credits:R. Elson and R. Sword

do you know whats so special about the one in the circle?
Explanation: This is NGC 1818, a youthful, glittering cluster of 20,000 stars residing in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 180,000 light-years away. Pick a star. Any star. Astronomers might pick the unassuming bluish-white one (circled) which appears to be a hot newly formed white dwarf star. What makes it so interesting? The standard astronomical wisdom suggests that stars over 5 times as massive as the sun rapidly exhaust their nuclear fuel and end their lives in a spectacular supernova explosion. With less than this critical mass they evolve into red giants, pass through a relatively peaceful planetary nebula phase, and calmly fade away as white dwarf stars like this one. Except that as a member of the NGC 1818 cluster, this new white dwarf would have evolved from a red giant star over 7.6 times as massive as the sun -- which should have exploded! Its discovery will likely force astronomers to revise the limiting mass estimate for supernovae upward.



Science is knowledge.
Knowledge is power.
Time is money.
power = work/time
therefore, knowledge= work/money
therefore, money = work/knowledge
therefore, money is inversely proportional to knowledge.

therefore,

The more knowledge you have, the less money you have.

Prepare for the worst, for you have read the worst.