Merry Christmas! I Spent Time With My Dear And Sweet Kim. Let's Go #furtherthanbefore With Our #pathwaytothestars

This Amazon/Author Hardcover Giveaway of A Cosmic Legacy: From Earth to the Stars is a compilation of all my publications contained within one text and part of a continuing story. Race to win, or simply buy it, and make this grand literary opus the favorite item in your library, next to your reading corner, on your nightstand, or in your living room, as you settle and read while the days go by.

Enjoy the story of several heroes who do as much as they can to heal the Earth, provide healing to those suffering most, and help humanity get out and into the Cosmos!

The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) is 2019911854, and the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is 978-1-7333131-2-4, which is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other stores online. Conduct a keyword search for the author, Matthew J Opdyke.

Hashtags #SpaceOpera #ScienceFiction #SciFi #Fantasy #Cerebral #Sophisticated #Books #eBooks #MatthewJOpdyke #mjopublications #physics #astronomy #biotech #neurotech #nanotech #spaceexploration #wellbeing #EarthFirst #physiology #neurology #longevity #CRISPR #sociopoliticalscifi #forEveryone

Pretty nice representation of Earth on through to the observable universe

~ wikimedia commons

Video for my newly released book, Pathway to the Stars: Part 7, Span of Influence. As always, it was fun putting it together. (Please help to get the word out! Thank you!) <3  "To be worthy to journey the stars, conditions must be such that if a group of explorers were to return home many millennia later, humanity will not have faded away into nothing. Instead, they will have preserved the homeworld and home solar system, and even improved upon the beauty, the abundance, and the ability of longevity of life in every way that is positive and possible." 

Eliza Williams works with her team in the Pathway organization to increase her span of influence throughout the world. Journey with Vesha Celeste as she continues her adventures with Yesha Alevtina in the Virtual Universe, understanding more fully how Eliza's team has become the enigmatic propagator of the future. With tech cities spanning the Solar System yet hidden from those who have not been read-in, humanity will be breath taken to behold them. Eliza takes on some of the biggest titans of every industry and teaches them what she believes will fuel the future -- kindness, shared-well-being, compassion, and consent, or what she coins as Universal Ethics!

Span of Influence, ISBN: 9781951321055, LCCN: 2019918436

eBook:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081XHLJ36

Paperback:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1951321073

A new Chandra image shows the location of several elements produced by the explosion of a massive star.

Cassiopeia A is a well-known supernova remnant located about 11,000 light years from Earth.

Supernova remnants and the elements they produce are very hot — millions of degrees — and glow strongly in X-ray light.

Chandra’s sharp X-ray vision allows scientists to determine both the amount and location of these crucial elements objects like Cas A produce.

Where do most of the elements essential for life on Earth come from? The answer: inside the furnaces of stars and the explosions that mark the end of some stars’ lives.Astronomers have long studied exploded stars and their remains — known as “supernova remnants” — to better understand exactly how stars produce and then disseminate many of the elements observed on Earth, and in the cosmos at large.Due to its unique evolutionary status, Cassiopeia A (Cas A) is one of the most intensely studied of these supernova remnants. A new image from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). Each of these elements produces X-rays within narrow energy ranges, allowing maps of their location to be created. The blast wave from the explosion is seen as the blue outer ring.

X-ray telescopes such as Chandra are important to study supernova remnants and the elements they produce because these events generate extremely high temperatures — millions of degrees — even thousands of years after the explosion. This means that many supernova remnants, including Cas A, glow most strongly at X-ray wavelengths that are undetectable with other types of telescopes.Chandra’s sharp X-ray vision allows astronomers to gather detailed information about the elements that objects like Cas A produce. For example, they are not only able to identify many of the elements that are present, but how much of each are being expelled into interstellar space.

Much more reading/info/video:  http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2017/casa_life/

Great post!

These Are The Top 10 Hubble Images Of 2018

“Year after year since its 1990 launch, Hubble keeps revolutionizing our view of the Universe. No other observatory continues to teach us so much. 28 years on, it’s still yielding uniquely spectacular scientific sights.”

There were a slew of scientific, astronomical breakthroughs made this past year, and Hubble was at the forefront of a great many of them. There was a tremendous dust storm enveloping Mars, and Hubble was there to capture it. Saturn’s rings are evaporating so quickly that they’ll be gone in 100 million years, and Hubble captured them. Ultraviolet light is created in great abundance in the nearby Universe from star-forming galaxies, and Hubble completed a survey of them. Ultra-distant galaxies form stars too, and Hubble was there to image them and measure how far it truly is to them. Galaxies speed through clusters; clusters contain stars ripped out of galaxies; nebulae race to form stars before the gas gets blown away by the existing ones. Through it all, Hubble was there.

What do the top 10 images of 2018 look like, and what do they teach us about the Universe? It’s a year-end list to remember, along with a feast for your eyes!

What are white dwarfs?

Some curiosities about white dwarfs, a stellar corpse and the future of the sun.

Where a star ends up at the end of its life depends on the mass it was born with. Stars that have a lot of mass may end their lives as black holes or neutron stars.

A white dwarf is what stars like the Sun become after they have exhausted their nuclear fuel. Near the end of its nuclear burning stage, this type of star expels most of its outer material, creating a planetary nebula.

In 5.4 billion years from now, the Sun will enter what is known as the Red Giant phase of its evolution. This will begin once all hydrogen is exhausted in the core and the inert helium ash that has built up there becomes unstable and collapses under its own weight. This will cause the core to heat up and get denser, causing the Sun to grow in size.

It is calculated that the expanding Sun will grow large enough to encompass the orbit’s of Mercury, Venus, and maybe even Earth.

A typical white dwarf is about as massive as the Sun, yet only slightly bigger than the Earth. This makes white dwarfs one of the densest forms of matter, surpassed only by neutron stars and black holes.

The gravity on the surface of a white dwarf is 350,000 times that of gravity on Earth. 

White dwarfs reach this incredible density because they are so collapsed that their electrons are smashed together, forming what is called “degenerate matter.” This means that a more massive white dwarf has a smaller radius than its less massive counterpart. Burning stars balance the inward push of gravity with the outward push from fusion, but in a white dwarf, electrons must squeeze tightly together to create that outward-pressing force. As such, having shed much of its mass during the red giant phase, no white dwarf can exceed 1.4 times the mass of the sun.

While many white dwarfs fade away into relative obscurity, eventually radiating away all of their energy and becoming a black dwarf, those that have companions may suffer a different fate.

If the white dwarf is part of a binary system, it may be able to pull material from its companion onto its surface. Increasing the mass can have some interesting results.

One possibility is that adding more mass to the white dwarf could cause it to collapse into a much denser neutron star.

A far more explosive result is the Type 1a supernova. As the white dwarf pulls material from a companion star, the temperature increases, eventually triggering a runaway reaction that detonates in a violent supernova that destroys the white dwarf. This process is known as a single-degenerate model of a Type 1a supernova. 

If the companion is another white dwarf instead of an active star, the two stellar corpses merge together to kick off the fireworks. This process is known as a double-degenerate model of a Type 1a supernova.

At other times, the white dwarf may pull just enough material from its companion to briefly ignite in a nova, a far smaller explosion. Because the white dwarf remains intact, it can repeat the process several times when it reaches the critical point, briefly breathing life back into the dying star over and over again. 

Image credit: www.aoi.com.au/ NASA/ ESA/ Hubble/  Wikimedia Commons/ Fsgregs/ quora.com/ quora.com/ NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger/ ESO/ ESO/ Chandra X-ray Observatory

Source: NASA/ NASA/ space.com

Nice view of Earth...

Our pale blue dot, planet Earth, is seen in this video captured by NASA astronaut Jack Fischer from his unique vantage point on the International Space Station. From 250 miles above our home planet, this time-lapse imagery takes us over the Pacific Ocean’s moon glint and above the night lights of San Francisco, CA. The thin hue of our atmosphere is visible surrounding our planet with a majestic white layer of clouds sporadically seen underneath.

The International Space Station is currently home to 6 people who are living and working in microgravity. As it orbits our planet at 17,500 miles per hour, the crew onboard is conducting important research that benefits life here on Earth.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Great post! #NASA #solarpower #solarsystem #spaceexploration

NASA sending solar power generator developed at Ben-Gurion U to space station

A new solar power generator prototype developed by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and research teams in the United States, will be deployed on the first 2020 NASA flight launch to the International Space Station.

According to research published in Optics Express, the compact, microconcentrator photovoltaic system could provide unprecedented watt per kilogram of power critical to lowering costs for private space flight.

As the total costs of a launch are decreasing, solar power systems now represent a larger fraction than ever of total system cost. Optical concentration can improve the efficiency and reduce photovoltaic power costs, but has traditionally been too bulky, massive and unreliable for space use.

Together with U.S. colleagues, Prof. (Emer.) Jeffrey Gordon of the BGU Alexandre Yersin Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, developed this first-generation prototype (1.7 mm wide) that is slightly thicker than a sheet of paper (.10 mm) and slightly larger than a U.S. quarter.

“These results lay the groundwork for future space microconcentrator photovoltaic systems and establish a realistic path to exceed 350 w/kg specific power at more than 33% power conversion efficiency by scaling down to even smaller microcells,” the researchers say. “These could serve as a drop-in replacement for existing space solar cells at a substantially lower cost.”

A second generation of more efficient solar cells now being fabricated at the U.S. Naval Research Labs is only 0.17 mm per side, 1.0 mm thick and will increase specific power even further. If successful, future arrays will be planned for private space initiatives, as well as space agencies pursuing new missions that require high power for electric propulsion and deep space missions, including to Jupiter and Saturn.

The 4 Scientific Lessons Stephen Hawking Never Learned

“His work, his life, and his scientific contributions made him an inspiration to millions across the world, including to me. But the combination of his achievements and his affliction with ALS — combined with his meteoric fame — often made him immune to justified criticism. As a result, he spent decades making false, outdated, or misleading claims to the general population that permanently harmed the public understanding of science. He claimed to have solutions to problems that fell apart on a cursory glance; he proclaimed doomsday for humanity repeatedly with no evidence to back such claims up; he ignored the good work done by others in his own field. Despite his incredible successes in a number of arenas, there are some major scientific lessons he never learned. Here’s your chance to learn them now.”

Hawking’s contribution to physics, from the existence and meaning of singularities to properties of a black hole’s event horizon, entropy, temperature, and the radiation they generate were remarkable in the 1960s and 1970s. His popularizations of science were groundbreaking, too, exposing a general audience to a wide variety of wild and speculative ideas, igniting an interest in theoretical astrophysics in the minds of millions around the world. But as brilliant as Hawking was, there were a number of lessons about science and humanity that he never learned for himself, from the Big Bang and black holes to lessons about communicating speculative or unproven information as though they were facts. We have a tendency, when we turn people into heroes, to lionize their achievements and ignore their failings, but to do so cheats humanity out of recognizing all the facets of a complicated character.

Come learn, for yourself, the 4 scientific ideas that Stephen Hawking never managed to learn and incorporate while he was still alive.

A Cosmic Legacy: From Earth to the Stars (Extended Video)

"Our beautiful mother world ached for a reprieve from the injustices of many, courtesy of cultures and governance systems, that forgot how to love, how to be kind, how to include others, and how to think beyond the scope of greed and power, but within the visions of shared joy and well-being."

“For far too long people have lived for merely one shared goal, due to the daunting nature that life seems to bring. That goal may be a noble one, but it comes short of progression in and of itself and does not recognize the complexity of life and all of its nuances.

“This goal is survival through natural evolution. To merely survive, no matter the means, as noble as it may seem at first, will actually lead to the end of life and the end of humanity, whether through natural events or mankind’s apparent affinity toward death.

“It’s as if far too many people worship the almighty ‘mixed result’ rather than raise the quality of and joy in life through logic, study, innovation, and common sense, by enjoying what it can bring to the table, which will ultimately result in desired results.

“Finding cures for disease, both physiological and neurological, and possessing the ingenuity to innovate technologies as well as a pathway for humanity to quicken their pace for developing them will lead to preserving our Earth, our solar system, perhaps our Universe, and with it, each individual and humanity itself, as we travel to and push the limits of the Universe and its sustainability, trusting ourselves as we do so.”

Enjoy this First-Year-Anniversary compilation of all of my works in one title: A Cosmic Legacy: From Earth to the Stars

This title includes the entire Pathway to the Stars series: Part 1, Vesha Celeste Part 2, Eliza Williams Part 3, James Cooper Part 4, Universal Party Part 5, Amber Blythe Part 6, Erin Carter Part 7, Span of Influence Part 8, Dreamy & Deep Part 9-Allure & Spacecraft Part 10-Sky Taylor Part 11-A New Day Part 12-Alpha Andromedae

Eliza Williams and a host of friendly heroes tackle some of the most significant dilemmas of the day to bring humanity out and into the stars bearing a legacy we would be proud to share with other civilizations--a legacy of kindness, of mind-to-mind communication, of love, and of healing instead of harming. If we are to overcome the great expansion and the death of all life, we must overcome the smaller challenges to progress and focus on even greater ones. Working with her team diligently, Eliza will speed the pace of society in her world with the belief that beauty and untold potential are within every being. If we find ways to bring that out in ourselves and others, a future where we can breed longevity, a collective and high quality of life, augment the clarity of our minds, and innovate to span the Cosmos may be in our grasp.

Together with the organization Eliza Williams founded, called Pathway, she and her growing team will take us on a fantastical and Utopian journey to get us out and into the farthest reaches of space. There are dilemmas such as the physiological effects of space on each of us, as well as the need for longevity and a desire to still be able to visit loved ones following long journeys. Eliza and her team develop capabilities, so we can overcome the challenges ahead and are determined to stabilize a rocky economy, wipe away suffering, violence, disease, cartels, terrorism, and trafficking in persons. They work together to tame seismic activity, weather, and fires. She and her friends tackle ways to prevent extinction and provide solutions to quality of life concerns. They even consider the longevity of our Sun and our Earth's capacity to preserve life. Eliza tackles each of these issues to get us out, and into the stars, so we can begin our biggest quest--to help our Universe breathe ever so lightly.

No matter the challenge, there will always be greater pursuits! The saga will continue...

"A Cosmic Legacy" is a science fiction & fantasy novel, with a Space Opera flair to it. It is designed to edify, educate, and entertain young adults and scholars alike. Some of the specific topics covered include physiology, neurology, physics, biotechnology, nanotechnology, astronomy, politics, philosophy, and ethics. Preservation of the life-giving and sustaining capacities of our Earth and creation of environments conducive to life throughout the Solar System once thought to be impossible are primary goals. The ideas of kindness, with innovation rooted in well-being, longevity, where cellular health expresses youth and rejuvenation, optimizing the body to be able to live comfortably in austere space environments without adverse effects, and mind-to-mind communication bearing with it a legacy we'd be proud to share with distant civilizations with mutual goals of preserving our Universe can bring a beautiful future for all living beings.

Hardcover (Regular price $45) LCCN: 2019911854 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-2-4 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1733313125

Paperback (Regular price $35) LCCN: 2019909638 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-1-7 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1733313117

eBook (Regular price $10) LCCN: 2019909630 | ISBN: 978-1-7333131-0-0 | ASIN: B07V4W3MW9 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07V4W3MW9

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