I am glad you like astronomy and are considering a STEM career. I am finishing up a PhD in astronomy myself.

I was trying to convey my observation that people think that there is no gravity in space while simultaneously thinking planets orbit because of gravity. It is the cognitive dissidence that I find amusing.

You are correct.

It doesn't surprise me either.

But, to your credit, the Earth's orbit is only slightly elliptical (it's eccentricity is 0.0167). Usually the orbits of planets are depicted as exaggerated ellipses in textbooks.

Sorry I was unclear. I am also not a health practitioner and I have no beef with you. I just thought since no one in this tread brought it up, I would discuss a bit of the statistics behind the recommendations.

From a Journal for Nurse Practitioners article on the controversy around breast self-examination:

There are two different types of supernovae, white dwarf exploding when they get too heavy (type I) and massive stars exploding at the end of their lifetimes (type II).

Why all white dwarfs explode at the same brightness is actually an area of active research.

Too late to edit, but I was only partially right about the light from the supernova coming from the interaction with the surrounding interstellar gas. In fact, most of the light that we see from a type Ia explosion comes from the decay of radioactive nickel produced by the explosion of the white dwarf.

There are generally two way to determine if a supernova is a massive star (type II) or white dwarf (type Ia) explosion. The first is to look at spectra to see the "chemical fingerprints" of certain atoms. For example, white dwarf supernovae are notable in that they do not show hydrogen and have a strong ionized…

I just wanted to add that there are two historical supernovae that went off inside the Milky Way, Tycho's supernova (9,000 ly away) and Kelper's Supernova (20,000 ly away).

It only takes a few seconds for the white dwarf itself to explode.

The eight glasses of water thing is an urban myth: http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/…

Weathorr, the malevolent climate monster who controls Chicago, has apparently decided to extend his reign over all of North America.

It is a dark fairy tale and revisits some childhood fears. It also can get a bit intense and bloody at times, but it is not as gory or jumpy as most modern horror films. I highly recommend seeing it if you have not. It is among my favorite films. It is even better if you know a bit about the Spanish civil war.

I would also like to time travel back to the time I saw a woman bring three under 10 children to see Pan's Labyrinth. I understand that the protagonist is a child and that it was in spanish (and they looked hispanic), so it would be cool to see a movie in their first language, but it was not a children's movie. I was…

The first time I saw Donnie Dark, it was the Director's Cut. It includes text from the original website and it makes so much more sense. I've found myself explaining the movie to all of my friends on subsequent viewings.

Just because it is becoming the dominant pronunciation doesn't mean I have to like it. :)

But, as an American who has made a valiant attempt to learn Spanish in Spain, and as has been to Ibiza several times, the Ibitha pronunciation always bothers me.