it’s not vandalism if it’s for science™! right?
by the way, to all you confused americans, that thing is called a “cricket bat”. cricket is this crazy sport that’s like baseball but actually slightly interesting.
Posts tagged supernova
star stuff
i’m just gonna drop the whole quote here before y’all accuse me of plagiarism.
“some part of our being knows this is where we came from. we long to return. and we can, because the cosmos is also within us. we’re made of star stuff. we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” – carl sagan (super smart science man)
new star
calling a star exploding a “new” star and the birth of the universe “the big bang” is classic example of scientists naming things.
i’m sure you all learned at school that dinosaur means “terrible lizard”, despite them being neither. even worse is iguanadon, which means “iguana’s tooth”, because that’s what its discoverer thought he was looking at.
on the other hand there’s colymbosathon ecplecticos, which translates to “astounding swimmer with a large penis”. which is without a doubt the best dinosaur name. good job scientists!
energy of a supernova
hope i did the maths right here (thank god for wolfram alpha). i love ridiculous scale comparisons for supernovae, but there’s no beating the classic one by randall munroe (the xkcd guy):
“which of the following would be brighter:
a supernova, seen from as far away as the sun is from the earth, or
the detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball?”
now i’m just waiting for some smartarse in the comments to point out that if you actually did magic a ball of tnt that large into existence it would just collapse under the weight of its own gravity and explode as a supernova anyway. shut up, it’s a thought exercise. don’t be that guy.
death of a star
obviously this is a much more complex and interesting subject than i could possibly squeeze into a four panel comic, so i highly recommend you go watch the episode of ‘crash course astronomy’ on youtube about high mass stars.
also in case you thought i made a mistake with the timeline, no, a smaller star actually lasts much much longer than a larger star, as it’s much cooler and thus burns its fuel slower. while the largest stars we know of (hypergiants) last only millions of years, the smallest stars (red dwarfs) can last for trillions of years. seriously. trillions with a t.
i’ll probably do a comic about this some day, so i should shut up now before i spoil it.
photons
who would win?
100 billion colossal nuclear deathballs
or 1 explodey boi
probably should point out that not every supernova is quite as bright as its entire galaxy (there’s not a lot of room for nuanced explanation in these comics), but the fact that it’s even comparable to hundreds of billions of stars is impossible to get your head around.
supernova hunting
poor dini. it’s not easy being sedna’s future husband.
fun fact: the current record holder of visual supernova discoveries is actually my grandfather.
betelgeuse
looks like astronomy’s back on the menu boys! ’bout time too. we’ve barely even seen sedna bust out the telescope since the first 9 comics. seriously, this is supposed to be a space comic! get your act together tom!
poor betelgeuse. people can’t talk about astronomy for 5 minutes without mentioning their desire to see this particular star violently commit suicide within their lifetimes. last year when betelgeuse dimmed significantly millions of people were chanting excitedly for this guy to hurry up and die (turned out it was just a gas cloud passing in front of it).
awfully rude. honestly.
supernova
(click here for a high resolution version of this illustration)
happy 2021 mates! kicking off the year with a cute illustration which some might call a ripoff of ‘the martian’, but i prefer to think of it as a tribute. if anyone recognizes this, yes it’s the one i submitted to the clip studio illustration competition months ago (i have a large buffer).
lots of spacey stuff to be excited about this year. there’s a lunar eclipse in may, spacex starship and boeing starliner will have their first orbital flights (hopefully), and the james webb telescope (the successor to hubble) will finally launch in october (maybe), and boy are my buttcheeks gonna be clenched when that happens.