Coolest dad ever

PIC of the week

Anyone care to guess what this is?


Edit: This is actually SPACE DNA. Famous lab guru and saxophonist, Kenny G, used it as a background at lab meeting. The picture was taken a little over a year ago, and shows the double helix nebula, near the center of our galaxy. Watson and Crick might as well have been peering at the heavens to come up with their model. Upon seeing the picture I wondered what kinds of processes could give rise to such a structure. There has to be a force driving a rotation and another driving the elongation that combined create a torsion of the gas in the nebula:

"We know the galactic center has a strong magnetic field that is highly ordered and that the magnetic field lines are oriented perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy," Morris said. "If you take these magnetic field lines and twist them at their base, that sends what is called a torsional wave up the magnetic field lines."

Follow the link to read a more detailed explanation.

Hawking in space

As soon as he comes down, we'll have him for an interview on the podcast...