There Was No Women's March Even Remotely Close To Me, So I Threw My Own. End The Gender Gap In STEM!

The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question.

- Neil Gaiman, Stardust

𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒎𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔 𝒂 𝒔𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒅𝒈𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒚 𝑪𝒐𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝑵𝒆𝒃𝒖𝒍𝒂, 𝒐𝒓 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒅𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝟗𝟗. 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒅𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝟗𝟗 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒏𝒆𝒃𝒖𝒍𝒂, 𝒂 𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒆 𝒄𝒍𝒐𝒖𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝒅𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒔 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒈𝒕𝒉𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒐𝒃𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒕. 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒅𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝟗𝟗 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒃𝒋𝒆𝒄𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒏 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒔𝒌𝒚. 𝑶𝒏 𝒂 𝒄𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕, 𝒊𝒕 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒃𝒆 𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒊𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒅 𝒆𝒚𝒆 𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒌 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉, 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒔, 𝒏𝒆𝒙𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒏 𝑪𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑪𝒓𝒖𝒙. 𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒅𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝟗𝟗 𝒊𝒔 𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝟔𝟎𝟎 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕-𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑬𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒉 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝒍𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕-𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒄𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒔. 𝑺𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒂 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒚.✨💙

if you ever feel like you're not "smart enough" for STEM or didn't do that great in school, i just wanna let you know that i failed algebra 2 THREE TIMES and dropped my high school physics class the FIRST WEEK...

and NASA chose me to student research with them.

so what i'm trying to say is that STEM is for EVERYONE. if school wasn't the easiest for you and you're not the strongest in math, don't let that stop you from pursuing STEM. working hard for goals makes you a great scientist.

screw that stereotype that all STEM majors are geniuses who were building robots and knew how to work a microscope at 3 years old.

STEM IS FOR EVERYONE! BECOME A FREAKING SCIENTIST! YOU CAN DO IT!

First crying-roses term of the year lets gooo

⁺⊹ . ｡. :☆ Alderlactea ☆: .｡.⊹ ⁺

Alderlactea [Alder-lac-tia] is an aldernic term for when one has, or wishes to have, a body that is, partially or fully, made of stars, starry or galactic.

Flag ID

[Flag ID: A flag with 7 similarly sized horizontal stripes. From top to bottom, the colours are dark blue, dark purple, dark magenta, muted salmon, gold, light yellow and white. The flag has a golden orange in the centre outlined with muted salmon. End ID.]

Was out filming with the telescope and first of all, I have it on the porch, which is shared with our neighbors. One of them came out and saw me with the telescope and I was like straddling it because it’s the only way I can use the viewfinder on that thing and conversation was just:

Him: uhhh-

Me: don’t

Him: -yes ma’am

And then I met our other neighbors, some drunk girls, who thought it was a /cannon/. So I put it on the Moon and was like “wanna see?” And they were about as excited as your typical 4 year olds to see the moon and when I told them they could take pictures through the eyepiece (the eyepiece I was using was a wide angle plossl) they could not have been more excited

NGC 1512 by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

WHAT IS A NEUTRINO??

Blog#123

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

Welcome back,

Neutrinos are elusive subatomic particles created in a wide variety of nuclear processes. Their name, which means “little neutral one,” refers to the fact that they carry no electrical charge. Of the four fundamental forces in the universe, neutrinos only interact with two — gravity and the weak force, which is responsible for the radioactive decay of atoms. Having nearly no mass, they zip through the cosmos at almost the speed of light.

Countless neutrinos came into existence fractions of a second after the Big Bang. And new neutrinos are created all the time: in the nuclear hearts of stars, in particle accelerators and atomic reactors on Earth, during the explosive collapse of supernovas and when radioactive elements decay. This means that there are, on average, 1 billion times more neutrinos than protons in the universe, according to physicist Karsten Heeger of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Despite their ubiquity, neutrinos largely remain a mystery to physicists because the particles are so tough to catch. Neutrinos stream through most matter as if they were light rays going through a transparent window, scarcely interacting with everything else in existence. Approximately 100 billion neutrinos are passing through every square centimeter of your body at this moment, though you won’t feel a thing.

Neutrinos were first posited as the answer to a scientific enigma. In the late 19th century, researchers were puzzling over a phenomenon known as beta decay, in which the nucleus inside an atom spontaneously emits an electron. Beta decay seemed to violate two fundamental physical laws: conservation of energy and conservation of momentum. In beta decay, the final configuration of particles seemed to have slightly too little energy, and the proton was standing still rather than being knocked in the opposite direction of the electron. It wasn’t until 1930 that physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed the idea that an extra particle might be flying out of the nucleus, carrying with it the missing energy and momentum.

“I have done a terrible thing. I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected,“ Pauli said to a friend, referring to the fact that his hypothesized neutrino was so ghostly that it would barely interact with anything and would have little to no mass.

More than a quarter century later, physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines built a neutrino detector and placed it outside the nuclear reactor at the atomic Savannah River power plant in South Carolina. Their experiment managed to snag a few of the hundreds of trillions of neutrinos that were flying from the reactor, and Cowan and Reines proudly sent Pauli a telegram to inform him of their confirmation. Reines would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1995 — by which time, Cowan had died.

But since then, neutrinos have continually defied scientists’ expectations.

The sun produces colossal numbers of neutrinos that bombard the Earth. In the mid-20th century, researchers built detectors to search for these neutrinos, but their experiments kept showing a discrepancy, detecting only about one-third of the neutrinos that had been predicted. Either something was wrong with astronomers’ models of the sun, or something strange was going on.

Physicists eventually realized that neutrinos likely come in three different flavors, or types. The ordinary neutrino is called the electron neutrino, but two other flavors also exist: a muon neutrino and a tau neutrino. 

As they pass through the distance between the sun and our planet, neutrinos are oscillating between these three types, which is why those early experiments — which had only been designed to search for one flavor — kept missing two-thirds of their total number.

But only particles that have mass can undergo this oscillation, contradicting earlier ideas that neutrinos were massless. While scientists still don’t know the exact masses of all three neutrinos, experiments have determined that the heaviest of them must be at least 0.0000059 times smaller than the mass of the electron.

SOURCE: www.livescience.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, September 18th , 2021)

“DO WE LIVE IN A FALSE VACUUM??”

Supernovas, Nebulas, and Stars captured by Hubble space telescope ✨🌌 💫