According to Colwell

A Supernova is the explosive death of a massive star, and is also one of the coolest (not in the temperature sense!) things in the universe. Stars are basically defined by the fluctuating battle in their interiors between their own crushing weight forcing atomic nuclei to fuse and the tremendous thermal pressure generated by the energy released from that nuclear fusion. As it happens, more massive atomic nuclei are more energetically stable than less massive nuclei. This means that the mass of, say, a carbon nucleus is less than the sum of the masses of the three helium nuclei that fuse to form it inside the core of a star. How can that be? It be. Einstein famously showed the equivalence between mass and energy, so mass is a form of potential energy in the same way that the height of a boulder on a hillside represents potential energy. The boulder at the top of the hill has gravitational potential energy that is released when it rolls down the hill. Protons and neutrons, the constituents of atomic nuclei, have mass potential energy that is released when they are brought close enough together for the nuclear strong force to bind them together into a larger nucleus. Just as the rolling boulder manifests energy in a new form (rolling and falling faster) as its gravitational potential energy is released, so do the products of nuclear fusion in stars release energy that comes from its mass potential energy. In the case of nuclear fusion, that energy is released in the form of gamma ray (high energy) photons, neutrinos, and the kinetic energy of the occasional positron.

Up to a point: it turns out that it is only energetically advantageous for nuclei to fuse elements as massive as iron or less. Fusing more massive nuclei, such as silver and gold, is like rolling the boulder back up the hill: it takes more energy rather than releasing it. That’s where supernovae come in. Once the core of a massive star has fused into iron, it’s not energetically advantageous for any further fusion to take place. The iron core gets more and more massive as fusion in shells around the core dumps more heavy elements onto it. At some point the electron degeneracy pressure holding the core up cannot support its own weight, and it collapses suddenly and violently. Now we’re back to the boulder rolling down the hill: gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy as the core collapses from something the size of the Earth to just a few kilometers across. This release of energy, which quickly bounces back outward into space, is a supernova. And it is in this very high energy event that atomic nuclei more massive than iron are created. Earlier this year astronomers serendipitously caught the early X-ray emission from a supernova in the galaxy NGC 2770 about 100 million light years from here. Because the bright X-ray flash is the first light to escape from the exploding star, catching it allowed the astronomers, led by Alicia Soderberg of Princeton, to alert the rest of the astronomical community to observe the supernova, providing an unprecedented record of the event from its earliest stages. Usually supernovae are not observed until days after the initial core collapse, because the brightness of the explosion in the visible part of the spectrum grows over the course of many days. They were fortunate enough to catch this one in the act because they were observing a supernova that had taken place in the same galaxy earlier. Perhaps the coolest thing about supernovae is that you probably have a fair amount of material made in an ancient supernova, whether it is a gold ring or silver necklace, every piece of that was blasted into space by a supernova explosion more than 4.6 billion years ago.

This documentary about a group of singers with an average of 80 is surprisingly moving. The style of documentarien Stephen Walker is initially disarming as his narration explains in conversational first person how he got interested in the singing group “Young at Heart”. At first it is charming and amusing to see a 92-year-old woman singing “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash. The group, in existence since 1982, brings a totally new twist to modern and classic rock songs. As the movie unfolds we follow their rehearsals for a new stage show, “Alive and Well”, as well as the inevitable medical setbacks for a large group of people in their 80s. Their love for the group and the joy they get from participating it is infectious, and it is impossible not to get attached to them or moved by their uniformly positive and upbeat attitude.

Although I like Tina Fey from both Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, my expectations for this movie were modest. But what appears in the previews to be only a gimmick comedy turns out to be, well, a really good gimmick comedy. Fey plays Kate, a successful executive for an organic food company run by Steve Martin in a hilarious turn as a new age guru who has had delicious salmon with native Americans and wants his new flagship store to capture the essence of a one-inch seashell. With her biological clock ticking, Kate feels the imperative of motherhood and turns to surrogacy when her uterus turns out to be inhospitable and the wait for adoption is years. Enter Poehler as Angie and her longtime boyfriend Carl. Angie agrees to carry Kate’s in vitro baby setting up a set of easy gags based on Kate’s type A personality with Angie, who “discontinued high school” and would rather watch America’s Funniest Home Videos than listen to foreign language CDs so Kate’s baby will be born bilingual.

But the movie, written and directed by Michael McCullers, actually gives the characters a story. Rather than being a drawn-out SNL segment, Baby Mama is a thoroughly enjoyable comedy with a plot as well as plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Angie stumbles through an explanation of her presence in Kate’s apartment to Kate’s new boyfriend, saying “I live in an apartment in New York with her husband which I have” but they travel around visiting various stock exchanges. But, like most good comedies, most of the funny lines are intertwined with the story and cannot be easily pulled out of context.

You have to like a comic book movie that casts Robert Downey Jr. as the superhero and Gwyneth Paltrow as the plain jane unnoticed assistant. Jon Favreau, my co-star from Deep Impact, directs this entertaining action outing. Downey (Downey Jr.?) plays Tony Stark, the genius son of one of the creators of the atomic bomb. After graduating from MIT at 17, the young Stark followed in his father’s footsteps by creating high-tech weapons for Stark Industries. One of the likable aspects of this movie is how cheerfully unlikeable Stark is. Downey Jr. (Downey?) can make an unlikeable, obnoxious, selfish, womanizing, amoral, weapon-building genius likeable like no other. And it’s not just because he poses for pictures with the troops in Afghanistan who are taking delivery of Stark’s latest and greatest missile system that promises to rain unprecedented destruction on the countryside.

One thing leads to another, and next thing you know Stark decides maybe he can use all those clever robots and computers in the basement of his palatial L.A. home for something more constructive than weapons. As Iron Man, Stark flies around in a high-powered form-fitting metal suit complete with, well, weapons, a heads-up display, and a bluetooth cell phone. The plot revolves around the double-dealings of Stark Industries with the bad guys and the good guys, perpetuating war for the sake of arms sales and Tony’s transformation from CEO to Iron Man. The action is entertaining, but what sets the movie above the run-of-the-mill flying superhero movie is the devil-may-care attitude of Stark, who is clearly having as much fun as the audience.