RE: Life happens! RE: virus: The universe

From: Steele, Kirk A (SteeleKA@nafm.misawa.af.mil)
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 16:34:48 MST


more evidence AGAINST some previous 'life form' being billions of years old
and being able to control superstrings.

A nice article, thanks Michele

-----Original Message-----
From: Michele Wiegand [mailto:michele@ulster.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 12, 2002 5:47 AM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: RE: Life happens! RE: virus: The universe

On 11 Jan 2002, at 8:19, Kalkor wrote:

<snip>
Life is probably about as common in the universe as interstellar dust
clouds... some emit beautiful light, some reflect beautiful light, some just
get in our way of seeing other things. The cosmos is indifferent to it and
I'm sure high energy radiation blasts interstellar dust clouds AND life to
smithereens on a regular basis.

---
There's an article in the NY Times today:
Scientists Paint Universe as a Vast Sea of Green
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 - The universe, by definition, holds 
everything imaginable and then some. It has stars and planets and 
moons, life here and possibly there, red giants and white dwarfs 
and - the ogres to top all ogres - big, bad black holes.
It even has color, astronomers have concluded. If it were possible 
to see the universe as a whole, from afar, it would appear pale 
green, between aquamarine and turquoise.
That is the conclusion of two astronomers from Johns Hopkins 
University, who mixed the varied hues in visible light of 200,000 
galaxies on their palettes and saw green. They announced the 
results here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical 
Society.
"From one perspective, it's surprising that it turns out green, 
because there are no greenish stars," said Dr. Karl Glazebrook of 
Johns Hopkins. "But it's the large numbers of old red stars and 
young blue stars in the universe that gives us the green."
Although it takes a mixture of blue and yellow to make green in 
pigments, light sources combine in a different way. A blend of blue 
and red produces what Dr. Glazebrook described as "the standard 
shade of pale turquoise, but a few percent greener." Dr. Glazebrook 
and his colleague, Dr. Ivan Baldry at Johns Hopkins, conceded that 
they were having "a bit of fun." But they had a serious purpose, as 
well. They said the research could help assess theories of star 
formation and evolution. 
 
For their research, the astronomers used data from galaxies at a 
distance of two billion to three billion light-years from Earth. The 
survey was conducted by the Anglo-Australian Observatory in 
Australia.
The astronomers first combined the data into a spectrum chart. 
The wavelengths of visible light plotted on the chart showed the 
intensity, or total amount of emitted light, of the galaxies in the 
survey. They then transformed the chart into a rainbow of colors, 
replacing each wavelength with the color the human eye sees at 
that wavelength. An analysis of this rainbow of component colors 
yields information on the prevalence of various chemical elements 
in the universe, which provides clues to the lives and deaths of 
stars.
To determine the overall color of the universe, the astronomers 
used methods established by ophthalmologists to calculate the 
human eye's response to particular wavelengths of color. Then all 
the colors were, in effect, blended.
As Dr. Glazebrook explained in an interview: "If you put all 200,000 
galaxies in a box, the average color would be green. And if you had 
a huge eyeball and could observe the whole universe at once, you 
would see the color green."
But at different times, far in the past or into the future, the cosmos 
would project different colors. The astronomers said the early 
universe probably started with a blue period, when young, hot blue 
stars predominated. As new star formation has declined and the 
population of aging, cooler red stars is proportionally much larger, 
the universe has moved into a middle green period.
Billions of years from now, when nearly all surviving stars turn red 
with age, Dr. Glazebrook said, the universe is expected to enter its 
final red period.
But for now, if there are little green men out there somewhere, they 
must feel proud to be the color of their universe.


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