Visiting Kennedy Space Center Yesterday Was Very Emotional For Me. It Brought Back The Memories Of How

Galaxy NGC 5584

The brilliant, blue glow of young stars traces the graceful spiral arms of galaxy NGC 5584. Thin, dark dust lanes appear to be flowing from the yellowish core, where older stars reside.

Adhesive color plates for Science Services’ Science Program series booklet Man in Space. Nelson Doubleday - 1965.

Orion Nebula photo 114 Years apart

The 1901 photo was taken by George Ritchey at Yerkes Observatory, using a 24 Inch (609mm) reflecting telescope. Amazing how far Astronomy has come

Clearest Image ever taken of Mars’ North Pole. Yes that’s water ice.

this was originally meant to be a physics blog but i find myself posting more about biology related stuff - excuse my inner plant nerd but i like physics too, so:

*cough cough* SPAGHETTIFICATION! a phenomenon where you can become stretched like spaghetti if you enter a black hole.

it’s also known as the tidal effect, and is generally used to describe the vertical stretching or compression of an object into a noodle-like shape in an extremely strong and non homogenous gravitational field.

by non homogenous i just mean that the gravitational field is not the same everywhere, but consists of irregularities. (it is non-uniform)

anyways, a very common example of this is when we’re talking black holes- if i threw you into a black hole, or you happened to fall into one, the gravitational field on one end of your body would be stronger than the other.

this gravitational gradient would mean as you fell, getting closer and closer to the event horizon, your body would become extremely stretched until it would become very very compressed. like spaghetti. but don’t worry, by that time you’d already be dead.

this only happens because of the sheer strength of a black hole’s gravitational field. it’s not really because of its size - but its density. there are lots of objects close or even larger than some black holes, the mass of a black hole is so concentrated in a small area that it absolutely maximises its gravitational pull, which is why not even light can escape it.

this is just one of the relativistic effects of gravity differences, and there are so many cooler ones! for example, pancake detonation.

so stay away from black holes, or you could become stretched like spaghetti or flattened like a pancake.

Astronaut readjusts to life back on Earth

> Don’t give him a baby for a while.

Craters and Shadows at the Lunar Terminator

Credits: Talha Zia

M64: BLACK-EYE GALAXY

Another incredible nebula shot! 1800 Megapixel

Science Services’ Science Program series booklet Man in Space. Nelson Doubleday - 1965.