thanks goes to bob's junk mail for this one - do also read his his "It's All Relative" as well:
If you take all the matter in the sun and compress it down to about 1/85,000 of its current diameter, you would come up with a neutron star about 10 miles in diameter. (Actually, you might need a little more than the mass of the sun.) But the process is a little more complex.
First, you'd need a supernova. That's essentially a star that explodes in a big way. Really big. Next, the matter from the supernova collapses into a big ball. Gravity makes this ball smaller, and eventually the neutrons, protons, and electrons re-arrange themselves into a stable isotope of iron, because it can handle the pressure. Up to a point.
Eventually, the protons and electrons give up and turn into neutrons and neutrinos, and the resulting matter collapses into a bunch of neutrons and a few other subatomic particles. I think most of the neutrinos fly away.
This star full of neutrons is called a neutron star. Its density is in the neighborhood of that of an atomic nucleus. The sun is over 800,000 miles in diameter. A neutron star typically has the mass of 1.5 or 2 suns, with a diameter somewhere between 6 and 12 miles. That's really dense!
If the mass of the collapsing matter is less than this, it turns into a white dwarf star. If the white dwarf collects some extra matter and grows to beyond about 1.4 solar masses, it gets really excited and goes supernova. If the collapsing matter is more than about 3 solar masses, it turns into a black hole. I haven't seen either of these things happen, but I'm pretty sure this is true.
A pulsar is a rotating neutron star that sends out pulses of radio signals. They've been observed for almost 40 years.
A team led by a guy from University of Manchester named Michael has been observing a double pulsar system, where two neutron stars are in tight orbit around each other. They orbit once every 2.4 hours and are flying around one another at about 600,000 mph.
Since the neutron stars are so dense, this does strange things to nearby space and time, at least according to a guy named Einstein. Michael and his team have verified this. They have observed that the delay caused by the curvature of space/time near the neutron stars (the Shapiro Delay) is within 0.05% of the predicted numbers.
I don't understand all the details, but I think this is the first time this part of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has been confirmed by observation. Imagine what Einstein could have done if he'd had a programmable calculator!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 094623.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_stars
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( 3 / 1884 )I wrote a review for the Norwegian magazine kunstkritikk.no about the art festival in lofoten called LIAF . There I was quite hard on the issues of 1999 and 2004, both co-curated by artist Tor Inge Kveum . He wrote an angry letter back, which I am obliged to reply on. Me being without lap top for a while, trying to get my shit together for the PHILIP project at Project Art Space in Dublin in a fourth nights time ends up writing small novels when trying to reply - guess that I do not really want to answer him. It is not that I have done some big mistake although he does points out that my research on the founding from the state of Norway was not good enough, there are some issues that I am going to touch upon that I think is not that pleasant for him. He started his reply to my review by using the English term "Opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one". I did find that quite strange because my latest review is about an artificial arsehole in the wall. Well, back to those books on reality and universe. Or should I rock the world and start feeling misunderstood as a writer?
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( 3 / 1852 )I have found the blog I am longing for, the blog I always wanted to read. It got the perfect protagonist: a female young art worker, nerd and buzzÿ bee working hard, in the same part of the world as I. It is updated daily, it is part art world gossip, part serios, part update on the news front, project descriptions, statements, comments on different things and a clear cut "I-am-an-art-world-maniac" profile. I am loving every single sentence. Actually, it is the blog I would write if I was half as good and a even near that well connected and updated.
It's like reading from someone you love and have dear, someone you know for a very long time - like a sister or a lost friend.
It's recent posting includes themes like the exhibition African Remix, Frieze Art Fair, Art Forum Berlin (long, very long and very subjective - mixture between the anal Scene and Herd of Artforum and personal letter/ email), David Elliott's predecessor at Mori Art Museum (Fumio Nanjo), about Kunsthalle Basel's Adam Szymczyk curating the next Berlin Biennial, hints and tips about the best art critics around (Searle and Saltz if you wonder) etc.
It is a great blog. the best around.
why I do not link to it?
Hidden Blog
This blog is "hidden" as in: you cannot search it on any search-machines or find it by looking for it. I'd like to keep it this way. This is a blog created for myself to be able to just post shit on my mind as a kind of therapy almost. Don't want to become a pro with this, I'd like to keep it simple, so IF you do send the link on I won't like it even though I can't stop you from doing it - I'd like to make it clear that this is NOT an official blog, I only post things related to myself in a very informal and easy way. I don't want other than very good friends to read this. I am not going to update on a regular basis. I am not going to be a "real" blogger, I'm just gonna keep the diary-thing going. AND I'm gonna talk about stuff that ONLY myself could possibly be interested in, I'm not gonna start adapting the content to any possible readers other than just as large art nerds as myself. So - please be careful with passing the blog-address on, will you? And if you do: please be selective...? Thanx!
posted by ****** at 7:06 PM
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( 2.9 / 1775 )Brian Sholis is mentioning that The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. are going to start a program called "Andy Warhol Arts Writing Initiative": where they are going to strengthen the role of the writer in todays contemporary art world.
This is good news.
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( 3 / 2023 )The difference between Europe and America is rather large, I know that much, and that some artist that they "over there" find essential might in my view be provinsial or boring. But without being arrrogant, I thought that Simon Starling, the winne of this years Turner Prize, was at least a known name by art geeks in the States. After all, Daniel Birnbaum wrote a text on him in Artforum just one year ago (might need a )bugmenot to enter site). And after all, he was nominated for the last Hugo Boss Prize (won by Rirkrit Tirivanija, 2004).
I might be overreacting on a innocent "Simon Starling (who?)" "Simon Starling (who?)", but it did sound sort of strange that Starling in not known by Gibson. I might be mistaken.
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read: Charlotte Higgins account on the winner in the Guradian.
links:
paperholic has a few other links, among them to a streaming interview with Starling
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