Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Strange Shapes in Space

The shapes of bubbles and clouds in outer space demonstrate that physics can do some pretty bizarre things on a giant scale. Take RCW 120, for example. The star-forming bubble, about 4,200 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius is the main subject of European Space Agency Picture. Radiation from a hot, massive star at the bubble's center is blasting gas and dust outward, and that's what has cleared out the space around the star. The shock wave from the central star compresses the material on the bubble's edge so much that still more stars are being squeezed into existence.


It's amazing what stars can do and create. Images from telescopes have shown us not even close to what all could be out there. Discoveries like this have led us to discovery more and more about how stars form and what they can create and become. It's scary to think of radiation and what it can do to us, but how its the building blocks of the universe pretty much. I think it's scary to even think how big stars can be and how they produce things like this.


http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/05/07/2297402.aspx

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