My Forum Diary

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Librina Russia
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Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:10 pm
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Re: My Forum Diary

Post by Librina »

So now I suggest you to expand your musical & scientific horizons a little, absorbing some more interesting information, & listen to a really excellent mini-release of two remarkable compositions dedicated to the enigmatic object of our Solar System, from a very nice Swedish project I noticed some years ago.
So, Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Its mass is 17.2 times greater than that of the Earth & is the third among the planets of the Solar System, and Neptune occupies the fourth place in terms of equatorial diameter, surpassing the Earth by 3.9 times. The planet is named after Neptune, the Roman God of the seas. Currently, its 14 natural satellites are known, and they got their names from ancient Greek and Roman mythology associated with Neptune, Poseidon, and the oceans. The largest of them are: Triton, Nereid, Proteus; the others - Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Galatea, Larissa, Hippocampus, Galimeda, Psamath, Sao, Laomedea and Neso - are inferior in size to them. And in order to capture the importance and significance of the planet for Astronomy and culture, Swedish composer Thomas Blentarp, the creator of the Tau Ceti project, published his mini-album "Neptune EP", consisting of a couple of pleasant tracks. The title one directs us right to Neptune, & under its unhurried content, seasoned with melodic inclusions, we fly around the specified object. It seems to us very mysterious, its size is awesome and that's why we want to get to know it better. And the 2nd theme - Across Endless Oceans - makes you think about how long the "icy oceans" of the planet are, seemingly boundless. This work, which includes likeable synths, notes & a measured tempo, is able to give a loyal fan of electronic music a few nice and good listening minutes! Even though this edition is small, it still reflected the attraction of Neptune and wonderfully delighted my ear! So I sincerely wish Thomas to continue writing great music, inspired by many objects of the Universe, & become a famous author in his understanding of the Spacewave genre! And to you - have a fine acquaintance with his job!
🚀 Glory, Glory, SpaceSynth! 💙

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Librina Russia
Posts: 4974
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:10 pm
Location: Kimry, Russian Federation

Re: My Forum Diary

Post by Librina »

Dear guys! 😀
I know that many of you are very interested in the history of the origin of my nickname. I have already told about this on another forum, but not all of you were able to see & read my post. And now I will tell you about it here so that no one else will have any questions in the future. I formed my nickname by partially adding two words. This is my Zodiac sign – Libra & my real name is Marina. So the formula is quite simple: Libra + Marina = Librina. I hope that everything has become very clear to all of you now.

From here, you may have a completely natural question: "Why didn't I use my real name?"

I answer: it's all about a musical project by Finnish composer Martti Raski called Space Marine. By the time I registered on the site, I already knew about its existence. Yes, I like my real name, it's very beautiful, but I think that you all now understand what's the matter. Yes, I really wanted to be unique, so I came up with a nickname for myself, by which I'm known here. At first, I was a little upset by the fact that I could not use my name, but an inner voice told me: "But you can come up with a very attractive nickname that you will also love". 🧡

Yes, I really like it. "Librina" even sounds poetic. I think you liked it too. If that's the case, then I'm very glad. Or maybe one of you will also tell me the story of your nickname? I will be very pleased to read about it! Thank you so much for your attention! All the best!
;)
🚀 Glory, Glory, SpaceSynth! 💙

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Librina Russia
Posts: 4974
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:10 pm
Location: Kimry, Russian Federation

Re: My Forum Diary

Post by Librina »

A Special Day For The “Big Three” Of Space Music World

The "Big Three" in the world of Spacesynth for me are Anton Eriksson (Rigelz, Spacehawk), Robert Gaj (Rob Van Der Guy, SynthOne) & Chris van Buren (also known as NeoSpace). And the date of August 27, 2017 is notable for the fact that it was then that their first joint track - "Brothers In Arms" was released. And it, without any doubt, has become one of the most outstanding, great and iconic for the previous 10-year period of the development of the Spacesynth style. Each of them put the best and unique features of their own creativity into it, and as a result they came out with a famous and much-loved theme by many Cosmo fans, in which absolutely all melodies, synths and chords sound truly glorious and delightful! When creating the composition, they demonstrated themselves as a well-coordinated team & even managed to get along with each other, becoming really cool "Brothers In Arms" capable of many achievements. Well, the video clip for it also turned out to be incomparable, so watch and enjoy! 9384569346
► Show Spoiler

And in honor of the 6th anniversary of the beginning of their collaboration, I decided to create a small thematic set with 3 tracks (one from each of them) about our planet Earth, differing from each other in stylistics and content. For example, Spacehawk offers to conquest it, Rob Van Der Guy admires it as an element, and Chris van Buren tells about life on it. I hope you'll enjoy this selection very much! 🌍
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Yes, these Spacesynth composers are so different, but they have the same goal - to make a significant contribution to the development of the genre & do everything in their power for its greatness and prosperity. And that's why I would like to sincerely wish them even more enthusiastic comments related to their wonderful works, sincere adoration in our environment and tremendous success! Robert, Anton, Chris, you are masterful and very experienced Lords of Synths who evoke truly positive emotions and always give so much joy to listeners! May all the good that you have done in life come back to you a hundredfold, and music lovers will certainly be grateful to you for such amazing tracks! So continue this productive interaction, discover new facets of your talents, and stay the same handsome men, cheerful and young at heart! Hurray! 05459986
🚀 Glory, Glory, SpaceSynth! 💙

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Librina Russia
Posts: 4974
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:10 pm
Location: Kimry, Russian Federation

Re: My Forum Diary

Post by Librina »

So, hello everyone again! 👋
Yes, I haven't written anything here for a long time, and for various reasons: I made posts on my Youtube channel, created new topics on the Portal, spent quite a lot of time searching for news, tracks & other things suitable for publication on the site, & sometimes I just didn't have an opportunity to enter the forum due to my employment on work and household chores. Well, now I was inspired again to continue keeping a diary, and I decided to restart from a repost of an article I found recently. I think it's very interesting, educational and this is its content:


Methuselah: The oldest star in the Universe

Star Of Methuselah.jpg
"In 2000, scientists looked to date what they thought was the oldest star in the Universe. They made observations via the European Space Agency's (ESA) Hipparcos satellite and estimated that HD140283 — or Methuselah as it's commonly known — was a staggering 16 billion years old.
Such a figure was rather baffling. After all, the age of the Universe — determined from observations of the cosmic microwave background — is 13.8 billion years old, so how can a star be older than the Universe?
"It was a serious discrepancy," says astronomer Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University. So with that in mind, Bond and his colleagues set out to discover truth and test the accuracy of the figure. Their conclusions were just as mind-blowing.
Astronomers began observing Methuselah — named in reference to a biblical patriarch who is said to have died aged 969, making him the longest-lived of all the figures in the Bible — more than 100 years ago. The curious star is located some 190 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Libra and it rapidly journeys across the sky at 800,000 mph (1.3 million kilometers per hour).
t was clear that the star was old. The metal-poor subgiant is predominantly made of hydrogen and helium and contains very little iron. Such composition meant the star must have come into being when helium and hydrogen dominated the Universe and before iron became commonplace (the heavier elements only appeared when massive stars created them in their cores).
But could Methuselah really be more than two billion years older than its environment? Surely that is just not possible. Either the star was older than the universe or the Universe was not as "young" as scientists thought it to be. Or maybe the dating was simply all wrong. What was it to be?

Investigating the age of Methuselah

A mystery of this magnitude could not be ignored so Bond and his colleagues attempted to unearth the truth by pouring over 11 sets of observations that had been recorded between 2003 and 2011.
These observations had been made by the Fine Guidance Sensors of the Hubble Space Telescope, which noted the positions, distances and energy output of stars. In acquiring parallax, spectroscopy and photometry measurements, the scientists could determine a better sense of age.
"One of the uncertainties with the age of HD 140283 was the precise distance of the star," Bond said. "It was important to get this right because we can better determine its luminosity &, from that, its age — the brighter the intrinsic luminosity, the younger the star. We were looking for the parallax effect, which meant we were viewing the star six months apart to look for shift in its position due to the orbital motion of the Earth, which tells us the distance"
Bond adds that there were also uncertainties in the theoretical modeling of the stars, such as the exact rates of nuclear reactions in the core and the importance of elements diffusing downwards in the outer layers. So they worked on the idea that leftover helium diffuses deeper into the core, leaving less hydrogen to burn via nuclear fusion. With fuel used faster, the age is lowered.
"Another factor that was important was, of all things, the amount of oxygen in the star," Bond said. HD 140283 had a higher than predicted oxygen-to-iron ratio and, since oxygen was not abundant in the Universe for a few million years, it pointed again to a lower age for the star.
As a result of all of this work, Bond and his collaborators estimated HD 140283's age to be 14.46 billion years. It was a significant reduction on the 16 billion previously claimed but it was still more than the age of the universe itself.
In that sense, it didn't clear up the mystery and, on the face of it, simply ensured Methuselah remained a curiosity. But the scientists posed a residual uncertainty of 800 million years, which Bond said made the star's age compatible with the age of the universe. It was a major breakthrough.
"Like all measured estimates, it is subject to both random and systematic error," said physicist Robert Matthews of Aston University in Birmingham, UK, who was not involved in the study. "The overlap in the error bars gives some indication of the probability of a clash with cosmological age determinations".
"In other words, the best-supported age of the star conflicts with that for the derived age of the Universe [as determined by the cosmic microwave background], and the conflict can only be resolved by pushing the error bars to their extreme limits".
Further refinements saw the age of HD 140283 fall a bit more. A 2014 follow-up study, for instance, updated the star's age to 14.27 billion years. "Again, if one includes all sources of uncertainty — both in the observational measurements and the theoretical modeling — the error is about 700 or 800 million years, so there is no conflict because 13.8 billion years lies within the star's error bar," Bond said.
What's more, in May 2021, another group of astronomers revised the best estimates for the age and mass of Methuselah and, having modeled how stars change over time, they found its age to be 12 billion years. It still makes HD 140283 extremely old (the sun, by comparison, is only a kid at 4.6 billion years old) but it puts the age of the star well and truly within the age of the universe. Or does it?

Investigating the age of the Universe

On the one hand, Bond says the efforts to date Methuselah is "an amazing scientific achievement which provides very strong evidence for the Big Bang picture of the Universe". By showing similarities between the age of the Universe and that of this old nearby star, he says the problem with the age of the oldest stars is far less severe than it was in the 1990s when the stellar ages were approaching 18 billion years or, in one case, 20 billion years. "With the uncertainties of the determinations, the ages are now agreeing," Bond said.
Yet, on the other hand, Matthews believes the problem has not yet been resolved. Astronomers at an international conference of top cosmologists at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California, in July 2019 were puzzled over studies that suggested different ages for the universe. They were looking at measurements of galaxies that are relatively nearby which suggest the universe is younger by hundreds of millions of years compared to the age determined by the cosmic microwave background.
Far from being 13.8 billion years old, as estimated by the European Planck space telescope's detailed measurements of cosmic radiation in 2013, the Universe may be as young as 11.4 billion years. If that is, indeed, the case, then Methuselah is one again older than the Universe. The plot, indeed, thickens, but how accurate are these re-estimates proving to be?
One of those behind the studies to date the Universe is Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
The conclusions are based on the idea of an expanding Universe, as shown in 1929 by Edwin Hubble. This is fundamental to the Big Bang — the understanding that there was once a state of hot denseness that exploded out, stretching space. It indicates a starting point that should be measurable, but fresh findings are suggesting that the expansion rate is around 10% higher than the one suggested by Planck.
Indeed, the Planck team determined that the expansion rate was 67.4 km per second per Megaparsec, but more recent measurements taken of the expansion rate of the Universe point to values of 73 or 74.
That means there is a difference between the measurement of how fast the Universe is expanding today and the predictions of how fast it should be expanding based on the physics of the early Universe, Riess said. It's leading to a reassessment of accepted theories while also showing there is still much to learn about dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to be behind this conundrum.
A higher value for the Hubble Constant indicates a shorter age for the Universe. A constant of 67.74 km per second per Megaparsec would lead to an age of 13.8 billion years, whereas one of 73, or even as high as 77 as some studies have shown, would indicate a universe age no greater than 12.7 billion years.
It's a mismatch that suggests, as stated, that HD 140283 could still be older than the Universe. It has also since been superseded by a 2019 study published in the journal Science that proposed a Hubble Constant of 82.4 — suggesting that the Universe's age is only 11.4 billion years. Astronomers are hoping the James Webb Space Telescope could shed light on this particular mystery.
Matthews believes the answers lie in greater cosmological refinement. "I suspect that the observational cosmologists have missed something that creates this paradox, rather than the stellar astrophysicists," he said, pointing to the measurements of the stars being perhaps more accurate.
"That's not because the cosmologists are in any way sloppier, but because the age determination of the universe is subject to more and arguably trickier observational and theoretical uncertainties than that of stars".

Why does the Universe appear younger than Methuselah?

But what could be making the Universe potentially appear younger than this particular star?
"There are two options, and the history of science suggests that in such cases the reality is a mix of both," Matthews said. "In this case that would be sources of observational error that haven't been fully understood, plus some gaps in the theory of the dynamics of the Universe, such as the strength of dark energy, which has been the prime driver of the cosmic expansion for many billions of years now".
He suggests the possibility that the current "age paradox" reflects time variation in dark energy, and thus a change in the rate of acceleration — a possibility theorists have found might be compatible with ideas about the fundamental nature of gravity, such as the so-called causal set theory. New research into gravitational waves could help to resolve the paradox, Matthews said.
To do this, scientists would look at the ripples in the fabric of space and time created by pairs of dead stars, rather than relying on the cosmic microwave background or the monitoring of nearby objects such as Cepheid variables and supernovae to measure the Hubble Constant — the former resulting in the speed of 67 km per second per Megaparsec and the latter in 73.
Trouble is, measuring gravitational waves is no easy task, given they were only directly detected for the first time in 2015. But according to Stephen Feeney, an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute in New York, a breakthrough could be made over the next decade. The idea is to collect data from collisions between pairs of neutron stars using the visible light these events emit to figure out the speed they are moving relative to Earth. It also entails analyzing the resulting gravitational waves for an idea of distance — both of which can combine to give a measurement of the Hubble Constant that should be the most accurate yet.
The mystery of the age of HD 140283 is leading to something bigger and more scientifically complex, altering the understanding of how the Universe works.
"The most likely explanations for the paradox are some overlooked observational effect and/or something big missing from our understanding of the dynamics of the cosmic expansion," Matthews said. Precisely what that "something" is, is sure to keep astronomers challenged for some time".

Such an amazing star! And it has already inspired Swedish performer Thomas Veberöd (also known as Tau Ceti) to create a magnificent composition dedicated to it. This theme was included in his album "Distant Fires", released on April 17th, 2022, and although you can listen to it in the topic with this long-play, I decided to add it here anyway. One has only to listen to it, and it will take you far away - into the Cosmic depths, and its sound will awaken in your imagination the approximate life cycle of the star shining in its part of the sky and illuminating the space around it. Enjoy! And yes, it's very nice to be back here! 9384569346

Tau Ceti - The Ancient Star Of Methuselah ⭐
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🚀 Glory, Glory, SpaceSynth! 💙

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Librina Russia
Posts: 4974
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:10 pm
Location: Kimry, Russian Federation

Re: My Forum Diary

Post by Librina »

Well, I keep on sharing my thoughts and good news with you. So, this year, fans of the American series "ER" celebrated 30 years since it first appeared on NBC (19.09.1994) & soon became famous all over the world. Several articles were devoted to this event, the authors of which recalled the show with love and warmth. I also have a lot of memories associated with it, and I could talk at length about my feelings and experiences, but perhaps I won't take up much of your time. I'll just say that, after almost 25 years since I fell in love with "ER", I came to conclusion that I even feel "enchanted" & can't watch other medical dramas, because it captured me so much & gave me so many emotions!

"ER" Reunion: Noah Wyle to Star in Medical Show ‘The Pitt’ for Max ;)
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And I would have lived for a long time just thinking about "ER", but this year I unexpectedly learned that three members of the series team, namely John Wells, R. Scott Gemmill and Noah Wyle, are engaged in another medical show, called "The Pitt". And if the action of "ER" is in Chicago, then the events of the current drama take place in Pittsburgh. And recently a trailer for a new show was released, after watching which, I suddenly felt like I wanted to live again, and it became interesting to watch this novelty, because its premiere will take place very soon, in January 2025. By the way, Noah Wyle performed here not only as one of his producers, but also as an actor, and the series itself has already been dubbed as "ER 2.0" in the comments to the teaser. So I was curious if the new series would be able to "break the magic spell" of "ER", and if it really happens, it will be a kind of sensation for me and something unbelievable! And here's the official trailer:

The Pitt - Official Teaser (Max) 76454545
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Well, and as a pleasant attachment to the publication – a magnificent, glorious, hit, dance composition from my favorite Russian group "Plazma" – "One Life", which is acquiring a special meaning now. Just listen to its beautiful lyrics, and you will immediately understand everything! Let it amuse you and cheer you up so much! Hurray! 05459986
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🚀 Glory, Glory, SpaceSynth! 💙

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