http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?
id=53d362fa-6569-4427-b871-925554163992&&Headline=Coming+up%3a+the
+mother+of+all+celestial+shows
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~white/images/eta_time_full.html
Regards,
Horace Heffner
On May 7, 2007, at 4:38 PM, Jones Beene wrote:
The name "SN 2006gy" may not mean much to most folks, but it is the
recently discovered supernova, which as it turns out is the most
luminous supernova (or the most luminous single object of any kind,
for that matter) ever recorded by humans.
It may also be eerily similar, but millions of years less mature
than our strange galactic neighbor, Eta Carinae.
Roger Quimby, a grad student made the discovery of SN 2006gy with
his comparative-wimp of a telescope, an 18-inch automated telescope
and software he developed as a graduate student at the University
of Texas. This scope has a mirror which can be bought by any
amateur for ~$2,500, but can run itself unattended all night,
looking for that "flash in the pan". The story is fascinating in
itself, as most any novice-stargazer/programmer could have pulled
it off.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0508/p01s04-usgn.html?page=1
That supernova is not in our galaxy, fortunately, yet it was
powered by the death of an extremely massive paired star, possibly
just like the Eta Carinae (EC) pair - which is not too far away
from us to possibly cause problems, if its radiation is ever
focused, as it appears can happen from an axial emissions -
especially when the ejecta itself is 'strange' (to be explained)
The new supernova, like EC, was not located centrally in the core
of its particular galaxy either (in Perseus), nor was it near a
black hole, but was positioned out from the core, about where EC
sits in our galaxy.
It is not yet clear what powers the radiated energy of 10^50 ergs,
but it was likely to be 56Ni decay for much of it. Earlier in our
galaxy, in the 19th century, the eruption of EC may have been
almost as luminous- and it is a 'repeat offender' regularly gaining
and loosing mass in hundred-sun quanta.
Four years ago, in an "off-topic" post to vortex, entitled
"Stranger than Fiction" I tried to make a speculative case for the
proposition that the recent dramatic surge in solar flares (back
then) could be linked time-wise to the brightest and most massive
star in the Milky Way, the aforementioned demon - Eta Carinae.
Please excuse this long rehash or some of that info.
... what makes EC such an interesting candidate for many earthly
problems, beyond the flares, is that it is reverberating to its own
5.5 year cycle with a companion 'object' - which cycle is ~half of
our Sun's 11 year sunspot cycle ... and the bursts are fairly well
coordinated... but admittedly, EC is far too distant to affect our
sun gravitationally, or with any kind of (non-focused) photon
emission.
In trying to comprehend how a star so distant might be able to
influence our sun, it is clear that no conventional explanation
suffices... but that a *focused* discharge moving at near
lightspeed would suffice, especially if the focusing were not
exactly a random thing... that is to say, not random because our
own solar system is perfectly axially aligned with the emitter.
Coincidental? No! that is: we could be located nearly perpendicular
to the exact axis of rotation of EC for a good reason - which is
the further implication: that EC may have expelled our entire
system and others billions of years in the past! It is/was that
massive.
But, even if we limit the speculation to "just" a focused modern
discharge from EC, traveling fairly close to light-speed, what kind
of focused and accelerated mass fits these circumstances
(disruptive enough to cause sunspots or earthly volcanism) ?
Here is where things get really strange.
Quarks are the most elementary mass particles - pieces of matter
that can't be divided into anything smaller. Normal matter in the
everyday world is made of only two types of quark - called "up" and
"down," but there is a third variety, called "strange". Strange
quarks in a gravitational field can coagulate together, as do the
up-and-down variety in less massive fields.
The so-called "strange quark matter" (aka SQM or "strangelets") is
very dense... heavier even than neutron star material - a sphere
the size of a bacterium would weigh a ton, but it may possibly
coexist (when highly diluted) with regular matter and that is the
LENR connection... or it may accumulate on its own in dense but non-
neutron-stars such as the star known as RX J1856.5-3754, in the
constellation of Corona Australis. This star's mass and temperature
profile means that it cannot be a neutron star - it is too dense!
yet not quite dense enough to form a black hole. A similar object
may be the companion object to EC.
The very same kind of quark-star may be involved with the new
supernova SN 2006gy !
Theorists have long suspected the existence of these very dense
objects, which are denser than neutron stars but are not quite
massive enough to become black holes... and they are pretty sure
now that they have identified their first few quark stars, which
may not be composed of 100% strange quarks. Strange quarks can have
short lifetimes in some baryonic combinations, but surely are
stable in others in high percentage... which material may itself be
accelerated out of the active-star's axial polar region (whenever
new material is captured, as in the case of binaries).
So, the $64 question is: could "strange matter" being accelerated
out from EC and directly towards Earth be the possible connection
to the recent anomalous solar activity which has trailed, by
several months, the peak x-ray output of EC. If anomalous volcanism
were to follow, soon here on earth, it may also be from this same
"strange matter" cause:
http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/releases/01342.html
BTW, this cite above is a "must read" for anyone interested in
understanding the risks or prospects of a cosmic influence on
earthly catastrophe....as well as offering an explanation as to how
some of this strange quark material could have become imbedded with
normal matter on the interior of earth...
Although some theorists have suggested that most strange matter was
formed in the early Universe, remnants of this matter may still
exist in binary systems like EC, and even in some asteroids -plus,
strange matter may still be being born at the extreme-end of cosmic
violence, such as occurs on EC (its photon output exceeds 5 million
suns) ... plus now we have some tentative evidence of a putative
mechanism where some of this strange material gets deposited on earth.
Does this have any relevance for understanding cold fusion?
It is far too speculative to say that this strange matter
connection is even possible, but if advancing technology in the
next few years does present us with the means of proving that a few
strange quarks do turn up in asteroids, and that asteroid impact
sites are the prime earthly source of the precious metals like
palladium... then??? there may well be a connection worth
investigating.
There are anecdotal reports of pure metals from different mines
that differ in density from the textbook standard...but...
<gulp>... is that just anecdotal, or is there a so-called "secret
alloy" for LENR- an unexpectedly 'heavy' form of Pd (from a
particular mine) which seems to be pure by all normal testing
except that it is slightly more dense, due perhaps to coming from
only one mine which had been an asteroid impact site?
Well, let's leave it at that for now, but if a CF lab capable of
doing extremely precise density tests on an active LENR electrode,
finds even a slightly abnormal density shift for "active" cathodes,
then it may not be unreasonable to assume that somehow, some-way, a
few of these strange quarks have gotten into the palladium in some
kind of stable baryonic form...
...or maybe even something stranger...
Jones
Regards,
Horace Heffner
