geekosystem

The Sun, it will surprise no one, is very, very hot. What is surprising -- and consistently baffling to researchers -- is that there are certain parts of the sun that are actually rather chilly. You know, in comparison to the rest of the Sun, which, as we've covered, is just exceedingly warm. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel observatory may have made a stride or two towards understanding the strange phenomenon, though, as it has recorded the first evidence of a similar cool outer layer in a star that isn't the Sun. The same cool layer has been observed for the first time in Alpha Centauri A, a relatively nearby star noted for its similarities to our own Sun.

I know, I know -- I don't get modern art, either. Luckily, the picture above isn't a painting -- it's a visualization of the heating and cooling of plasma erupting from the sun in solar flares. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took images and gathered data on the plasma from a particularly active sunspot on six wavelengths over a twenty four hour span, then processed the data and recorded it's hating and cooling history -- one pixel at a time. The result is this amazing image and plenty of others like it, and you can check them all out -- and learn more about how they're made -- in the video below.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has voted to officially change the Astronomical Unit (AU) -- a measure of the distance from the Earth to the Sun -- from a variable value to a more convenient constant. Because if you're the IAU and you have a meeting without voting on anything, it looks kind of bad, we guess? Kidding! It's because the IAU is made up largely of people who teach astronomy for a living, and people who teach astronomy for a living are, as a whole, just sick to death of teaching a new legion of bong-addled freshmen a mostly obsolete equation that most of them will never use outside of scribbling it on their hand to pass their astronomy final.

This article over on The Sun, entitled "Wacky cat pics are a web hit," is an article from today, which happens to fall in the year 2012. The article only has a few sentences written up, followed by a handful of the mentioned "wacky cat pics." As anyone who has an Internet connection knows, these "wacky cat pics" are LOLcats, and have been a cornerstone of the Internet for roughly ever. So, either we're looking at a humorously out of date article, or we're looking at one of the greatest trolls of all time.

Angeles Duran, like many before her, has decided that a weird quirk of international law makes it possible for individuals to make claim on extraterrestrial real estate. Unlike others, however, she decided to make a claim on a celestial body that actually has a minute to minute effect on at least half of the globe at any time. And that's not counting its reflection off the surface of the moon. Ms. Duran, of course, has made a notarized, registered claim on the star we call the Sun, and says she's going to start charging people to use it.

In a recent interview with Vibe, legendary hip-hop producer and rapper Dr. Dre sent us into a collective swoon when he let it drop that "for a long time," he's wanted to make an instrumental album about Earth's solar system called The Planets. Each track would consist of Dre's interpretations of the planets in the solar system. And he'd need surround sound to convey the majesty of Saturn.

This is the sun. For a long time, it was sleepy, lying idly in the sky, keeping us warm and cozy here on Earth. Well, now the sun is waking up after its slumber, and it wants us to know. So it's spitting at us, via a coronal mass ejection. The sun's surface erupted, sending huge amounts of plasma into space ... toward us. For reference in the image above, the eruption is the dark arc near the top of the star, not the bright patch nearer the middle. But don't worry, everyone. While the sun can and someday will bring about the apocalypse, this isn't that moment. There will be pros and cons to this event, which should start as soon as tonight and last into tomorrow. Let's start with the bad news: Some satellite communications could be disrupted. The good news: Light show! This kind of plasma attack could create a geomagnetic storm, which sounds terrifying, but would really just mean we'd get to see the Northern Lights, except they'd be all over the lower 48 states.

Easy Sequels to Horror Flicks (Spinoff)

Michigan Town Regulates Fortune Telling (Freep)

5 Bad-Ass Pokémon (GameRant)

Weird Lawsuit of the Day (Bleeding Cool)

Star Wars + Warhammer = Win (Toycutter)

This Is A Laser-Sighted Pea Shooter (The Sun)

Lutetia: Beautiful Asteroid (BBC News)

(image via Reddit.)

Hibiki Kono, a 13-year-old attending King's College School in Cambridge has created a couple of suction plates that allow him to climb walls, powered by two $22 vacuum cleaners. Said Kono to The Sun:

I used to dress up as Spiderman[sic] when I was younger and I love all the films. So it's great to be able to climb walls like him. I've climbed up the school wall but I'm not allowed too high. It's not scary and I completely trust the machine.

Unfortunately for Kono, he can't get too far. At least not without another extension cord.

Don't panic or anything, but there just might be the possibility that an upcoming solar storm could devastate out technological infrastructure, causing up to $2 trillion in damages and generally terrifying everyone out of their minds. There have been past solar storms like those now being predicted, but Earth has always lucked out, escaping the line of fire. But according to CNN, scientists now warn that "the Sun is waking up from a deep slumber." That can't be good.

This weekend we commented on the information coming out about President Obama's then unrevealed national budget proposal. Well, its Monday, and the cat's out of the bag: the rumors were right.

As we reported on Saturday, the White House's proposal calls for a change in direction on our path to the Universe, canceling the Constellation program, extending the life of the International Space Station, and turning to the private sector to replace the space shuttle.

Join us after the jump for some of the hard numbers.