readers.

John Butler recently retired as Associate Professor of Humanities at the University College of the North in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada, and has taught at universities in Canada, Nigeria and Japan. He specializes in early modern travel-literature (especially Asian travel) and seventeenth-century intellectual history. His books include an edition of Sir Thomas Herbert’s Travels in Africa, Persia and Asia the Great (2012) and most recently an edition of Sir Paul Rycaut's Present State of the Ottoman Empire (1667) and a book of essays, Off the Beaten Track: Essays on Unknown Travel Writers.


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Arun Kundnani: The West’s Islamophobia is only helping the ‘Islamic State’

"The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger." - Arun Kundnani. Image: Al Jazeera

As Easter is celebrated by Christians across the world this weekend, Arun Kundnani reflects on the “global war on terror”, the Brussels outrage, the West’s “double standard” on terrorism and religious intolerance.

The “war on terror” was supposed to contain violence, but the whole world is a battlefield now.

The promise of the “global war on terror” was that “it was better to fight them there than here.” That promise brought mass violence to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Yemen and Somalia — in the name of peace in the West.

That formula has clearly failed. Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels come on the heels of similar incidents in Grand-Bassam, Ivory CoastMaiduguri, NigeriaIstanbulBeirutParis; and Bamako, Mali, all in the last six months. Rather than containing violence, the war on terror turned the whole world into a battlefield.

We should not be surprised. Violence inflicted abroad always comes home in some form. Last year, the U.S. military dropped 22,110 bombs on Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon says these bombs “likely” killed only six civilians, along with “at least” 25,000 Islamic State fighters.

The true number of civilian deaths, though, is likely to be in the thousands as well.

War on terror kills more civilians
Indeed, we know that the war on terror kills more civilians than terrorism does. But we tolerate this because it is “their” civilians being killed in places we imagine to be too far away to matter. There is no social media hashtag to commemorate these deaths; no news channel tells their stories.

Because we pay little attention to the effects of our violence in the places we bomb, it appears that terrorism comes out of the blue. When it does happen, then, the only way we can make sense of it is by laying the blame on Islamic culture.

When opinion polls find that most Muslims think Westerners are selfish, immoral and violent, we have no idea of the real causes. And so we assume such opinions must be an expression of their culture rather than our politics.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have exploited these reactions with their appeals to Islamophobia. But most liberals also assume that religious extremism is the root cause of terrorism.

President Obama, for example, has spoken of “a violent, radical, fanatical, nihilistic interpretation of Islam by a faction — a tiny faction — within the Muslim community that is our enemy, and that has to be defeated.”

Based on this assumption, think-tanks, intelligence agencies and academic departments linked to the national security apparatus have spent millions of dollars since 9/11 conducting research on radicalisation. They hoped to find a correlation between having extremist religious ideas, however defined, and involvement in terrorism.

In fact, no such correlation exists, as empirical evidence demonstrates — witness the European Islamic State volunteers who arrive in Syria with copies of “Islam for Dummies” or the alleged leader of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was reported to have drunk whisky and smoked cannabis.

‘Radicalisation’ models
But this has not stopped national security agencies, such as the FBI, from using radicalisation models that assume devout religious beliefs are an indicator of potential terrorism.

The process of radicalication is easily understood if we imagine how we would respond to a foreign government dropping 22,000 bombs on us. Large numbers of patriots would be volunteering to fight the perpetrators. And nationalist and religious ideologies would compete with each other to lead that movement and give its adherents a sense of purpose.

Similarly, the Islamic State does not primarily recruit through theological arguments but through a militarised identity politics. It says there is a global war between the West and Islam, a heroic struggle, with truth and justice on one side and lies, depravity and corruption on the other. It shows images of innocents victimised and battles gloriously waged.

In other words, it recruits in the same way that any other armed group recruits, including the US military.

That means that when we also deploy our own militarised identity politics to narrate our response to terrorism, we inadvertently reinforce the Islamic State’s message to its potential recruits. When British Prime Minister David Cameron talks about a “generational struggle” between Western values and Islamic extremism, he is assisting the militants’ own propaganda.

When French President François Hollande talks of “a war which will be pitiless,” he is doing the same.

Utopian and apocalyptic vision
What is distinctive about the Islamic State’s message is that it also offers a utopian and apocalyptic vision of an alternative society in the making. The reality of that alternative is, of course, oppression of womenenslavement of minorities and hatred of freedom.

But the message works, to some extent, because it claims to be an answer to real problems of poverty, authoritarian regimes and Western aggression. Significantly, it thrives in environments where other radical alternatives to a discredited status quo have been suppressed by government repression.

What’s corrupting the Islamic State’s volunteers is not ideology but by the end of ideology: they have grown up in an era with no alternatives to capitalist globalisation. The organisation has gained support, in part, because the Arab revolutions of 2011 were defeated, in many cases by regimes allied with and funded by the US.

War creates terrorism
After 14 years of the “war on terror,” we are no closer to achieving peace. The fault does not lie with any one administration but with the assumption that war can defeat terrorism. The lesson of the Islamic State is that war creates terrorism.

After all, the organisation was born in the chaos and carnage that followed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Russia and Iran have also played their role, propping up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime — responsible for far more civilian deaths than the Islamic State — and prolonging the war in Syria that enables the militant group to thrive.

Meanwhile, the alliances that we consider crucial to the war on terror have worked in the Islamic State’s favor. The group’s sectarianism and funding have come from the Saudi and Gulf ruling elites, the West’s closest regional allies after Israel.

And the groups that have been most effective in fighting the Islamic State — the Kurdish militia — are designated as terrorists by Western governments because they are considered threats to our ally Turkey.

The incoherence of our response to the Islamic State stems from our Islamophobia. Because we believe religious extremism is the underlying problem, we prop up Arab dictatorships that we think can help us contain this danger.

Paradoxically, we support the very regimes that have enabled the Islamic State’s rise, such as the Saudis, the most reactionary influence in the region.

With our airstrikes, we continue the cycle of violence and reinforce the militants’ narrative of a war by the West against Islam. Then, to top it all off, we turn away the refugees, whom we should be empowering to help transform the region.

If we want to avoid another 14 years of failure, we need to try something else — and first, we need to radically rethink what we’ve been doing.

Arun Kundnani writes about race, Islamophobia, political violence, and surveillance. His latest book The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic War on Terror was published by Verso Books in March 2014. Born and bred in London, he moved to New York in 2010 on a fellowship with the Open Society Foundations and now lives in Harlem. He is the author of The End of Tolerance: racism in 21st century Britain, which was selected as a New Statesman book of the year in 2007. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he was miseducated at Cambridge University, holds a PhD from London Metropolitan University, and teaches at New York University. This article first appeared on the Washington Post website.

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Box 5

Contains 1 Collection or Record:

Balloon flights, 1961 January-March

 File — Box: 5, Folder: 139
Identifier: Folder 139
Scope and Contents The Gordon Newkirk Papers document the work of Dr. Newkirk as an astrophysicist and director of the High Altitude Observatory. This collection contains correspondence, data, photocopies, photographs, publications, reports, lectures, research materials, maps, and manuscripts.


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Interstellar Comet Borisov Looks Weirdly Familiar

The gas cyanogen has been detected in 2I/Borisov’s coma—a historic detection of a gas commonly found in regular comets.

Artist’s impression of a cometary nucleus. [ESA]

It’s official, the solar system is playing host to its second confirmed interstellar visitor only two years after the strangely-shaped `Oumuamua was spotted receding into interstellar expanse. While `Oumuamua was historic in that it was the first confirmed interstellar comet to be discovered, according to a new study (which has yet to be peer reviewed), this newest interstellar vagabond is potentially more significant:

“For the first time we are able to accurately measure what an interstellar visitor is made of, and compare it with our own solar system,” said Alan Fitzsimmons of the Astrophysics Research Center, Queen’s University Belfast, in a statement.

So, why are astronomers so excited about 2I/Borisov?

A (Cometary) Star Is Born

In late August, the comet was discovered by Gennady Borisov, an amateur astronomer in Crimea, and initially designated “C/2019 Q4” because, well, it looked like a regular comet. It was only after repeated observations by Borisov, and confirmed by other amateur and professional astronomers, that the object’s path and speed through the solar system could be realized. It turned out to be traveling fast.

Like, really, really fast.

Clocked at a breakneck pace of 93,000 miles per hour (150,000 kilometers per hour), astronomers realized that C/2019 Q4 was a special kind of comet. While it was found to possess the characteristics of a regular comet (it has a faint coma and tail) there is no way that it’s gravitationally bound to our Sun. Its trajectory is hyperbolic. In other words, it didn’t originate in our solar system—it’s an alien visitor.

This simple animation depicts the comets path through our neighborhood; there’s little ambiguity in the fact that it doesn’t intend to hang around for very long:

With only a slight tug by our Sun’s gravity, the interstellar visit will careen out of the solar system in a few months. [NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Last week, these factors all culminated in the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially classifying C/2019 Q4 as the second unambiguous interstellar comet discovery to date. It was therefore reclassified as “2I/Borisov” (1I/`Oumuamua being the first, of course). It’s thought interstellar junk passes through our solar system all the time, but only two comets (to date) have been confirmed to have an interstellar origin, suggesting our observational techniques are improving.

Now, the really neat thing about 2I/Borisov is that it’s a lot more active than `Oumuamua; the latter produced very little in the way of a discernible coma or tail after its discovery. Borisov, however, is being far more generous, already allowing astronomers to grab a crude spectroscopic snapshot of the gases being vented into space.

A Mysterious Interstellar Time Capsule

After being thwarted by the glare of the Sun on Sept. 13, an international team of astronomers was able to use the William Herschel Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands in the morning of Sept. 20 to measure the light that was being scattered off the gases in its tenuous coma. Follow-up spectral analysis by the TRAPPIST-North telescope in Morocco was also used.

Measuring the spectrum of Borisov allows us to understand the chemical composition of the ices that are fizzing into space as they are slightly heated by our Sun’s radiation via a process known as sublimation. And this is profoundly awesome.

To capture the spectra of any comet reveals the chemicals it contained when it formed billions of years ago. In our solar system, comets are considered to be icy time capsules; they formed from the solar nebula when the Sun was a proto-star and the planets were just starting to accrete from the surrounding protoplanetary disk of ancient debris. To see the chemicals contained within the vapor of these fizzing “dirty snowballs” gives us a five-billion-year-old glimpse of what the solar nebula and its system of baby planets would have contained.

2I/Borisov as imaged by the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii. [GEMINI OBSERVATORY/NSF/AURA/INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL UNION]

Borisov wasn’t formed in our solar nebula, however, it was formed from the nebula of a distant, unknown star of unknown age. We have little idea as to where or when it originated (though there’s little doubt that astronomers will use data from the European Gaia space telescope to try to figure out a rough estimate, as they did with `Oumuamua).

Surprisingly Familiar

While previous observations of the comet’s nucleus have revealed a reddish tinge that is similar to the long-period comets that originate from our solar system’s Oort Cloud (such as Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake), the new study has been able to identify another familiar trait: its venting gases contain cyanogen. This chemical is a simple, yet toxic molecule containing one carbon atom and a nitrogen atom (CN). Cyanogen is commonly found in regular comets born in the solar system.

The researchers were also able to make an estimate of the ratio of the dust to gas that is being blasted from the comet’s nucleus and, you guessed it, it is roughly in agreement to what you’d expect a regular comet to generate.

All of these findings point to an unexpected conclusion, as the researchers highlight in their paper: “If it were not for its interstellar nature, our current data shows that 2I/Borisov would appear as a rather unremarkable comet in terms of activity and coma composition.” In other words, if it wasn’t for its extreme speed, 2I/Borisev would look like a regular comet from our solar system.

Does this mean all comets from any star system have similar compositions? That doesn’t seem possible, considering we know other stars and their associated nebulae their comets would have formed from contain different chemicals to our own. It could just mean that Comet Borisov was ejected from a nearby star that formed in the same stellar nursery as our Sun five billion years ago and should therefore contain approximately the same chemicals. But for now, it’s too early to say.

Obviously, more work needs to be done and, fortunately, we have time. The comet will reach perihelion (point of closest approach to the Sun) in early December, and astronomers are predicting maximum nucleus activity in December and January before it starts to recede into the interstellar night.

So, watch this space.

How Gaia Is Already Shaping Our Interstellar Adventures

The space telescope has refined the stellar flybys of the Voyager and Pioneer probes—how might it help us chart our way to the stars in the future?

The Gaia space telescope [ESA]

When looking up on a starry night, it can be difficult to comprehend that those stars are not fixed in the sky. Sure, on timescales of a human lifetime, or even the entirety of human history, the stars don’t appear to move too much. But look over longer timescales—tens of thousands, to millions of years—and it becomes clear that the stars in the sky are in motion. This means the constellations we see today will be misshapen (or even non-existent!) in a few hundred thousand years’ time.

This poses an interesting question: If humanity were to send a spacecraft on an interstellar mission—an endeavor that could take thousands of years, depending on how ambitious the target—aiming it directly at a distant star would be a mistake. Depending on how far away that star is, by the time the spacecraft reaches its target, the star could have moved a few light-years away. This is why precision astrometry—the astronomical measurement of a star’s position, speed and direction of motion—will be needed to predict where a target star will be, and not where it currently is, when our future interstellar mission gets there.

To test this, we don’t need to wait until humanity has the means to build a starship, however. We have a bunch of interstellar probes that have already started their epic sojourns into the galaxy.

Interstellar Interlopers

Earlier this year, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft departed the Sun’s sphere of influence and became humanity’s second interstellar mission, six years after its twin, Voyager 1, made history to become the first human-made object to drift into the space between the stars. Both Voyagers are still transmitting telemetry to this day, over 40 years since their launch. Another two spacecraft, the older Pioneer 10 and 11 missions, are also on their way to interstellar space, but they stopped transmitting decades ago. A newcomer, NASA’s New Horizons mission, will also become an interstellar mission in the future, but it has yet to finish its Kuiper belt explorations and still has fuel to make course corrections, so predictions of its stellar encounters will remain unknown for some time.

Both Voyager 1 and 2 have left the Sun’s heliosphere to become humanity’s first interstellar missions [NASA]

Having explored the outer planets in the 1970’s and 80’s, the Voyagers and Pioneers barreled on, revealing stunning science from the outer solar system. In the case of Voyager 1 and 2, when each breached the heliopause (the invisible boundary that demarks the limit of the Sun’s magnetic bubble, between the heliosphere and interstellar medium), they gave us a profound opportunity to experience this distant alien environment, using their dwindling number of instruments to measure particle counts and magnetic orientation.

But where are our intrepid interstellar interlopers going now? With the help of precision astrometry of local stars observed by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, two researchers have taken a peek into the future, seeing which star systems the spacecraft will drift past in the next few hundred thousand to millions of years.

Previously, astronomers have been able to combine the spacecrafts’ trajectory with stellar data to see which stars they will fly past, but in the wake of the Gaia Data Release 2 (GDR2) last year, an unprecedented trove of information has been made available for millions of stars in the local galaxy, providing the most precise “road map” yet of those stars the Voyagers and Pioneers will encounter.

“[Gaia has measured] the positions and space velocities of nearby stars more precisely than before and so has more precisely characterized the encounters with stars we already knew about,” says astronomer Coryn Bailer-Jones, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

Close Encounters of the Voyager Kind

Bailer-Jones and colleague Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., published their study in Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society, adding another layer of understanding about where our spacecraft, and the stars they’ll encounter, are going. Although their work confirms previous estimates of some stellar close encounters, Bailer-Jones tells that there have been some surprises in their calculations—including encounters that have not been identified before.

For example, the star Gliese 445 (in the constellation of Camelopardalis, close to Polaris) is often quoted as being the closest encounter for Voyager 1, in approximately 40,000 years. But with the help of Gaia, which is giving an extra layer of precision for stars further afield, the researchers found that the spacecraft will come much closer to another star, called TYC 3135-52-1, in 302,700 years.

“Voyager 1 will pass just 0.30 parsecs [nearly one light-year] from that star and thus may penetrate its Oort cloud, if it has one,” he says.

This is interesting. Keep in mind that the Voyager and Pioneer spacecraft include the famous Golden Records and plaques (respectively), revealing the location, form, and culture of a civilization living on a planet called “Earth.” For an alien intelligence to stumble across one of our long-dead spacecraft in the distant future, the closer the stellar encounter the better (after all, the likelihood of stumbling across a tiny spacecraft in the vast interstellar expanse would be infinitesimally small). Passing within one light-year of TYC 3135-52-1 is still quite distant (for instance, we currently have no way of detecting something as dinky as a Voyager-size probe zooming through the solar system’s Oort Cloud), but who knows what the hypothetical aliens in TYC 3135-52-1 are capable of detecting from their home world?

The Pioneer plaque is attached to the spacecrafts’ antenna support struts, behind Pioneer 10 and 11’s dish antennae, shielding the plaques from erosion by interstellar dust [NASA]

Another interesting thought is that these Gaia observations can help astronomers find stars that are currently very far away, but now we know their speed and direction of travel, some of those stars will be in our cosmic backyard in the distant future.

“What our study also found, for the first time, is some stars that are currently quite distant from the Sun will nonetheless come very close to one of the spacecraft within the next few million years,” says Bailer-Jones. “For example, the star Gaia DR2 2091429484365218432 is currently 159.5 parsecs [520 light-years] from the Sun (and thus from Voyager 1), but Voyager 1 will pass within 0.39 parsecs [1.3 light-years] of it in 3.4 million years from now.”

In some cases, given unlimited time, you may not have to go to a star, the star will come to you!

Our Interstellar Future?

While pinpointing the various stellar encounters for our first interstellar probes is interesting, the observations being made by Gaia will be important for when humanity develops the technology to make a dedicated effort to travel to the stars.

“It will be essential to have extremely precise astrometry of any target star,” explains Bailer-Jones. “We must also measure its velocity and its acceleration precisely, because these affect where the star will be when the spacecraft arrives.”

Although this scenario may seem a long way off, any precision astrometry we do now will build our knowledge of the local stellar population and boost the “legacy value” of Gaia’s observations, he adds.

“Once a target star has been selected, we would want to make a dedicated campaign to measure its position and velocity even more precisely, but to determine the accelerations we need data measured at many time points over long periods (at least tens of years), so Gaia data will continue to be invaluable in the future,” Bailer-Jones concludes.

“Even now, astrometry from the previous Hipparcos mission—or even from surveys from decades ago or photometric plates 100 years ago!—are important for this.”

An artist’s impression of the Icarus Interstellar probe, a concept for a fusion-powered, un-crewed starship that may be used to travel to the stars [Icarus Interstellar/Adrian Mann]

Update (May 23): One of the reasons why I focused on the Voyager missions and not the Pioneers is because the latter stopped transmitting a long time ago. Another reason is because we already know Pioneer 10 doesn’t make it very far into interstellar space:

For more on how Gaia observations are being used, see my previous interview with Coryn on how these data were used to find the possible origins of ‘Oumuamua, the interstellar comet.

Coolest White Dwarf Is a Glimpse of What Happens Long After Our Sun Dies

All good things come to a cold and dusty end.

[NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger]

“So, what do you think happens after you die?”

The question was more of an accusation. The lady asking was sitting across from me at a Christmas dinner a friend of mine was hosting and the previous query was one about my religion. She wasn’t impressed by my response.

Granted, it probably wasn’t the ideal setting to say that I was an atheist, but I wasn’t going to lie either.

“Um, well…” I remember feeling vulnerable when I responded, especially as I’d only just met half the dozen people in the room, including the lady opposite, but I remember thinking: stick with what you know, Ian. So, I continued: “When I’m dead, all the elements from my body will remain on Earth,” — I didn’t want to go into much detail about my real plan of having my remains blended up into a jar and then launched into space (more on that in a future post, possibly) — “and those elements will get cycled through the biosphere through various biological, chemical and physical processes for billions of years. Eventually, however, all good things must come to an end and the sun will run out of fuel, ballooning into a huge red giant star, leaving what is known as a white dwarf in its wake.” (By her glazed look, I could tell she regretted asking, but I continued.) “If, and it’s a big IF, the Earth survives this phase of stellar death, our planet might be hurled out of the solar system. Or, and this is my favorite scenario,” — I’d hit my stride and everyone else seemed to be entertained — “it might careen inward, toward the now tiny white dwarf sun, where Earth will be ripped to sheds under powerful tidal forces, sending all the rocks, dust, and the elements that used to be my body, raining down onto the white dwarf.”

This is an abridged version. I also went into some white dwarf science, why planetary nebulae are cool, and how our sun as a white dwarf would stand as a monument to the once great solar system that will be gone five billion years from now. The recycled elements from my long-gone body could eventually rain down onto the atmosphere of a newborn white dwarf star — pretty cool if you ask me. This might be more of a cautionary tail about inviting an atheist astrophysicist to religious celebrations, but I feel my tabletop TED talk was good value for money. And besides, by turning that inevitable “what religion are you?” question into a scientific one, I hadn’t gotten bogged down with justifying why I’m an atheist — a conversation that, in my experience, never works out well over dinner.

So, why am I remembering that fun evening many years ago? Well, today, there’s some cool white dwarf news. And I love white dwarf news, especially if it’s about dusty white dwarfs. Because dusty white dwarfs are a reminder that nothing lasts forever, not even our beautiful 5-billion-year-old solar system.

One Cool Dwarf

A citizen scientist working on the NASA-led “Backyard Worlds: Planet 9” project has discovered the coldest and oldest white dwarf ever found. The project’s aim is to seek out as-yet-to-be-discovered worlds beyond the orbit of Neptune (re: “Planet Nine” and beyond). Through the analysis of infrared data collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE (inspired by data from the European Gaia mission), Melina Thévenot was looking for local brown dwarfs — failed stars that lack the mass to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores, but pump out enough infrared radiation to be detected. In the observations, Thévenot spied what she thought was bad data, but with the help of WISE, she found not a nearby brown dwarf, but a white dwarf that was brighter and further away. After sharing her discovery with the Backyard Worlds team, astronomers at the W. M. Keck Observatory confirmed that not only was that white dwarf lowest temperature specimen yet found, it was also very dusty. In fact, it’s thought that the white dwarf, designated LSPM J0207+3331, has multiple dusty rings. Its discovery, however, is something of a conundrum and the researchers think it may challenge planetary models.

“This white dwarf is so old that whatever process is feeding material into its rings must operate on billion-year timescales,” said astronomer John Debes, at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, in a NASA statement. “Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve.”

Interesting side note: It was Debes who first got me excited about dusty white dwarfs when I met him at the 2009 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, Calif. You can read my enthusiastic Universe Today article I wrote on the topic here.

After deducing the tiny Earth-sized star’s cool temperature — 10,500 degrees Fahrenheit (5,800 degrees Celsius) — the researchers estimate that the white dwarf is approximately 3-billion years old. The infrared signal suggests a copious quantity of dust is present, which is a bit weird. As I alluded to in my tabletop TED talk, after a sun-like star runs out of fuel and puffs up into a red giant, it will leave a shiny white dwarf surrounded by a planetary nebula in its wake. Should any mangled planet, asteroid or comet that survived the red giant phase stray too close to that white dwarf, it’ll get shredded. So, it’s poignant when astronomers find dusty white dwarfs; it means those star systems used to have some kind of planetary system, but the white dwarf is in the process of destroying it. That is the inevitable demise of our solar system in 5 billion years time. But to find a 3-billion-year-old specimen with a ring system doesn’t make a whole lot of sense — the white dwarf had plenty of time to consume all that dusty debris by now, a process, according to Debes, that should only take 100 million years to complete.

Debes, who led the study published in The Astrophysical Journal on Feb. 19, and his team, including discoverer and co-author Thévenot, has some idea as to what might be going on, but more research is needed. One hypothesis is that J0207’s dusty ring is composed of multiple rings with two distinct components, one thin ring just at the edge of where the star is breaking up a belt of asteroids and a wider ring closer to the white dwarf. It’s hoped that follow-up observations by the next generation of space telescopes, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), will be able to deduce what those rings are made of, thus helping astronomers understand the evolution of these ancient star systems.

Besides being the ultimate way to gain perspective on our tiny existence (and an excellent topic for an awkward dinner conversation), this research underpins a powerful way in which citizen scientists are shaping space science, particularly projects that require many human brains to process vast datasets.

“That is a really motivating aspect of the search,” said Thévenot, who is one of more than 150,000 volunteers who works on Backyard Worlds. “The researchers will move their telescopes to look at worlds you have discovered. What I especially enjoy, though, is the interaction with the awesome research team. Everyone is very kind, and they are always trying to make the best out of our discoveries.”

The Solar System Just Had an Interstellar Visitor. Now It’s Gone

Hello, goodbye interstellar comet. The hyperbolic orbit of Comet C/2017 C1 as plotted by JPL’s Small-Body Database Browser (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Update: At original time of writing, C/2017 U1 was assumed to be a comet. But Followup observations by the Very Large Telescope in Chile on Oct. 25 found no trace of cometary activity. The object’s name has now been officially changed to A/2017 U1 as it is more likely an interstellar asteroid, not a comet.

Astronomers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope in Maui may have discovered an alien comet.

Comets and asteroids usually originate from the outermost reaches of the solar system — they’re the ancient rocky, icy debris left over from the formation of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.

However, astronomers have long speculated that comets and asteroids originating from other stars might escape their stars, traverse interstellar distances and occasionally pay our solar system a visit. And looking at C/2017 U1’s extreme hyperbolic trajectory, it looks very likely it’s not from around these parts.

“If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet,” said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC). A preliminary study of C/2017 U1 was published earlier today. (Since this statement, followup observations have indicated that the object might be an asteroid and not a comet.)

According to Sky & Telescope, the object entered the solar system at the extreme speed of 16 miles (26 kilometers) per second, meaning that it is capable of traveling a distance of 850 light-years over 10 million years, a comparatively short period in cosmic timescales.

Spotted on Oct. 18 as a very dim 20th magnitude object, astronomers calculated its trajectory and realized that it was departing the solar system after surviving a close encounter with the sun on Sept. 9, coming within 23.4 million miles (0.25 AU). Comets would vaporize at that distance from the sun, but as C/2017 U1’s speed is so extreme, it didn’t have time to heat up.

“It went past the sun really fast and may not have had time to heat up enough to break apart,” said dynamicist Bill Gray. Gray estimates that the comet is approximately 160 meters wide with a surface reflectivity of 10 percent.

But probably the coolest factor about this discovery is the possible origin of C/2017 U1. After calculating the direction at which the comet entered the solar system, it appears to have come from the constellation of Lyra and not so far from the star Vega. For science fiction fans this holds special meaning — that’s the star system where the SETI transmission originated in the Jodie Foster movie Contact.

For more on this neat discovery, check out the Sky & Telescope article.

Newborn Star Found Growing Inside Magnetic Nest of Chaos

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that stars form in extremely powerful and ordered magnetic fields. But “conventional,” our universe is not (as Yoda might say).

In a new and fascinating study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters and carried out by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, a star some 1,400 light-years away in the Serpens star-forming region had its magnetic field gauged.

The star, called Ser-emb 8, is embedded inside the magnetic field passing through the molecular cloud it was born in. As the surrounding dust aligns itself with the direction of these magnetic field lines, ALMA is able to make precise measurements of the polarization of the emissions produced by this dust. From these incredibly sensitive measurements, a map of the polarization of light could be created, providing a view of the magnetic nest the star was born in.

Texture represents the magnetic field orientation in the region surrounding the Ser-emb 8 protostar, as measured by ALMA. The gray region is the millimeter wavelength dust emission. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); P. Mocz, C. Hull, CfA

And this nest is an unexpected one; it’s a turbulent region lacking the strong and ordered magnetism that would normally be predicted to be in the immediate vicinity of Ser-emb 8. Previous studies have shown newborn stars to possess powerful magnetic fields that take on an “hourglass” shape, extending from the protostar and reaching light-years into space. Ser-emb 8, however, is different.

“Before now, we didn’t know if all stars formed in regions that were controlled by strong magnetic fields. Using ALMA, we found our answer,” said astronomer Charles L. H. “Chat” Hull, at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. “We can now study magnetic fields in star-forming clouds from the broadest of scales all the way down to the forming star itself. This is exciting because it may mean stars can emerge from a wider range of conditions than we once thought.”

By comparing these observations with computer simulations, an insightful view of the earliest magnetic environment surrounding a young star has been created.

“Our observations show that the importance of the magnetic field in star formation can vary widely from star to star,” added Hull in a statement. “This protostar seems to have formed in a weakly magnetized environment dominated by turbulence, while previous observations show sources that clearly formed in strongly magnetized environments. Future studies will reveal how common each scenario is.”

Hull and his team think that ALMA has witnessed a phase of star formation before powerful magnetic fields are generated by the young star, wiping out any trace of this pristine magnetic environment passing through the star forming region.

‘Failed’ Star Rapidly Orbits ‘Dead’ Star in Weird Stellar Pairing

The galaxy may be filled with weird stellar wonders, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a binary system stranger than WD1202-024.

First thought to be an isolated white dwarf star approximately 40% the mass of our sun, astronomers studying observational data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope realized the stellar husk has company. In an extremely fast 71-minute orbit, the star has a brown dwarf, 67 times the mass of Jupiter, in tow — an unprecedented find.

White dwarfs are formed after sun-like stars run out of fuel and die. This will be the fate of our sun in about five billion years time, after it becomes depleted of hydrogen in its core and puffs-up into a red giant. Shedding its outer layers after a period of violent stellar turmoil, a planetary nebula will form with a tiny mass of degenerate matter — a white dwarf — in its center. Earth would be toast long before the sun turns into a red giant, however.

But in the case of WD1202-024, it seems that when it was a young star (before it passed through its final red giant phase), it had a brown dwarf in orbit.

Commonly known as “failed stars,” brown dwarfs are not massive enough to sustain sufficient fusion in their cores to spark the formation of a star. But they’re too massive to be called planets as they possess the internal circulation of material that is more familiar to stars (so with that in mind, I like to refer to brown dwarfs as “overachieving planets”). They are the bridge between stars and planets and fascinating objects in their own right.

But the brown dwarf in the WD1202 binary couldn’t have formed with only a 71-minute orbit around the white dwarf; it would have evolved further away. So what happened? After carrying out computer simulations of the system, the international team of researchers found a possible answer.

“It is similar to an egg-beater effect,” said astronomer Lorne Nelson, of Bishop’s University, Canada, during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas on June 6th. “The brown dwarf spirals in towards the center of the red giant and causes most of the mass of the red giant to be lifted off of the core and to be expelled. The result is a brown dwarf in an extraordinarily tight, short-period orbit with the hot helium core of the giant. That core then cools and becomes the white dwarf that we observe today.”

In the future, the researchers hypothesize, the brown dwarf will continue to orbit the white dwarf until energy is depleted from the system via gravitational waves. In less than 250 million years, the orbital distance will be so small that the extreme tidal forces exerted by the white dwarf will start to drag brown dwarf material into the star, cannibalizing it.

This will turn WD1202 into a cataclysmic variable (CV), causing its brightness to flicker as the brown dwarf material is extruded into an accretion disk orbiting the white dwarf.

What a way to go.

Exoplanets Are Sacrificing Moons to Their White Dwarf Overlords

An artist’s impression of a planet, comet and debris field surrounding a white dwarf star (NASA/ESA)

As if paying tribute, exoplanets orbiting white dwarfs appear to be throwing their exomoons into hot atmospheres of these stellar husks.

This fascinating conclusion comes from a recent study into white dwarf stars that appear to have atmospheres that are “polluted” with rocky debris.

A white dwarf forms after a sun-like star runs out of hydrogen fuel and starts to burn heavier and heavier elements in its core. When this happens, the star bloats into a red giant, beginning the end of its main sequence life. After the red giant phase, and the star’s outer layers have been violently ripped away by powerful stellar winds, a small bright mass of degenerate matter (the white dwarf) and a wispy planetary nebula are left behind.

But what of the planetary system that used to orbit the star? Well, assuming they weren’t so close to the dying star that they were completely incinerated, any exoplanets remaining in orbit around a white dwarf have an uncertain future. Models predict that dynamical chaos will ensue and gravitational instabilities will be the norm. Exoplanets will shift in their orbits, some might even be flung clear of the star system all together. One thing is for sure, however, the tidal shear created by the compact white dwarf will be extreme, and should anything stray too close, it will be ripped to shreds. Asteroids will be pulverized, comets will fall and even planets will crumble.

Stray too close to a white dwarf and tidal shear will rip you to shreds (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Now, in a science update based on research published late last year in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, astronomers of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have completed a series of simulations of white dwarf systems in an attempt to better understand where the “pollution” in these tiny stars’ atmospheres comes from.

To explain the quantities observed, the researchers think that not only is it debris from asteroids and comets, but the gravitational instabilities that throw the system into chaos are booting any moons — so-called exomoons — out of their orbits around exoplanets, causing them to careen into the white dwarfs.

The simulations also suggest that as the moons meander around the inner star system and fall toward the star, their gravities scramble to orbits of more asteroids and comets, boosting the around of material falling into the star’s atmosphere.

So there you have it, planets, should your star turn into a white dwarf (as our sun will in a few billion years), keep your moons close — your new stellar overlord will be asking for a sacrifice in no time.

ALMA Reveals the True Nature of Hubble’s Enigmatic Ghost Spiral

Appearing as a ghostly apparition in deep space, the LL Pegasi spiral nebula signals the death of a star — and the world’s most powerful radio observatory has delved into its deeper meaning.

Left: HST image of LL Pegasi publicized in 2010. Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai. Right: ALMA image of LL Pegasi. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) / Hyosun Kim et al.

When the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the stunning LL Pegasi spiral for the first time, its ghostly appearance captivated the world.

Known to be an ancient, massive star, LL Pegasi is dying and shedding huge quantities of gas and dust into space. But this is no ordinary dying star, this is a binary system that is going out in style.

The concentric rings in the star system’s nebula are spiraling outwards, like the streams of water being ejected from a lawn sprinkler’s head. On initial inspection of the Hubble observation, it was assumed that the spiral must be caused by the near-circular orbit of two stars, one of which is generating the flood of gas. Judging by the symmetry of the rings, this system must be pointing roughly face-on, from our perspective.

Though these assumptions generally hold true, new follow-up observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) on the 5,000 meter-high Chajnantor plateau in Chile has added extra depth to the initial Hubble observations. Astronomers have used the incredible power of ALMA to see a pattern in the rings, revealing the complex orbital dynamics at play deep in the center of the spiral.

“It is exciting to see such a beautiful spiral-shell pattern in the sky. Our observations have revealed the exquisitely ordered three-dimensional geometry of this spiral-shell pattern, and we have produced a very satisfying theory to account for its details,” said Hyosun Kim, of the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan and lead researcher of this work.

Just as we read tree rings to understand the history of seasonal tree growth and climatic conditions, Kim’s team used the rings of LL Pegasi to learn about the nature of the binary star’s 800 year orbit. One of the key findings was the ALMA imaging of bifurcation in the rings; after comparing with theoretical models, they found that these features are an indicator that the central stars’ orbit is not circular — it’s in fact highly elliptical.

ALMA observation of the molecular gas around LL Pegasi. By comparing this gas distribution with theoretical simulations, the team concluded that the bifurcation of the spiral-shell pattern (indicated by a white box) is resulted from a highly elliptical binary system. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) / Hyosun Kim et al.

Probably most striking, however, was that Hubble was only able to image the 2D projection of what is in fact a 3D object, something that ALMA could investigate. By measuring the line-of-sight velocities of gas being ejected from the central star, ALMA was able to create a three-dimensional view of the nebula, with the help of numerical modeling. Watch the animation below:

“While the [Hubble Space Telescope] image shows us the beautiful spiral structure, it is a 2D projection of a 3D shape, which becomes fully revealed in the ALMA data,” added co-author Raghvendra Sahai, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.

This research is a showcase of the power of combining observations from different telescopes. Hubble was able to produce a dazzling (2D) picture of the side-on structure of LL Pegasi’s spirals, but ALMA’s precision measurements of gas outflow speed added (3D) depth, helping us “see” an otherwise hidden structure, while revealing the orbital dynamics of two distant stars.

A special thanks to Hyosun Kim for sending me the video of the LL Pegasi visualization!

Battlestar Galactica’s “Twelve Colonies of Kobol” Star System Found?

An image at radio wavelengths of a young stellar quadruplet. Credit: CfA/Nature/Pineda
An image at radio wavelengths of a young stellar quadruplet. Credit: CfA/Nature/Pineda

825 light-years away, in the constellation of Perseus, hides one protostar and three previously unseen gas concentrations that are undergoing gravitational collapse — basically embryos of soon-to-be baby stars. Found through the analysis of data from radio telescopes by astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), this tiny cluster of baby stars occupy a small volume only 10,000 AU across — meaning that they’d all easily fit within the confines of the boundaries of our solar system (yes, the Oort Cloud is the solar system’s outermost boundary).

This is exciting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, this little ‘stellar womb’ has given astronomers an opportunity to study the genesis of a multi-star system. Indeed, most stars in our galaxy belong to multi-star systems, whether that be binary or greater, and astronomers are currently trying to figure out whether they were born this way or whether, over time, stars jostled around and eventually became gravitationally bound. After analysis of the velocities of the protostar and stellar embryos, it appears that the masses are gravitationally interacting. In other words, it has the potential to mature into a quadruple star system in around 40,000 years, a minute amount of time in cosmic timescales. Although it is likely that the system will become unstable, possibly ejecting one or two of the stars in the process, it does provide observational evidence that multi-star systems can be born in a gravitational embrace.

A map of the Twelve Colonies via
A map of the Twelve Colonies via

But as I have a habit of linking astrophysical studies with science fiction imaginings, when I first saw this research, I immediately thought of the awesome re-imagined series’ Battlestar Galactica and Caprica.

Battlestar Galactica is set in the years following the Cylon attack on the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, which almost wiped out humanity in this far-flung part of the galaxy. The remaining survivors, headed by William Adama (Edward James Olmos), take to the stars in a fleet of ragtag spaceships in search of the fabled Earth. One of my favorite scifi storylines and favorite scfi TV shows. But I digress.

The Twelve Colonies consist of four stars — Helios Alpha, Helios Beta, Helios Delta and Helios Gamma — each with their own systems of planets, 12 in total, including capital world Caprica.

So that poses a question: Just because Battlestar Galactica imagines a quadruple star system (well, two binary systems in a mutual orbit), is it possible to have such a stable system of planets evolve in a multi-star system? Or are the gravitational interactions too complex for anything to coalesce and slot into stable orbits? Well, by understanding how multi-star systems evolve by finding examples like this embedded inside star forming molecular clouds, we may start to appreciate how common and how stable they are and whether accompanying planetary systems are a reality or something that will forever be confined to the Twelve Colonies.

READ MORE: Star Quadruplets Spied Growing Inside Stellar Womb (Discovery News)

Some Galaxies Die Young… Others Recycle

Some galaxies undergo a rapid star formation phase, losing stellar gases to intergalactic space, others choose to recycle, thereby extending their star forming lifespans.
Some galaxies undergo a rapid star formation phase, losing stellar gases to intergalactic space, others choose to recycle, thereby extending their star forming lifespans (NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI))

It sounds like an over-hyped public service announcement: If you don’t recycle, you’ll die a premature death.

But in the case of galaxies, according to three new Science papers based on Hubble Space Telescope data, this is a reality. Should a galaxy “go green,” reusing waste stellar gas contained within huge halos situated outside their visible disks, they will fuel future star-birth cycles, prolonging their lifespans.

Sadly for “starburst” galaxies — galaxies that undergo rapid star generation over very short time periods — they care little for recycling, resulting in an untimely death.

Using data from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), three teams studied 40 galaxies (including the Milky Way) and discovered vast halos of waste stellar gases. Contained within these spherical reservoirs — extending up to 450,000 light-years from their bright disks of stars — light elements such as hydrogen and helium were found to be laced with heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and neon. There’s only one place these heavy elements could have come from: fusion processes in the cores of stars and supernovae.

Interestingly, the quantity of heavy elements contained within the newly-discovered halos is similar to what is contained in the interstellar gases within the galaxies themselves.

“There’s as much heavy elements out in the halos of the galaxies as there is in their interstellar medium, that is what shocked us.” said Jason Tumlinson, an astronomer for the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., in an interview for my Discovery News article “Galaxies That Don’t Recycle Live Hard, Die Young.”

But these heavy elements are stored in halos outside the galaxies; how the heck did it get there?

According to the researchers, powerful stellar winds jetting into intergalactic space have been observed, transporting the heavy elements with them. But there’s a catch. If the outflow is too strong, waste stellar gases are ejected from the galaxies completely. Unfortunately for one sub-set of galaxies, powerful stellar outflows come naturally.

Starburst galaxies rapidly generate stars, ejecting speedy streams of stellar waste gas. Some of these streams have been clocked traveling at 2 million miles per hour, escaping from the galaxy forever. In the case of a starbust galaxy, a “recycling halo” cannot be re-supplied — future star birth is therefore killed off.

“We found the James Dean or Amy Winehouse of that population, you know, the galaxies that lived fast and died young,” Tumlinson pointed out. “(Todd) Tripp’s team studied that in their paper.”

“That paper used a galaxy that is known as a ‘post-star burst galaxy’ and its spectrum showed that it had a very robust star burst (phase),” he continued. “It was one of those live fast, die young galaxies.”

Although fascinating, one idea struck me the hardest. On asking Tumlinson to speculate on how galactic recycling of stellar material may impact us, he said:

“Your body is 70 percent water and every water molecule has an oxygen atom in it. The theorists say the recycling time (in the Milky Way’s halo) is approximately a billion years, so that means — potentially — that some of the material (oxygen) inside your body has cycled in and out of the galaxy ten times in the history of the galaxy. At least once, maybe up to ten times.”

As Carl Sagan famously said: “We’re made of star stuff;” perhaps this should be rephrased to: “We’re made of recycled star stuff.”


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The Spanish Fryar: Or the Double Discovery. Acted at the Theatre-Royal, By His Majesty's Servants

[DRYDEN, John]

Regular price $25.00 Sale

Publication Info

  • Publisher: Printed for J. Tonson
  • Edition: n/a
  • Date Published: 1734
  • Place Published: London
  • ISBN: n/a

  • Condition: Good
  • Signed: No
  • Dust Jacket: No
  • Jacket Condition: n/a
  • Details:
    94, [2] p. 17 cm. Disbound. Tear in title page, small hole and chipped corner on last page.

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Tag Archive for Auckland rug cleaning companies

Auckland Rug Cleaning Companies

Why Auckland Rug Cleaning Companies Are Better Than DIY

Cleaning your rugs is something that everyone needs to do at some point.  There are 2 options available for this and they are to hire a professional rug cleaning company or clean the rug yourself.  While many people assume that cleaning their rugs themselves will be better, there are a number of reasons why hiring one of the Auckland rug cleaning companies is better.

Saving Time

Auckland rug cleaning companiesMany people assume that cleaning their rugs themselves will save them time, but this is not actually true.  You will have to hire a DIY rug cleaner and learn how to use it.  This will take time and you might have to go over your rugs a number of times.  This is something that you will not have to worry about with professional rug cleaning companies.

Any of the professional Auckland rug cleaning companies will know how to use their machinery.  This means that they will be able to clean and sanitize your rugs much faster than you will be able to.

Saving Effort

A lot of people assume that you can simply hire a rug cleaning machine like Rug Doctor and get started.  This is not actually true because you will need to find a store that rents out these machines and then find the right cleanser.  The type of rug that you have will impact the cleaning products that you need to use.  If you use the incorrect cleaner on your rugs you could damage them and this could result in you needing to replace them.

When you hire a rug cleaning service, they will know which cleaner to use for your rug.  They will also be able to determine the fibre count of your rugs and which machine settings are needed.  Rug cleaning companies will generally have insurance that covers your expenses if they cause damage to your rugs while they are cleaning them.

You Will Save Money By Using One Of The Auckland Rug Cleaning Companies

rug cleaning auckland

Rework of other rug cleaning company’s poor job

The primary reason why people look at cleaning their rugs on their own is the costs.  These people assume that professional rug cleaning companies will cost more than hiring a rug cleaner.  This is not actually always the case and you need to consider this.  As the rug cleaning market is competitive, you should be able to find a cleaner which is within your budget.

Of course, you need to be careful when looking to save money with a rug cleaning company.  The cheapest companies will not always be the right one because they are cheap for a reason.  For example, one company, Go Green Carpet Cleaning, had to be called in to re-do the work of another rug cleaner who had done a poor job. The picture to the right shows the difference in quality.

Most rug cleaning companies will charge per room and you should get quotes from a number of companies before you make any decisions.  Once you have the estimates you will see that many of the companies will be cheaper than trying to clean the rugs yourself.

There are many reasons why rug cleaning companies are better than trying to clean your rugs yourself.  A professional company will know how to use their machinery and what cleaners they should be using.  They will also have the insurance to cover any damage done to your rugs.


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Legends of the Autobahn Cancelled for 2020

Legends of the Autobahn Cancelled For 2020,

But Will Return For 2021 Monterey Car Week

Monterey, C.A. (April 15, 2020) – Audi Club North America, BMW Car Club of America, and Mercedes-Benz Club of America who collectively host the annual Legends Of The Autobahn™ event presented by Michelin, today, announced the cancellation of this year’s show scheduled for Friday, August 14, in Monterey, California. However, participants and fans of the all-German marque Concours d’Elegance will be pleased to hear the event will return to the Monterey Car Week schedule in 2021.

Audi Club North America, Mercedes Benz Club of America, BMW Car Club of America, and the Club at Pasadera have worked in close partnership for the last eleven years to bring together our members, their cars, the local community, and attendees of Monterey’s famed Historic Car week.  The three clubs intend to do so for many more years to come, however we will only do so when it is safe for our guests and our members. While this decision was difficult to make, we believe it was the right one.

The show has run for ten consecutive years and become a must-see event on the Monterey Car Week schedule for all. Each year, the Concours d’Elegance draws over 400 registered cars and over 3,000 spectators that fill the fairways of The Club at Pasadera. In 2019, Legends Of The Autobahn™ was voted the number four car show in America by the USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice Poll.

Legends couldn’t have achieved such success and prominence without the support of many including our volunteers, members, attendees, fans, host venue, and sponsors. Although, this year’s event will not take place, we cannot go without specifically thanking our major sponsors who have shown incredible support including Michelin, XPEL, Hagerty, and Griot’s Garage. In addition, The Club at Pasadera, its membership, and the Pasadera community have been amazing hosts and we look forward to working with them again in 2021.

Plans are being made now for next year’s event and triumphant return to the Monterey peninsula. Further updates regarding the 2021 edition of Legends will be announced in late 2020 at www.legendsoftheautobahn.org.


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Download Kilts and Daggers Audiobook

Kilts and Daggers Audiobook, by Victoria Roberts Extended Sample Click for printable size audiobook cover
Author: Victoria Roberts Narrator: Justine Eyre Publisher: Tantor Format: Unabridged Audiobook Delivery: Instant Download Audio Length: Series: The Highland Spies Series Release Date: June 2015 ISBN: 9781494583576
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Ever since Lady Grace Walsingham discovered her uncle and sister are spies for the Crown, she has yearned for adventure. She's counting the days until she can leave barbaric Scotland behind, even if she must endure Highland captain Fagan Murray's company for weeks.

Fagan has a simple mission: escort the haughty Lady Grace back to England. But nothing is ever easy. The sharp-tongued woman needles him at every turn. But when a menacing threat follows them on their journey, Fagan's grudging tolerance for Grace turns to respect . . . and into a perilous attraction that could seal their fate. Download and start listening now!

Quotes & Awards

  • “In a classic story of disdain leading to love, Fagan and Grace’s banter strengthens their connection…Grace and Fagan make visiting the Highlands worth the trip.”

    Publishers Weekly

  • Grace and Fagan make visiting the Highlands worth the trip. Publishers Weekly
  • “Roberts continues to craft fast-moving, well-written plots populated by real-life characters, keeping readers in the story from beginning to satisfying conclusion.”

    RT Book Reviews (4 stars)

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About the Author

Victoria Roberts writes sexy, Scottish historical romances about kilted heroes and warriors from the past. Prior to ever picking up a single romance novel, she penned her first young adult novella at sixteen years old. Who knew her leather-studded motorcycle hero would trade in his ride and emerge as a kilt wearing Highlander wielding a broadsword? Victoria lives with her husband and their two beautiful children in western Pennsylvania.

About the Narrator

Justine Eyre is a classically trained actress who has narrated many audiobooks, earning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration and numerous Earphones Awards. She is multilingual and known for her great facility with accents. She has appeared on stage, with leading roles in King Lear and The Crucible, and has had starring roles in four films on the indie circuit. Her television credits include Two and a Half Men and Mad Men.


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Peekaboo Dress - Custom Order

This adorable dress is perfect for spring and summer. Layer it with a long sleeve tee and it's even cute for autumn! An adorably unique design that includes a tie back and a double layer skirt with a ruched skirt on one side, creates a one-of-a-kind, fun, yet girlie, outfit for your daughter.

Made with gorgeous quality cotton, this dress perfect for your little girl's wardrobe.  A very pretty dress to attend parties this summer!

All Aunty Bea's Designs items are handmade with love & care in northside of Brisbane, QLD.  Each garment is made especially for you, please allow approximately 28 days for your item to be made plus shipping time.   If you need your item for a particular date, please contact us to let us know so we can endeavor to meet your requirements.

Fabric pattern placement may vary from what is shown in the images.  Colours of fabrics may also vary slightly than what is shown in the photo.

Sizes available from 0000 to 8.

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Telstra Outage in Lower Cudgera, Tweed, State of New South Wales

Telstra offers mobile and landline communications services to the public and businesses, including mobile phone, mobile internet, and broadband internet.

 No problems detected at Telstra

Telstra problems in the last 24 hours in Lower Cudgera, State of New South Wales

Telstra Outage Chart in Lower Cudgera, Tweed, State of New South Wales 08/07/2020 21:00

At the moment, we haven't detected any problems at Telstra. Are you experiencing issues or an outage? Leave a message in the comments section!

Most Reported Problems:

  • Internet 75.87% Internet
  • Wi-fi 7.81% Wi-fi
  • E-mail 6.51% E-mail
  • Phone 6.25% Phone
  • Total Blackout 3.08% Total Blackout
  • TV .49% TV

Telstra in Lower Cudgera, State of New South Wales Comments

Tips? Frustrations? Share them here. Useful comments include a description of the problem, city and postal code.

Telstra Issues Reports

Latest outage, problems and issue reports in social media:
  • Teatreehollow Nicole Chapman (@Teatreehollow) reported

    @Telstra been trying for a week to speak to customer service about my account without luck. How do I actually speak to someone??

  • KateKatecornish CowboyKate (@KateKatecornish) reported

    @northcoasteels @BuchananBlake @Telstra Jump ship!! You’ll feel much better! We did and it’s the best thing we did in 2019. Seriously the time telstra has wasted of my life!! Worst service of anyone I’ve ever had any form of contract/payment with. I’ll never go back.

  • AngeandBarney AngelaBarney (@AngeandBarney) reported from Melbourne, State of Victoria

    @Telstra REALLY struggling with you guys right now. My husband and I both took half day off work yesterday and patiently waited for NBN to be connected between 12-5...NO ONE came! I was on the text chat from 1.30pm until 10pm...still no resolution!

  • DineshPMF1 Dinesh Piskala Mahadevan (@DineshPMF1) reported

    @Telstra Thanks Ollie for your response. In the service status page, it says “There are no confirmed interruptions in your area” for my address. I will let u know when it happens again. I can say the last one was the 3rd time in the last 1 month or so.

  • lutajobe MA & PA FARMERS 2.0 (@lutajobe) reported

    @Telstra pretty bad in a developed country. But we do vote for the National party. So we get what we vote for @PaulFletcherMP

  • samanthadick00 Samantha Dick (@samanthadick00) reported

    @AKunowski @Telstra I had similar issues getting through a few weeks ago. I was so annoyed I switched to @Optus instead. Much better customer service

  • althom01 Alex Thompson (@althom01) reported from Wangaratta, State of Victoria

    @AKunowski Telstra are crooks. Go to amaysim I did. Never looked back

  • northcoasteels Matt (@northcoasteels) reported

    @Telstra Nah I don’t make calls (does anybody) from my landline. It’s about the consent process. I will contact through the app today and likely be lodging a complaint with Fair Trading over the process.

  • AKunowski Ashlea Kunowski (@AKunowski) reported

    So much for all the support during this time @Telstra it’s impossible to get through to someone, and I’ve tried using the app and nobody has been in touch. Isn’t this a communication business?

  • NavyBlueGal 💧Bobbie T (@NavyBlueGal) reported

    @Telstra can you reply to my DM and I’m unable to get a response from anyone through the app. Customer Service is non existent


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Life at the Clubhouse changed drastically 3 weeks ago.   Today we are living in a time of uncertainty, social distancing and sheltering in place.  Thank God I have been able to stay connected to the Clubhouse community virtually and remotely.  I still get to participate in the work and work side by side with other members and staff. It seemed strange the first week but we hit the ground running and haven’t looked back.  We’ve ramped up our connectivity so that when we can physically return to the Clubhouse we will be stronger than ever.

I was seriously concerned with how I was going to fill my days while stuck in the house isolating with my parents.   I can’t even go to the grocery store anymore because they are both over the age of 70. This puts them at great risk as they are considered more vulnerable to the Coronavirus.  Happily, we are all doing well.

That being said, life is harder than ever right now.   To be frank with y’all, my anxiety had been extremely high because I was afraid my depression would worsen knowing I couldn’t go to the Clubhouse.  Regularly I would volunteer 3-4 days a week and frequently, all day. Thankfully, I have found that I’m keeping that same schedule remotely and virtually.  I was really concerned about having enough things to do but my days are packed! My morning starts with the 9:30 check in and I wrap things up around 4:30pm.  The most important aspect is keeping connectivity. I’ve spent some of my time calling members with staff. We’ve all worked hard! In the last 3 weeks we have made 560 calls) just checking in to see how folks are doing and giving them the information they need to stay connected.  I’ve been on virtual wellness walks, put together the Poetry portion of the Spring Newsletter, contacted donors thanking them for donating during Amplify Austin, data entry and more. I’ve also been able to attend daily meetings. Today via Zoom, a group of people met virtually with a group of folks from a clubhouse in Maine.  Being on Zoom meant we could all see each other’s faces! Boy have I missed seeing faces! Today I also attended the Ambassador Meeting (via Zoom), and our topic of discussion was the Texas Summit that some attended virtually last week. I’ve had very full days. Full days of laughter, work and progress. It’s been an exciting week!  You’ve got to join us so you can see Luke and John-Michael! You wouldn’t recognize them! They shaved their beards off! You can imagine that conversation around the dinner table has been filled with the stories from my day.

The best part of my day is the connection.  I don’t feel so alone. All of us are experiencing the same things living in such tough times.  I am feeling less anxious because I keep my therapy appointments and stay busy with the Clubhouse.  I wrap things up with the Clubhouse at 4:30 and then it’s me time. I treat the day like I’m back at work.   I hope you will join me. I promise you are missed and there is much work to be done. You are valued and we want you with us!  Let’s keep each other company during this surreal time. We all make a difference in each other’s lives.

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Get Paid Surfing The Net

We have collected a lot of useful information about Get Paid Surfing The Net. The links below you will find everything there is to know about Get Paid Surfing The Net on the Internet. Also on our site you will find a lot of other information about kitesurfing, wakeboarding, SUP and the like.

10 Sites Where You Can Get Paid for Browsing the Internet ...
    How getting paid to surf the web works Market researchers aim to understand the patterns and behaviors of people using the internet through their devices. This data is collected using an app that is installed on a user’s device (typically, on their cell phone or as a browser-add on their computer), and runs in the background.

    DesktopDollars is one of the best ways to get paid to surf the net. They will share 70% of the money they earn from advertisers with you based on the amount of time you and your referrals (6 tiers deep) are online. Once your account reaches $20 or more you will get paid. This program is available Worldwide.

How to Earn Money by Surfing Websites-Get Paid to Surf ...
    Apr 19, 2017 · Get paid to Surf works on a small Business Model known as “Pay to Surf (PTS)Program”. First You have to sign up for an PTS Company/Website. Then they will provide a small software (also known as a Viewbar) which is to be installed on your Computer.Then the ads that are displayed on the Websites are replaced by the Advertiser Company ads.

Get paid to surf, get paid to read e-mail -
    Getting paid to surf isn't a new concept on the Internet. During the dot com boom the Internet was rapid with companies promising riches on the web simply by surfing the Internet with an ad toolbar on your screen. Everyone hopped on the band wagon and starting to use and promote these paid for surf or paid to read e-mail programs.

We hope you found Get Paid Surfing The Net info you were searching for.

Kiteboarding is a wonderful sport and a fun pastime. Find all the information you need on our website and get started!

Related Kiteboarding Info


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Blood Ties

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Cover in category: 'Fiction' > 'Science Fiction'

2nd Place 2016
Blood Ties
Romance Fantasy New Adult, Paranormal, romance, werewolves & shifters, Science Fiction & Fantasy/Science Fiction/Genetic Engineering. Paranormal, Shifter, Romance. First of three books in the Blood Trilogy.

Keagen was tall, muscular, and stronger than most men were, although he wasn’t exactly a man. His genes were human DNA with a hint of animal, courtesy of Solgen Laboratories. It wasn’t common knowledge what the company did, and their labs were all in secret locations. Only their financial backers knew where they were. Who supported them was unclear. Possibly the government, private military organizations, or even wealthy dictators; no one knew. You would not find any documentation about it. It wasn’t legal what they were doing, that’s for sure.
Keagen tracked and hunted escapees and always caught his prey, but just one eluded him. Gabriel, a lycan.

K 3 4 G E N is Solgen Laboratories number one hunter. He’s genetically enhanced and has a high IQ, heightened senses, and thanks to lycan DNA, he is stronger and faster than any man. It’s taken him a year to find Solgen Labs most wanted escapee; Gabriel, a lycan, and K 3 4 G E N is finally bringing him in, but despite his one hundred percent retrieval rate, his title and life are about to expire.
The labs have created a new hunter, a female. G H 0 5 C T - She’s faster, stronger, and has a new genetic enhancement that gives her the edge. She’s a trained killer, and is eager to replace K 3 4 G E N, robbing him of his title and crown.
Feeling betrayed, K 3 4 G E N turns to his enemy, Gabriel. He hands Gabriel a file containing details of his sister, who was executed at the hands of Dr. Keller, the founder of Solgen Labs. Seeking an alliance, he offers to help Gabriel find out what happened to his sister.
Gabriel must make a choice; trust the hunter, or run and hide as he had done previously.

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