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The Beginning Of The End

Zam-Zam

Senator
It was fun while it lasted.......


The Stars Are Beginning To Go Out…




They really are.

The universe is apparently well past its prime in terms of making stars, and what new ones are being made now across the cosmos will never amount to more than a few percent on top of the numbers already come and gone.

This is the rather disquieting conclusion of a new and significant study of the rate at which stars have been produced through cosmic time.

Sobral and colleagues recently published the results of a series of ‘snapshots’ made of galaxies busily making stars at different epochs, from about 4 billion years ago (around the time of Earth’s formation) all the way back to nearly 11 billion years ago. This is no simple task, some of the world’s largest and most sensitive telescopes had to be employed.

By observing light at very specific frequencies (corresponding to emission from warm hydrogen atoms – see the note below) they are able to gauge the actual rate at which new stars are condensing out of thick nebular material in a few thousand galactic systems. This yields some very robust statistics on the global changes in the numbers of new stars being made as the universe ages.

The main conclusions come in two parts. First, 95% of all the stars we see around us today were formed during the past 11 billion years, and about half of these were formed between roughly 11 and 8 billion years ago in a flurry of activity. But the real shocker is that the rate at which new stars are being produced in galaxies today is barely 3% of the rate back 11 billion years ago, and declining. This indicates that unless our universe finds a second wind (which is unlikely) it will only ever manage to produce about 5% more stars than exist at this very moment.

This is, quite literally, the beginning of the end.



Complete text: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/2012/11/19/the-stars-are-beginning-to-go-out/
 

jammer

Mayor
Run for the caves, it's our only hope!

Oh wait a minute! Zammie, that is scientific stuff, I thought you rightwingers all thought the world was created only 9000 years ago and that only God can make end. Is God blowing out the stars like candles on a cake?
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
Run for the caves, it's our only hope!

Oh wait a minute! Zammie, that is scientific stuff, I thought you rightwingers all thought the world was created only 9000 years ago and that only God can make end. Is God blowing out the stars like candles on a cake?


There you go, thinking again. Your preconceived notions are bound to get you in trouble.
 

GordonGecko

President
It's true, jammer.....there ARE actually rightwingers who believe in science.

They just rarely have to run in a GOP Presidential Primary like Marco Rubio and have to keep it quiet or "play it down" to appeal to the guys who DO think the world is 6000 years old and Noah's Flood drowned the Velociraptors.

Zam isn't one of them though.
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
It's true, jammer.....there ARE actually rightwingers who believe in science.

They just rarely have to run in a GOP Presidential Primary like Marco Rubio and have to keep it quiet or "play it down" to appeal to the guys who DO think the world is 6000 years old and Noah's Flood drowned the Velociraptors.

Zam isn't one of them though.



I'll thank you to remove me from the list of people you feel compelled to discuss.
 

fairsheet

Senator
I have a hard enough time wrapping my peabrain around the fact that that star I'm looking at up in the nightime sky, may not even actually be there anymore.
 

OldGaffer

Governor
Terrific, now we have to fear the entropic death of the Universe. Science says our sun only has around 4 billion years of life left as well, I am really worried about that.
 
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