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Saturday, November 08, 2008
The Solar System -vww
I came across this picture on Wikipedia a while ago and thought it gave a good idea of the scale of distances in the vicinity of the Sun. The unit of measurement is AU (Astronomical Unit), which is the distance between the Earth and the Sun (that's why Earth is at 1AU).
As seen in the diagram, interstellar distances are mind-bogglingly immense (notice the exponential scale). Even 1AU is far by human standards. Light takes more than 8 minutes to travel 1AU; it takes light only 1.3 seconds to reach the Moon.
Most people are probably not so familiar with the Heliosphere. It is the layer of the Sun sustained by the pressure of the solar wind. The Heliosphere deflects a large portion of dangerous galactic cosmic radiation, quite similar to how the Earth's magnetosphere protects us from the powerful solar winds. The Heliosphere has been in the spotlight lately due to new data that shows it has been shrinking. In addition, there is the recently launched IBEX spacecraft that will be sent beyond Earth's magnetosphere to take measurements of the Heliosphere among other tasks.
p.s. Wikipedia has a great diagram for explaining Termination Shock that involves a tap and a basin.
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permalink --
Yiheng made
3:32 PM
Oh! It's about carrots! -vvx
Shuquan, you guessed right. The song is indeed in that CD we saw.
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Yiheng made
2:47 PM
I'm astonished how did you manage to find this. What's the name of it Thai again? i can't read those squiggly lines.
I would have never guessed it was about carrots. Wonder if the Thai army is still singing that song
By
Soqcrates, at 12:23 AM
Previous Posts
Swing Along 2009 -vvv
FF13 -vvx
YGBSM -vvw
Tibetan Song -vvx
Unfortunate Side Effects -vwv
Memorable News -vwv
Five Golden Flowers -vvz
Art Appreciation in Singapore -vvw
Openmindedness -vvx
侠客行
Current Read
Last Three Books
The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology
Arthur Cotterell, Rachel Storm
Those Before
Paycheck: And Other Classic Stories By
Philip K. Dick
Mirror Mirror: A Novel
Gregory Maguire
