I just had my sister Anita, her daughter Zoe and Anita's boyfriend Owen and my brother Ryan over for a cup of tea, coffee, green tea etc.
It was really nice to catch up with family, my niece wanted to play the ps2 eye toy, she loves it and goes crazy playing the kung foo game.
I haven't had much to eat, but will have something soon and walk down the road holding my skates to check out the rollerblading ramps. I figure the walk will do me good and I don't have to worry about skating across roads and being cleaned up by a passing car. (or for that matter, being busted by a cop for not wearing a helmet)
But, I must finish cleaning up my house, as I got a fair way through my bedroom yesterday, which is good as its an annoying dump and SOOOOOOO DISORGANISED (yes my weakness is organisation and I am working on changing that and its starting with my messy, disorganised bedroom, plus I am sure it will help me concentrate when I am studying)

Yum m & m's.
Phil, I think something is not quite right about my blog. It seems to not be archiving (I think) the links and posting option are going further and further down the page, I fear they will disappear altogether.
I am amazingly doing some house work, making the most of boyfriend being away in another state, so I can get stuff done.
I badly need to get another set of drawers to put all my clothes in, or something. I managed to buy a heap of plastic crates to store any course work in, but its not helping solve the fact that I have piles of folded clothes around my bedroom and no where to put them.

I'm contemplating doing a geometry and trigonometry unit this semester, I havn't studied it before, not in high school.
I'm not sure if it will be important to have it when going into a science course at uni?
Chat again soon.

working as usual.
Astonished by Phil's very interesting post on astronomy, its amazing that when a star implodes it sucks everything inwards so rapidly and it can't come out again, how does it fit it all in???????
I like the sound of these nebula's which harbour baby solar systems like our own, may there be organisms in these baby systems.
The night I went out, there was a system 4 and a half light years away, I can't remember its name, but it had two pairs of suns (4 suns all up) and they are much like our own, weird thing is, these suns are orbiting each other like kids holding hands and spinning in circles.
The other amazing thing is, there is galaxy systems popping up all over the place and stars imploding all over the place, it seems like its a hive of activity out there, its exciting and intriguing stuff.

Stars, Black Holes, and the Universe

Michelle, I was rather delighted to read about your outing to the observatory. I know a bit about Astronomy, and I can give you some interesting facts. Unfortunately, I ended up writing so much, I figure I might as well make a proper post with pretty pictures.

Stars, Black Holes, and the Universe

The most astonishing idea really is how truly vast space is. If you shrink Earth down to the size of a marble, the nearest star other than the Sun (called Alpha Centauri) would be 200 km away! It lies about 4 light years away, meaning that at the speed light moves (300 million meters per second), it would take 4 years to reach us.

The Andromeda Galaxy (Disk shaped, very like our own)

Stars are formed from very dense dust clouds that are literally enormous (many, many times bigger than our solar system). You can think of it as the dust cloud collapsing on itself (from pressure), and forming this ball. The ball ages (or burns) and as it burns, it loses precious materials. At some point, it has burned up so much material that it starts to self destruct -- and goes supernova. But this only happens to big stars. Most little stars will just burn out and become a white dwarf and later, a black dwarfs (essentially a dead star). In fact, the Sun will one day become a white dwarf (it's too small to go supernova).

Formation of Stars

Now, if you take a massive star near the end of its life, you get something very interesting. Stars are alit because they are always burning something at their cores. What happens after they burn for a long time is that the core starts shrinking due to gravity. So the core shrinks and shrinks...until it doesn't shrink anymore (why this occurs, is a bit too long of an explanation).

Then suddenly this core, which is about the size of the Sun, collapses within a fraction of a second. Imagine the Sun, shrinking to the size of a city...in less than a second! This produces the supernova, and the remnants is what's known as a neutron star. The key word here is density. If you were to take a teaspoon of the stuff a neutron star was made of, it would weigh about as much as a mountain.

A Supernova and Neutron Star

Now, if your original star was big enough, what happens is that this neutron star continues to shrink...and shrink. Until, well, it shrinks to a point. So what happens now?

Well, you have a big problem. You have compressed the mass of (several) Suns into something smaller than a dust particle. So what happens it that gravity is so incredibly strong near this point that even light is sucked in. In fact, no light can escape from this point. This is what is known as a black hole. Black holes are very interesting objects, mainly because of the fact that anything that is remotely near it is sucked right in. In fact, black holes literally eat up stars for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The result when you munch a star is an output of energy.

Now, if you take a look at the center of our galaxy, you see a big energy output (lots of light, explosions, supernova, etc.). It's hypothesized that at the very centre of our Galaxy, lies a black hole, munching up all the stars around it.

A Black Hole's Breakfast

Okay, so we have the Earth. The Earth is near the Sun (a star), which is inside our Solar System (consisting of a bunch of planets). The Solar System is contained in the Milky Way, which is our galaxy. In each galaxy, there are about 100 million to one trillion stars. And how many galaxies are there in the Universe? Only about one hundred million.

Astronomers have actually managed to find ways of 'looking' at far away galaxies. In fact, the farthest galaxies they've managed to detect lie about 14 BILLION LIGHT YEARS away. This is actually the hypothesized age of the Universe! So in fact, when the astronomers see these galaxies, they are gazing 14 billion years into the past...

So who knows what the Universe is really like right now!


Side note: I took a lot of liberties to make this as short as possible. So there is a fair amount of inaccuracy. For example, there are many ways a star can die. Forming a supernova and neutron star is actually very, very rare -- albeit the most interesting path.

I organised a surprise outing for Bob last night, I baked a vegetable stuffed italian loaf, a berry sundae and a bottle of red. I took him firstly for a picnic up at the lookout, in the hills of Perth, then at 10pm, I took him to the Perth Observatory, where I had booked us a star gazing session.
It was amazing, we got to see Saturn, the key hole nebula, tarantula nebula, the globular cluster, the seven sister (where there is 4 suns who have not long been germinated), and we also so the jewel box cluster.
They are so beautiful and the information that the guides tell you is amazing, there is a star in the key hole nebula, which is bulging and on the verge of becoming a supernova. But the visual effect of the explosion will take 7500 years to reach us.

Phil everytime I look at the banner, I yearn to ride a horse again.
It is a very overwhelming feeling.

work is same same.
Am looking forward to the weekend, hey we are approaching Australia Day over here, so beware lots of sentimental Aussies around the place.
Australia Day, it sounds so natural.
I bought a bbq chicken for tea and diced up some salad for it, I put the left overs in the fridge in an airtight container, so I hope that is a safe way of storing it, because I don't know what is the best storage for chicken.
I guess that it was better to be airtight, because fewer bacterias can grown anaerobically as opposed to the aerobic bacterias.
Oh well, if I get sick from lunch tomorrow, I will know its because of the chicken being stored wrong.
Alright, I better go and find some other task, to get myself organised before uni rolls around.

Just cooked myself some dinner, for a change. Some pasta with a cheese sauce and bacon and a salad.
Hey Phil, thankyou greatly for explaining the percentages to me, I was sure I was getting close, but so many people had told me different things I started getting depressed about which one is the correct one to follow.
Work was a struggle, as I had all late nights over the weekend, mind you, all I did was stay up late - eating and watching a movie, but it has hit me hard.
I also resigned from my current finance job with the govt. to continue on with studying, I hope I can get the brain cells to work better this time around AND be less lazy AND more organized.
So I sign off, while I sit hear sweating my arse off in front of my pc typing this.

On the 8th of January, myself Bob and a couple of his mates drove up to Lancelin to enjoy the fine summer weather. It was 30 degrees celsius and no wind, it was stunning weather. I was still a bit hung over from the cricket the night before, but the beach and weather certainly helped pull me out of illness. Above, the big blue thing, is a manta ray, it gets towed behind either a jet ski or boat and it gets wickedly air born, mind you, you can flip out of it alot.
I had a go and its so fast and scarey, but fun at the same time, I was worried about falling off because I started to get cramps in both my hips (from gripping on for dear life) and thought if I fell in, I wouldn't be able to skull due to the cramps. Then there is also the worry of the driver not noticing you being flipped out and leaving you there for the sharks eeeeeeeeeeeek.
That night, we walked from the beach house to the pub and were entertained by an awesome fireworks display, a live band and the boys could enjoy the bikini parade.
It was awesome at night, again no wind, nice warm temperature and a lightning storm further inland, displaying some awesome bolts.
On that note, we have had the STRANGEST summer ever, we have had torrential flooding inland and it runs right up the length of western australia. We have had the coolest summer, it hasn't got past 26 degrees C, for the last three months, normally its STINKING F##%ING hot, I'm talking 30 degrees plus by november, with no rain WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!!!!

Hello everybody, I apologise about the absence. Summer is finally rolling in about one season too late, its been the weirdest summer we have ever had over here.
I have just been working and watching cricket and swimming when it gets warm enough.
I have re-enrolled at uni and am doing part time study this year.
Am feeling a bit tired at the moment, its been a busy week, with everyone returning from their summer break and so my work load has gained.
I hope this picture works, its me at the cricket, 20/20 game. I am scoffing down some chocolate star lollies and drinking beer as western australia did their best to beat victoria. It was good fun.

It is hot here now, after having the coolest spring/summer in history, the temperatures just shot through the roof. Normally in Perth, it gets hot around mid October, this time, it was cold and really cold, then finally this week the temperatures finally got past 25 degrees C.
Its been very unusual.
I have a headache, I think I have something wrong with my left eye, as it gets really sore and headachey after I have been reading something more than arms length away. Today, I was watching one of my superiors draw up a contract, and during and after I now have the above mentioned sore eye and accompanying head ache. ergh.
Bloody hell, I went to the university website to draw up my timetable, and when you print it, it only gives you the table lines and leaves out the coloured blocks where your lecture, lab and tutorial times go. ergh, headache doesn't compute with that very well. Bugger.