It's apparently a Cannibal CME. The sun threw a Coronal Mass Ejection at us, and a while later threw a faster one. The faster one eats and merges with the original one to become one huge one.

My twin loves of astronomy and horror films combine. Mmmm.

This makes me sad. I hope a new one can be built but they were having trouble even getting the funds to repair it along with everything else going on there. I remember watching something on PBS about this in the '80s and it and NASA had me hooked on all things space-related. I almost chose astronomy as my major in college, sorta wouldn't mind going back for it, space still intrigues me.

You had me at ...
"geometry, music, mathematics, astronomy ...the writing of music is a hybrid activity between something very technical and rule based and computational and also pure chance and randomness and intuition and those things colliding allow us to evoke emotions…"

Wait @harlequinn take a step back from the borders of advanced theoretical physics back to practical stuff like geometry and astronomy and measuring time and heating stuff and using other sources of power than slave labour.

Religion did not get us far in many areas.

If science had to start all over again maybe quarks and strings would look different, but steam engines would be the same. Heart transplants would be very similar. Other parts of medicine might not.

Technically no but partially yes, my degree is in general science, but I gotta ask, what difference does it make to my statements what level of degree I have in which science? Can a person not know or study a topic without having a masters degree in it, IYO?

And just to explain, I went to college for nearly 12 years after numerous advanced college prep schools with no specific degree in mind, just because I like to learn and had the opportunities, and one day asked the counselor if I qualified for a degree, and I did. Most of what I studied was science...all fields of science available for study from astronomy to advanced molecular biology. Also some comparative religion, math, Latin (to help with science), and basic requirements (I get bored with English, for instance, and never excelled in it, but still had to take it), but science was always my focus.

@scheherazade just gave you one.....ask (read) Hawking for more....or this article has a few options....
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm

A friend of mine is a PhD student in Astronomy and he sometimes observes at Arecibo in Puerto Rico (a single radio telescope). And his collaboration will generate so much data that it's faster and cheaper to send by mail on external hard drives than through any sort of network!

Scientism:

"Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints."

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/sciism-body.html

The idea that science has all the answers is a particular faith of some atheists and agnostics, with no evidence actually supporting the claim. The problem of induction alone throws that idea out of the window. I love science and I amazed by what we are able to do, technologically. I've studied astronomy quite a bit in my lifetime. Just because I love science does not mean that I must bow before any theory because it is accepted by the mainstream scientific community as being the current idea of what is true and real.

If you look through history you will see many of these ideas held to be truth by the scientific community turned out to be half-baked ideas based on pure speculation. Somehow, people think we have it so nailed down now that the major ideas we have about the cosmos have to be true. It's pure hubris; our knowledge about how the Universe actually works or how it got here is infinitesimal compared to what there actually is to know.

Draw a circle on a piece of paper and say that represents all of the knowledge it is possible to know. What percentage of it could you claim that you knew? If you're honest, it isn't much. Do you think that knowledge of God and the supernatural could be in that 99 percent of things you don't know? If you really think about this you will see that to rule these things out based on limited and potentially faulty information is prideful and it blinds you to true understanding.

here is another NASA page:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/30may_solareclipse/

I guess all these people are wrong too:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2012/05/18/the-solar-eclipse-coincidence/

http://www.space.com/15584-solar-eclipses.html

http://space-facts.com/solar-eclipse/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse

http://www.astronomy.com/news-observing/ask%20astro/2000/10/why%20is%20the%20moon%20exactly%20the%20same%20apparent%20size%20from%20earth%20as%20the%2
0sun%20surely%20this%20cannot%20be%20just%20coincidence%20the%20odds%20against%20such%20a%20perfect%20match%20are%20enormous

It is simple math and I am not sure why you are having trouble with it. The Sun is 149,600,000 kilometers away. Divide that by 400 and you get 374000 kilometers, which is about the distance of the Moon from the Earth. I notice you're doing quite a bit of gymnastics to avoid the point.

As a kid, I was really into astronomy, but was always bugged by the fact that books would talk about seeing the Milky Way at night, and about the thousands of stars in the night sky. I figured there was something wrong with my eyes or something, because I could never find the Milky Way, and while I never counted the stars, I thought there were only about a hundred at best.

Then when I was about 12, we went camping and on a night with a new moon, I went outside the tent after dark. I looked up at the sky and literally got dizzy at the stunning revelation that was the real night sky.

Nowadays, I always try to plan family camping trips around the new moon so my kids get a chance to see the real sky, but even out in the middle of nowhere it is getting increasingly difficult to find a spot without at least one glaring streetlight or security light.

Phil Plait, the author of the Bad Astronomy blog is leaning towards this being real. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/04/05/close_call_video_of_a_skydiver_almost_hit_by_meteoroid.html

I thought of you since you like astronomy and thought you might enjoy NASA's free offering of photographs of the Earth from space.

It's here: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/earth_art_detail.html

You will find it under 'download pdf'

"they evolve into a person?"

"In practice yes, over billions of years, a time period btw that is evidenced in scientific fields including chemistry, physics, geology, astronomy and biology."

This image probably shows illumiunation effects which appear to move faster than light speed. It is an illusion only of course.

Imagine if you took a coffee can and cut a slice out of one side. Next, put a quadrillion watt light bulb inside it, and start to spin the can once per second.

It spins the light beam around like a lighthouse does. If you move far enough away from the can, the moving pattern of shadow and light from the can will move faster than light speed.

Several astronomy "motion" videos like this illustrate super-luminal light effects like that.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'liquid mirror telescope, spinning mercury' to 'liquid mirror, telescope, spinning, mercury, astronomy' - edited by kulpims