How's this for sci-fi: A cosmic river of 4,000 stars dazzles lifeforms as it flows through a galaxy. And that galaxy is the Milky Way If you’re living in Earth's southern hemisphere, chances are you may be able to see some of the stars in a newly identified cosmic river that's flowed through the Milky Way for hundreds of millions of years. Astronomers say the freshly discovered gigantic cluster of stars is passing relatively close to our Solar System. The …
All the important continents are in the northern hemisphere, so are the important stars. That's why compasses point north. Four thousand stars hiding in the southern sticks just haven't yet been assimilated by the northern stars. Bet my best load stone they wont stick together for another orbit of the galaxy core now that they have been discovered and found to be aberrant.
Having grown up in New Zealand including Southern NZ with its easily accessible dark skies I am very familiar with how bright the Milky Way is across Southern skies. Moving first to London not being able to see stars was a huge disappointment.
At university in Dunedin we would on occasion walk up the nearby big hill and lie there looking up with one of our number who was into astronomy who would point things out to us and pronounce 'satellite' not shooting star etc. So we tried to appreciate the spectacle on our upper neighbourhood.
>Moving first to London not being able to see stars was a huge disappointment.
I doubt that anyone has had a good view of the Milky way, from London, for several hundred years.
When I first went abroad, in the '60s, I was stunned by the brightness of the Milky Way and the number of meteorites that I could see while camping high in the Pyrenees.
However, on the Norfolk coast and other darkish places in Britain, you can occasionally* get a good view of the Milky Way. I presume that NZ's small population doesn't generate a lot of smog or light pollution. (Does the smoke from SE Asian forest burning get to NZ skies?)
*wind from the Arctic helps.
Wait, what? You say the South Pole is actually a north magnetic pole? Um, how is that decided? In fact, how is it even detected? I was under the impression that opposite magnetic poles are opposite, but exactly equal in every other way. Therefore someone, sometime, must have arbitrarily declared one magnetic pole to be "North."
Hmmm, since the Earth is the Big Magnet, one would suppose that such a major example would set the standard, but you imply some scientist just picked a direction long ago, and got it wrong!?
Wait a minute... The only reason for saying the North Pole is a south magnetic pole would have to be that in a compass, the south end of the magnet points to the north magnetic pole. And the coloured end of the magnet is officially "north." So that means the North Pole is a south pole ONLY because the coloured end of the compass magnet is called the "north end?"
Sure wish the planet would hurry up with that magnetic reversal...
I just realized something. When that magnetic reversal finally does happen, all the compasses in the world will HAVE to be held with the S at the top! Either that, or start calling the non-coloured compass point the "north" pointer.
Or... we could swap the names of the actual planetary poles, but then the names would STILL be wrong! >:-(
The Earth is a single magnet. It has two poles that are manifestations of that magnet.A compass needle is also a single magnet with two poles. Compasses work by aligning themselves to the Earth's flux lines, which are more or less level except near the magnetic poles, where they are more vertical.
In fact, there are vertical compasses made that detect the dip of the local flux lines, and regular compasses are commonly counter weighted so they stay flat despite the dip effect. Each region needs custom counter weighting to match the local dip, so a compass from a different latitude may not work well due to needle dragging.
I'm curious if it's actually visible as a linear feature on the disk of the galaxy, as viewed from well above the disk plain. Plenty of other star streams are visible in galaxies that have interesting pasts. Even our own galaxy is said to have swallowed quite a few dwarf galaxies in its eon, so it must be a little messy around the disk.
Hothouse Earth will wipe away civilisation, soon.
You could be right, but in geological terms you should be equally concerned about a new ice age. Not only are we in a cyclical inter-glacial period, but the rapid uptick in temperatures before a glacial period is repeatedly visible from the geological record through the Pleistocene.
Pink Floyd have you covered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flyvn-6Uz9s
There's a chance that it might help that theory - certainly it's interesting, I wonder if the stream of stars is a result of a collision with another galactic cluster some 5-6 billion years ago? A collision that might have lead to the formation of our solar system.
I think it's fascinating that we know so much about the universe these days compared to when I was a kid and it's a safe bet that when our kids are heading into retirement, they will be saying the same things about us.
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