Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Cool stuff and the name of the blog

So I suppose I should explain where the name for my blog came from.  The Txn part should be fairly self evident, Im from Texas.  Specifically the area between Boerne and San Antonio.  The traveling part has a mix of origins, for one, I haven't really lived in Texas for about seven years.  I spent four years in Ft. Collins, Co getting my first bachelors degree in Biomedical Science from CSU.  The last three years I have been working on my nursing degree (BSN track) at NSU in Shreveport, La.  Additionally I like to travel, Ive been to Mexico on several occasions, both the touristy areas and the not so touristy, Honduras, nearly half the states in the US, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and France.  Hopefully Ill get to make a trip across the boarder into Canada this summer if/when I go visit my brother at RIT (Rochester, Ny) for his graduation.  Finally the traveling part also comes from the nick name Travelin Trav given to me by one of my clinical instructors due to riding a motorcycle, always going someplace, and getting arrested over a mardi gras break (yes we get off for mardi gras here, and yes Ill be writing a post about that incident soon)  So yeah that's whats in the name. 


Now onto cool stuff...

PIA14402: A Twisted Star-Forming Web in the Galaxy IC 342


This is a picture of galaxy IC 342, which is apparently pretty close to us (10 million light years being close on a galactic scale) but is only visible when using an infrared scope because it is located on the other side of the milky way and the dust clouds between us and it prevent visible light from reaching us.

Perhaps I read too much science fiction, but sometimes I like to think about if/when people take to the stars and what it would be like to see something like this in person.  Granted the people that saw a galaxy in its entirety wouldn't get to see what is inside it, even with the ability to go the speed of light which I'm not better we develop in my lifetime if ever.  In-fact for a view like this with your naked eye you would pretty much have to be between galaxies.

Slightly more realistically, it would be really cool to see other planets within our solar system, and eventually maybe humans will see other solar systems in our galaxy.  Though right now its also fairly improbable since pretty much the only space program still putting people into space are the Russians and their space program is rife with problems.  If the US was spending half as much as it currently is on defense spending.  The spent half the money saved on a viable space program we might be able to start seeing other planets in my lifetime.  That isn't going to happen though.


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