Our Generation's Supernova, Planet with two Suns, and the Speed of Light Broken?

1. Since my last post, science has had many exciting discoveries. First I will talk about the new supernova found. To all you astronomy beginners a supernova is when a massive star has burned through its light elements like hydrogen, helium, carbon ect... Eventually the star burns all its light elements and gets to the iron core. This massive star then has one of many outcomes outcomes. Be it a very dense and relatively dead neutron star, a supernova, or maybe even a black hole if it's a super massive star. In this case we are talking about a supernova which is when a star collapses from its own gravitational force and explodes. These explosions are very violent for it hurls tones of deadly radiation and energy. These events don't happen that often and as a result, they become one of those very rare and beautiful events that one luckily gets to see once or twice in his lifetime. This particular supernova was found by our bay areas own UC Berkeley. It was found moments after the explosion happened, which is not to say that we saw the event unfold as soon as it happened. Remember that it takes time for light to get to us, and in this unimaginable vast universe that we live in, it doesn't help that its vastness is so huge that it keeps us from getting a glimpse at such a majestic event. So when I speak that we found it moments after, Im referring that the light from the explosion finally hit our earth and allowed us to see it. It is likely that the light traveling from the supernovas region in space took millions of light years to get to us. A distance so incredibly huge, that even light, the fastest known thing in the universe (not for long though). Going at around 300,000,000 meters per second, took millions of years to get here. To get a picture of how big these distances are, multiply the speed of light by all the seconds in millions of years, and your left with a monster size number with which no human being has the capability to grasp. A number along the lines of around  9.3312*10^21*Number of Millions of years it took light to get to our planet=X meters. This ladies and gentleman, is only a distance applied to things near us. These numbers get bigger and bigger the more you go out into space. Now that you a pretty good idea of how special these events are, here is a picture of the supernova. Which is located in the pinwheel galaxy, which is conveniently located right next to the big dipper.

-Of course this event that I described so in-depth looks dull in the picture, but the beauty of it is knowing what exactly that faint spec of light in the picture is, and how it got to you. Something that I find incredibly amusing and keeps me up at night wondering how mysterious and yet attractive the world around us is.

If you would like to learn more about this event or about supernovas, go to the links below.
-Supernova article: http://www.space.com/12745-closest-supernova-discovered-star-explosion.html
-The video below is an episode in the history channel's beautiful series "The Universe". It talks about a star's life.

2. The second story I will talk about is something relalitivly new and therefore I don't have much information on it. All I can say is that astronomers have found a planet that orbits two stars!!! These stars are much smaller than our sun and must have a very complicated orbit for this solar system is the only solar system known through out the universe to have a planet orbiting two stars.

-For more about this click on the link below.
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/15/140499991/here-come-the-suns-new-planet-orbits-two-stars

3. Now the final story is one of the most, if not, the most important event in our lifetime. It has to do with the speed of light being potentially broken. The speed of light, according to Einstein's "Special Theory of Relativity", is the speed limit of the universe (3*10^8 meters per second). Nothing can go faster than it, or at least thats what Einstein thought. However, recently a group of physicists in Italy, more notably known as the scientist at CERN. Have found that a sub-atomic particle called neutrinos have been found to arrive at a certain part of a particle accelerator 60 nanoseconds quicker than light. This might be such a miniscule difference to you that you could just dismiss it, but no matter how small the difference is, it goes quicker than the speed of light and that is monumental. Monumental you ask? Your probably asking yourself "Why should I care wether something goes quicker than the speed of light?".  Because wether you like it or not, we must learn how the world around us works in order to help the human species advance as a whole. Also, because people like me love finding out new things about the universe around us. Its an addiction that we can't help but feed. Now if this turns out to be true (which it looks like it will) all of physics, astronomy, and many other sciences will have to change their laws and rules. This could potentially prove some part of string/M-theory (theories that try to explain everything in one single theory) which says that there are alternative universes. It could also mean that time travel is possible and that in the future we could possibly travel back in time. This discovery would ultimately change the way we view the universe for ever.

-If your interested more in the story, take a look at the links below.
-http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/23/us-science-light-idUSTRE78L4FH20110923
-Video on youtube which belongs to one of my favorite youtube channels:



This is truly a remarkable and exciting story which I hope is true. I hope that you at least found something interesting in this very long blog entry, and I hope that one day, you too can see and find the beauty and mystery in this great place we call the universe :)