All posts tagged: peculiar

Peculiar galaxies showcase the beauty of cosmic violence

Peculiar galaxies showcase the beauty of cosmic violence

Published by Jenni Sidey

Throughout the visible Universe, trillions of galaxies abound. This deep-field view of the Universe showcases a portion of the COSMOS-Web field acquired with JWST. In this field are a wide variety of galaxies, where the largest, most massive ones are nearly all spirals or ellipticals, with some lenticular galaxies possessing properties common to both. However, about 5-10% of these galaxies, where their shapes can be resolved, are irregular, peculiar galaxies: evidence of galactic interactions and mergers. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Gozaliasl, A. Koekemoer, M. Franco, and the COSMOS-Web team Most of the Universe’s stars, however, are contained in the largest, most massive galaxies. This image, acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018, shows the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4860 alongside its passing neighbor, the rapidly-moving spiral NGC 4858. Both of these galaxies are located in the Coma Cluster, but NGC 4858 is special: it’s fast-moving, at 5600 km/s through the intracluster medium, and speeding through it in an edge-on fashion. The evidence for ram pressure stripping, including trails of newly formed stars …

Data From Chinese Moon Lander Shows Signs of Peculiar Radiation “Cavity”

Data From Chinese Moon Lander Shows Signs of Peculiar Radiation “Cavity”

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech As NASA continues to push for a permanent presence on the Moon, future space travelers will face plenty of dangers, from micrometeorite showers battering the lunar surface to the unknown effects of spending prolonged periods of time in just one sixth of Earth’s gravity. Deep space radiation also remains a major hazard. NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, which is slated to launch as early as next week, will see astronauts venturing far beyond the Moon, reaching the furthest mankind has ever been away from home, and likely exposing them to significantly higher levels of radiation. The fear: such cosmic rays could penetrate astronauts’ bodies and damage DNA or increase the risk of developing cancer. But thanks to recent research by an international team of researchers, there may be a peculiar “cavity” of reduced cosmic radiation that could provide them with shelter. This cavity includes Moon and extends far beyond it into space, and only appears at a specific moment …

Rain, rain, go away: the peculiar British stoicism of ‘celebrating’ awful weather | UK weather

Rain, rain, go away: the peculiar British stoicism of ‘celebrating’ awful weather | UK weather

Published by Jenni Sidey

May it fall as a blessing, not as a curse. So goes the ancient prayer inviting us to embrace days of rain. It is a prayer that would not be welcomed by anyone on the floodplains the UK persists in filling with houses. It would be met with outright hostility by any farmers who are now unable to do any of the things they need to do in February because their land has had literally 40 days and nights of rain. For most, though, weather affects mood, not home or livelihood. The recent wet spell has been so abundant that residents of these islands may feel they are running out of ways to express stoical acceptance of the inevitability of rainfall: “the garden needed it”, “lovely weather for ducks” and the rest. Like Wales’s “raining old women and sticks” and the Midlands’ “black over the back of Bill’s mother’s”, these phrases defy all efforts to find their origins. The origin – and the content – is beside the point. Shoppers make the best of the …

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love review – the south London band double down on their haunting, peculiar brilliance | Dry Cleaning

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love review – the south London band double down on their haunting, peculiar brilliance | Dry Cleaning

Published by Sam Flores

Dry Cleaning’s third album features a lot of strikingly odd lyrics. Take your pick from “alien offshoot mushroom, going the gym to get slim”; “my dream house is a negative space of rock”; or, indeed, “when I was a child I wanted to be a horse, eating onions, carrots, celery”. But it’s an ostensibly more straightforward line, from Cruise Ship Designer, that seems destined to attract the most attention. “I make sure there are hidden messages in my work,” says vocalist Florence Shaw as the track draws to a conclusion, the muscular guitar riff that’s driven it along devolving into a janky, trebly scrabble. The artwork for Secret Love. Photograph: Patrick Jameson Initially, the lyric appears to characterise what Dry Cleaning do, and Shaw in particular. From the moment they first appeared with the 2018 EP Sweet Princess, the south London quartet have attracted adjectives such as “surreal”, “enigmatic” and “inscrutable”. Most of the British bands who emerged around the same time bearing a roughly equivalent blend of post-punk guitars and spoken-word vocals sounded angry …