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- "Can you believe it took us about 20 minutes to integrate a redshift of z = 7? That used to take a week. And forget about 5-sigma; all we have to worry about now is UV coverage"
- That must be the Large Magellanic Cloud! I'm not used to seeing it upside down"
- "Oh, that was during Wife 1.0."
- "I had a Starfleet uniform, too. Engineering yellow. My wife threw it out."

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1This is going to get a bit heavy, but you can handle it. We see objects in everyday life because light (from the sun or artificial sources) in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum bounces off these objects and strikes the photosensitive pigments in our retinas; our brain interprets this reflected light as the familiar things we see. However, all matter emits radiation that has nothing to do with the light that falls upon it from an external source. The colour—or frequency—of this emitted light changes with the object’s temperature. An iron in a fire will glow red at about 700 °C, and will radiate white light when white-hot at about 6,000 °C. This is due to an innate quantum-mechanical property of all matter. A human’s skin temperature is about 33°C. This temperature translates to an emission of light in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum; invisible to our eyes, but not to infrared cameras. The reason a far-off dust cloud appears dark to us here on Earth is because there’s no light bouncing off of it. To see the particles, observers must rely on light emitted by this quantum-mechanical process. The temperature of interstellar dust is about -230 °C, corresponding to light waves which have a frequency of about a millimetre which means they have very low energy. That’s why ALMA’s antennas need to be so sensitive. More science: The Science Behind Tripping Balls Stephen Harper Needs to Stop Gagging Canadian Scientists Science Will Justify Your One-Night Stands
