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AstroMatt writes: For many years now we've required our undergraduate majors in the Physics and Space Sciences department to take a programming course in either Fortran or C++. The courses offered by the CS dept are fine, and do the job they are supposed to do, however they're considering replacing those courses (which are not for-credit for CS majors) with a Python programming course. I've just recently started using Python and Matplotlib, and from my standpoint the purpose of programming is to get results and learn the basics of programming. Python does that and Matplotlib can make publication-quality plots, so it's a good choice in my mind. However, some of my colleagues worry that Python is "only a scripting language" and that the students will miss out if they don't learn a traditional compiled language. Thoughts?
Yea, I did the slackware thing back in the early 90's, too.
I like XFCE a lot, but lately have tried LXDE and think I'll stick with it. It's very lightweight, so very responsive.
Matt
Melbourne, FL
www.astro.fit.edu/wood
Yes, but it's not *really* science. It's a public works project for engineers and provides a place for astronauts and the shuttle to visit - justifying their existence. If instead we'd spent the money on on dozens to hundreds of robotic missions to other planets, asteroids, and comets - now that would have been some good science.
Matt Wood
www.astro.fit.edu/wood
Except white dwarf interiors will also have lots of oxygen atoms, and the lattice structure (BCC) is different from that of diamonds (interpenetrating FCC). And if you remove the self gravity the white dwarf matter would no longer be crystallized.
And this story dates from 2004 - breaking news! Definitely slashdot-worthy...
Stars on the main sequence get less dense the hotter/brighter they are. When the evolve off the main sequence, they get bigger still. It's likely this has the largest radius, too.
Very interesting formation mechanism... stellar collisions!
A friend happened to be the referee when this paper was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal. He wrote: "I was referee of this paper for ApJL and rejected it, because the
author confuses accuracy with stability. The terrestrial clocks are
more accurate, but lose stability much faster than wds and
pulsars.
One a aside, the author is a hard creationist and has several books
saying Einstein is wrong. We are in good company."
No stupid is spouting off when you don't really know much of what you're talking about. Fact: for a long time pulsars *were* more accurate than atomic clocks. The technology of atomic clocks got better, but the neutron stars stayed the same. They are in fact excellent clocks - 1.4 times the mass of the sun, spinning up to 1000 times per second. Rates of period change roughly 10^{-15} seconds per second. There's pi x 10^7 seconds per year, so that's a very stable period:-)
Stars are a bit far to resolve, and these stars are about the size of the earth, so no pictures of this will be available in your lifetime. But assuming you accept that we understand physics and can simulate what things look like, please visit http://astro.fit.edu/wood/visualizations.html. This is not new. It's called the Roche lobe and is simply an equipotential surface. Here's an image from a textbook http://physics.uoregon.edu/~jimbrau/BrauImNew/Chap20/FG20_22.jpg
