architecture

Monday, April 2, 2007

Bulletproof

The above photograph shows "supersonic 'bullets' of gas" shooting through "clouds of molecular hydrogen in the Orion Nebula." These "bullets" are moving "more than a thousand times faster than the speed of sound."
On the other hand, to call them bullets "is somewhat misleading since these objects are truly gigantic. The typical size of one of the bullet tips is about ten times the size of Pluto's orbit around the Sun." (!) Which is to say that objects made of iron, larger than our solar system, are moving 250 miles per second through huge, interstellar curtains of colored gas... I wonder if you could build houses on them.
Meanwhile, don't miss this photo of the Gemini Observatory itself, a kind of hilltop Cyclopean building-machine shining lasers into the sky.

No comments:

Post a Comment