You may be a starduster if...

This forum is for discussing space science topics related to Stardust@home.

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Wolter
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Location: Enkhuizen, the Netherlands

Post by Wolter »

A large pot of hairgel extra strong
A variety of bearing balls
A catapult

And now lets see how a real track looks like.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Just dusting... Image
ll2425
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:42 am
Location: Canada

Post by ll2425 »

-you get excited reading previous posts about aerogel jewelry (awesome idea :D ) - so much for "diamonds are a girl's best friend" - give me aerogel (tennis bracelet anyone?)
Your Overall Score: 1166
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Specificity: 100.00%
Sensitivity: 98.78%
ivankush
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2006 10:14 am
Location: North Carolina

There's a track in my queso!

Post by ivankush »

As I was having my ritualistic last meal at Taco Cabana (5 minutes from Johnson today in Houston) getting ready to fly home I had a sighting. I had a small order of queso and I like to mix in some pico so I only have to dip a chip once and get the queso and pico all at the same time - Annnnny ways, I had just dumped all my pico in the queso and was watching it sink into the cheese (read: zoning out) thinking about the flights ahead of me when suddenly it was like a vision! An unidentified object was the last to sink through the boundry layer of cooled queso into the molten queso below and as it was doing this there it was - A TRACK! instinctively (thank goodness no one noticed [I think?]) my right hand jerked spasmodically trying to change the focus back to what it looked like above the boundry layer of the cooled queso. It really was a moment that almost brought tears (of insanity) to my eyes. Luckily it was only me and a few hardcore truck drivers inside this morning.
Regards,
fjgiie
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You may be a starduster if...

Post by fjgiie »

- you go to bed at 2: am and get up at 5: am for a month -

- your spouce gives you the look when you head to the computer -

- you are threatened 31 times with divorce proceedings -

- you quit stardusting to look for a place to sleep for 3 hrs a night -

- your doctor tells you to gain some weight -

- your psychaitrist tells you to cut back on stardusting every time you miss a cal -

- your undertaker asks you to come down to his office -

- you push the dirt up and go looking for a computer to stardust with -
Nikita
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Location: Indiana, USA

Post by Nikita »

You get Sea Monkeys and reach for your mouse so you can try to change the focus in the tank to see them better!
From dust we come
netguy
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:43 am

There's already Aerogel jewelry

Post by netguy »

minkiemink, ll2425: too late. A company called Aerogem already has aerogel jewelry! :)
Pretty cool. The AeroView shows the aerogel, but the FusionX Magnum (with aerogel) looks better.

Website: http://www.aerogem.com
Aerogel Images: http://www.aerogem.com/media.html
Photo Gallery: http://www.aerogem.com/aerogel-photo-gallery.html
Sharqua
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Location: Bradenton, FL

Post by Sharqua »

Now that is cool.

Thanks for sharing, Netguy!

-Shar
netguy
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 8:43 am

Aerogel Pendants

Post by netguy »

Sharqua, it was my pleasure.

I just read your earlier post about your getting some aerogel this month. Congrats!

I did the same thing about a year ago. Got two 1" square pieces. What a kick. It's nice having something virtually nobody in my whole "state" has ever been in the same room with.

The only unfortunate part is how fragile aerogel is. While many talk about its strength, it is still very easy to turn it into a piece to dust with very little pressure. My small monolithic aerogel collection is now smaller - down to several small fragments from all the handling. I hope you have luck with your jeweler, but keep in mind that as minkiemink pointed out, it probably should be encased in glass to protect it. If you tried to wrap gold wire around it - while it sounds beautiful - the first bump and the entire aerogel piece is shattered into small pieces.

That's why I was so glad to hear that people like aerogem.com is finally doing someting with aerogel at the consumer level. The aerogel is completely encased and protected in Pyrex glass. I got the blue FX Magnum for myself, and my wife got the blue Aeroview "see-through" pendant. The silver tarnishes after awhile, but they include a little cleaning pad that takes care of that.

What is particularly interesting is the response from others. Many have never heard of aerogel, and if they have, they have certainly never seen it. As ll2425 eluded to, while "diamonds are a girl's best friend," everybody has seen or owned a diamond - but virtually nobody has been anywhere close to magical aerogel.
minkiemink
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 7:55 pm
Location: Topanga, California

Post by minkiemink »

minkiemink, ll2425: too late. A company called Aerogem already has aerogel jewelry! Smile
Pretty cool. The AeroView shows the aerogel, but the FusionX Magnum (with aerogel) looks better.

Hey Net....
That's not jewelry, thats a glorified keychain. You wait....<grin>! I ordered some yesterday. Woo hoo!

-Mink
“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched”
-Henry David Thoreau
Siegfried
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Location: La Quinta, California
Contact:

Post by Siegfried »

JOC wrote:- you hear an interview with a rapper who proclaims he's "...on an exploratory quest to find some great tracks..." and that he "...scored well with some heavenly dust..." and you find yourself thinking: it's so wonderful of him to promote space science like that among all the children of the world.

:D
LOL! :lol:
And God said: E = +mv^2 - Ze^2/r ...and there *WAS* light!

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Siegfried
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Post by Siegfried »

-you buy a chunk of aerogel, hook it onto an Estes model rocket and launch it, and then take really zoomed-in pictures and look for dust tracks in it
-you keep dropping your mouse off the desk in an effort to get the VM to focus down even more.
-you ask random people what their specificity is...and think they're odd for not knowing.
-your friends learn that the easy way to wake you up screaming is whisper in your ear, "YOU FAILED A CALIBRATION MOVIE!!"
-You seek therapy because you missed a calibration movie you KNEW you got right and it dropped your score
-your family thinks you are crazy because you laugh at these (Note: Yep! Sure enough my dad asked what I was laughing at, in the same way you would ask someone talking aloud to thin air, “Who are you talking to?”)
-you sign up on an online dating forum and list one of your attributes as"100 % sensitivity"
-seeing soap bubbles gives you a heart attack (Note: ?)
-you are compelled to create project-themed song parodies... (Note: That’s how I get through each day... I’ll include my best one so far below, a parody on the “New York, New York” opening to Leonard Bernstien’s On The Town.)
-You begin to tell everyone that dust bunnies come from outer space, you've seen them in the aerogel!
-You are singing the project-themed song parodies (Note: Again, this is true...)
-You tell your psychanalyst "My sensitivity is at 99.46%!" (Note: If I said that to my grandma, a former psychologist, she would go to my dad later and say “He needs help.”)
-Your grandson loses his two front teeth and right away you want to put this on your Events List...where all the important stuff is
-You see a fallen rubber band on the carpet and you gasp, point your finger, and say "Click!"
-on the rare occasion you do venture out of you "dusting chamber", your own dog barks at you.
-your family think you've lost the plot when you start wearing numerous tennis wrist bands on your mouse arm.
-your pale appearance and absence have people wondering if you've just come out of jail.
-It takes less than than 20 minutes of direct sunlight to give you a sunburn (Note: I have to say that used to be from personal experience for me too, but since I’ve gone on several compulsory day trips, which I have no objections about, I’ve actually not been burned once this summer, which has probably not been the case since I was two-ish.)
-Your favorite whistle tune is "Born to be Wild-Two" (Note: LOL! That’s one of the best. It’s effective ‘cause it takes you a few seconds to get it.)
-You tell a new friend that you are really into star dust lately. He thinks you have:
a. Subscrbed to "the number one Bollywood magazine"
b. Registered on a dating site that appears to offer foreign mail order brides.
c. Joined an on-line "goddess" cult by the same name.
d. All of the above
(Note: Or “e. Become a highroller”)
-You get stronger reading glasses so you can see below the surface of the book you are reading!! (Note: !!!)
-You are really starting to believe that you are a rocket scientist! (Note: A geophysicist, in this case. Honestly, get it right! :p )
-Your friends are starting to believe you are a rocket scientist! (Note: That’s always been the case. Wait, what friends!?)
-A new type of repetitive strain injury is named after you.
-When you go to sleep, you try to count sheep ... but most of the time they turn out to be white rocks in the field coming in and out of focus, so you keep pushing "no sheep"... (Note: That’s the best one so far... “Four legs good, aerogel track better!”)
-your undertaker asks you to come down to his office (Note: Famous last words: “Ma, look! No tracks.” *train wreck*)

Dang! I had one of my own, but I forgot it reading all these.
Oh, here we go:
-if you forget what you were going to say making a complete “Greatest Hits” compilation of what everyone else said.


We got one track and we’re gonna find it
To see that science might.
We’ll find the tracks and dust particles
Beneath the aerogel.
But we’ve all got our chance to find a particle or to in the gel.
Well!

Aerogel, a helluva gel.
The testing’s up and the particles found.
The people look for a hole in the ground.
Aerogel! It’s a helluva gel!
And God said: E = +mv^2 - Ze^2/r ...and there *WAS* light!

WANTED:
Dead or Alive
^-^
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stardust1
Posts: 161
Joined: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:08 pm
Location: Germany

Post by stardust1 »

Siegfried wrote:-you buy a chunk of aerogel, hook it onto an Estes model rocket and launch it, and then take really zoomed-in pictures and look for dust tracks in it
-you keep dropping your mouse off the desk in an effort to get the VM to focus down even more
....
Au weia!
(that´s german and stands for: :shock: or "Oh my goodness!")

You may be a convalescent starduster if
- you realise, that stardusting is surprisingly addictive
- your psychiatrist´s best room is a clean room
- you spot, there are mountains of dust on your desk and below your sofa: you can see without using a microscope!
- your wife bewares of cooking something "jelly-like"
- your bank adviser ...
Wir leben in einer Zeit vollkommener Mittel und verworrener Ziele. (Albert Einstein)
Siegfried
Posts: 105
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 7:18 pm
Location: La Quinta, California
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Post by Siegfried »

More song parodies...

The Duster is Awake
He isn't hungry...
for dinner at eight.
He likes to stardust...
and stays up too late.
He'd never bother
with tracks that are fake.
That's why the duster is awake.

Doesn't like waiting
for movies to load.
Won't go to bed:
it's quite a long road.
Won't dust the house
because it's now sad.
That's why the duster is awake.

He'd like to free...a...
piece of stardust,
that will bear his name.
He's right! He just might!

Loves California,
that's where Berkeley is.
That's why the duster is a wake!


(Parody of Sinatra's "The Lady is a Tramp")[/i]
And God said: E = +mv^2 - Ze^2/r ...and there *WAS* light!

WANTED:
Dead or Alive
^-^
( ^ )
Schroedinger's Cat
sb126k
DustMod
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Location: Charlevoix, MI (AKA, Tourist Town, USA)

Post by sb126k »

Don't let this Die!
You rang?
Nikita
DustMod
Posts: 994
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 8:33 pm
Location: Indiana, USA

Post by Nikita »

You learn more about browsers, computer settings and the importance of good mouse batteries than you ever had, and ever wanted to!
AND you begin to wonder how you ever got along with just connecting and clicking before!
From dust we come
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