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[lilymischief]

You Are Made of Stardust

Though the billions of people on Earth may come from different areas, we share a common heritage: we are all made of stardust! From the carbon in our DNA to the calcium in our bones, nearly all of the elements in our bodies were forged in the fiery hearts and death throes of stars.

The building blocks for humans, and even our planet, wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for stars. If we could rewind the universe back almost to the very beginning, we would just see a sea of hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium.

The first generation of stars formed from this material. There’s so much heat and pressure in a star’s core that they can fuse atoms together, forming new elements. Our DNA is made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. All those elements (except hydrogen, which has existed since shortly after the big bang) are made by stars and released into the cosmos when the stars die.

Each star comes with a limited fuel supply. When a medium-mass star runs out of fuel, it will swell up and shrug off its outer layers. Only a small, hot core called a white dwarf is left behind. The star’s cast-off debris includes elements like carbon and nitrogen. It expands out into the cosmos, possibly destined to be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. New life may be born from the ashes of stars.

Massive stars are doomed to a more violent fate. For most of their lives, stars are balanced between the outward pressure created by nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When a massive star runs out of fuel and its nuclear processes die down, it completely throws the star out of balance. The result? An explosion!

Supernova explosions create such intense conditions that even more elements can form. The oxygen we breathe and essential minerals like magnesium and potassium are flung into space by these supernovas.

Supernovas can also occur another way in binary, or double-star, systems. When a white dwarf steals material from its companion, it can throw everything off balance too and lead to another kind of cataclysmic supernova. Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study these stellar explosions to figure out what’s speeding up the universe’s expansion. 

This kind of explosion creates calcium – the mineral we need most in our bodies – and trace minerals that we only need a little of, like zinc and manganese. It also produces iron, which is found in our blood and also makes up the bulk of our planet’s mass!

A supernova will either leave behind a black hole or a neutron star – the superdense core of an exploded star. When two neutron stars collide, it showers the cosmos in elements like silver, gold, iodine, uranium, and plutonium.

Some elements only come from stars indirectly. Cosmic rays are nuclei (the central parts of atoms) that have been boosted to high speed by the most energetic events in the universe. When they collide with atoms, the impact can break them apart, forming simpler elements. That’s how we get boron and beryllium – from breaking star-made atoms into smaller ones.

Half a dozen other elements are created by radioactive decay. Some elements are radioactive, which means their nuclei are unstable. They naturally break down to form simpler elements by emitting radiation and particles. That’s how we get elements like radium. The rest are made by humans in labs by slamming atoms of lighter elements together at super high speeds to form heavier ones. We can fuse together elements made by stars to create exotic, short-lived elements like seaborgium and einsteinium.

From some of the most cataclysmic events in the cosmos comes all of the beauty we see here on Earth. Life, and even our planet, wouldn’t have formed without them! But we still have lots of questions about these stellar factories. 

In 2006, our Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth containing tiny particles of interstellar dust that originated in distant stars, light-years away – the first star dust to ever be collected from space and returned for study. You can help us identify and study the composition of these tiny, elusive particles through our Stardust@Home Citizen Science project.

Our upcoming Roman Space Telescope will help us learn more about how elements were created and distributed throughout galaxies, all while exploring many other cosmic questions. Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[lilymischief]

Bear vibing in a river ⊂(￣(ｴ)￣)⊃

[lilymischief]

Raya and Namaari calling each other “dep la,” a Kumandran phrase for best friend. The term is derived from the Vietnamese word đẹp, which translates to “beautiful” in English. RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON (2021) dir. Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada

[lilymischief]

Ok I know I’m way behind but I WANNA TALK ABOUT GRACE’S HAIR

When Grace was a kid pre-IT her hair was straight. Considering the lifestyle she was living (not dissimilar to my own upbringing), her hair was most likely chemically relaxed, not just flatironed.

That means that she couldn’t just “cut off her hair and make locs”- she had to wait for enough natural growth to come in first, and for really kinky curly hair that can take months.

And that means unless she did the Big Chop, poor young Grace was walking around with combo hair for a while, experiencing dryness and breakage like a mofo 😩

I’m officially wishing and hoping in my heart that young Grace found a salon car and they fixed her right up with some solid two-strand twists that eventually became the beautiful locs we see her in in the show. ✨👩🏾‍🦱✨

[lilymischief]

∞ go watch infinity train! ∞

[lilymischief]

Day 2: Janelle Monae

—-

the future is a Black Woman in a man’s suit and she gives no fucks about your boner.

[lilymischief]

Day 4: Emmett Till

——-

Google his funeral

and you will find

a Face

that launched

a thousand ships.

[lilymischief]

I hope my warm thoughts of you

travel through the wood, concrete

up into the air

and down Broadway

past the quiet buildings

we walked past

stopping where you made me laugh

to gather up the echoes

through tunnels where secrets thrive

then blooming, upward

to You

igniting your dreams

with butterflies

so you awaken feeling

Loved.

[lilymischief]

Hazel Scott playing two pianos at the same damn time with ease

[lilymischief]

“spring can wait”

for Katharina @photoshamanism

instagram

[lilymischief]

Joyous Turkey Month to us all

[lilymischief]

A little faux cover for Boycloaks magazine featuring Sir Fitzroy Maplecourt Knight (in Absentia) of the realm of Goodcastle, from The Adventure Zone: Graduation.

The idea of a fantasy influencer who also happens to be learning to be a professional villain is so powerful and I will forever be mad that it was just a throwaway joke line.

[lilymischief]

Livestock drama

   “Let’s put pool noodles on the goat’s horns!” says a teenager.

“Why would you,   ” I begin, but they have already stampeded out of the house. I shrug.

   It turns out that when someone puts pool noodles on a goat’s horns, the goat doesn’t really care. They’re very light, after all, and she can’t see them. You know who cares? Who cares a LOT?

   the HORSE. Hero took one look at Nutmeg wearing pool noodles and ran away. You know who doesn’t want to be left alone, ever? Nutmeg. Who went trotting after Hero because he was leaving her.

   Hero, seeing that the eldritch abomination was after him, picked up speed. Nutmeg went into a full run. My kids started chasing Nutmeg to get the pool noodles off her, but could not catch her, because she’s surprisingly fast. The dogs were bringing up the rear, just happy to be going for a pleasant run. Hero was in a panic, leading a parade that he did not want.

   This all resolved. One noodle feel off; the kids eventually cornered Nutmeg and removed the other one. Just - a day at a farm, I guess.

10/02/20

[lilymischief]

hello everyone!! if you have time, please consider watching rick astley’s “never gonna give you up”. i don’t want to inconvenience anybody but i’m trying to troll you. thank you very much! please pass this along to help me troll your friends if you can!!

i’ve included the video in this post so you can easily watch it

[lilymischief]

Happy October

[lilymischief]

Happy October Everyone ✨🎃🍂🕯👻

[lilymischief]

Launchpad dated his clone and it made him a better person.

So I want to weigh in on the whole “Launchpad has dated his clone thing”. I see a lot of posts about a physical relationship, and sure, that’s fun to speculate but for me, it’s a really cool thing that he’s dated his clone.

Now, we don’t know the how cloning works in the DuckTales universe, but I am going to assume that since Launchpad dated his own clone, his clone was possibly an exact replica of himself. Thus, Launchpad dated himself, personality and all, and not just a look alike. If this theory is true, and for this post I am going to go with this theory because it suits me best, (sorry, no evidence to back up my claim, but the people who are claiming the physical relationship don’t either…) it means that Launchpad had a relationship with himself. 

And you’re all like, yep, we got that part. 

Launchpad has had the unique opportunity to date himself, he has seen himself as a partner, thus he knows exactly how he is in relationships and how he relates to others. Frank Agnones recently stated on Tumblr that his favourite partner for Launchpad was his clone, what if this is because this is the reason why Launchpad is such an awesome guy?

Think about it, Launchpad knows himself so well that he is totally confident and comfortable with himself. This is a gift that I don’t think many get and so this is really special. Although Launchpad said in the first episode “…I’m everybody’s friend”, under the influence of snake venom, I truly believe that he is capable of being “everybody’s friend” because he knows what he’s like being a friend. It’s just so meta, and I love it so much. Good for Launchpad to take a chance and to date himself and to really get to know who he is, that can be a really scary thing.  Launchpad is probably the most stable person in the DuckTales world and anyone who dates him is certainly going to be lucky, not naming names or anything, but maybe a certain black hole or nebula.