You learn something new everyday: what did you learn today?

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I learned that Pluto is no longer officially classed as a 'planet'.

That a white spot on a cat's chest is called a "locket".

I rarely learn anything I'm not embarrassed for not having known already.

Today I learned that no one exactly knows what stars we see in the sky at night are officially dead and what are not.



I thought astronomers do have a method. But they don't. They can only do probabilistic conjectures.

Huh? What do you mean by having a method? Stars follow the laws of physics, and their evolution is quite well known.

There's always the off chance that something completely unexpected will happen, contradicting any scientific theory, no matter how much empirical evidence supports it, but there's nothing special about stars in this regard. Science isn't about absolute certainties; everything rests on experiment.

The physical laws governing the evolution of typical stars are backed up by a lot of evidence and there's no known evidence against them. A random star you see in the sky can't just die for no reason any more than a stone resting on the ground can spontaneously jump into the air. So there's reasonable doubt whether a star is still alive or not only when the star is old enough and the uncertainty with which its distance is known is greater than the distance travelled by light in a time matching the uncertainty with which we can tell when the star will die.

You can't know when exactly the star will die, because you don't know exactly its current state just looking at it from Earth. But you can tell a star which still has a lot of life ahead of it won't just die before the time comes. You won't see our Sun beginning to die in a million years, literally. In fact, long before it dies, it'll become so bright the Earth's oceans will boil away, and then it'll grow into a red giant, swallowing all the inner planets, but it won't matter much to our descendants, because Humanity will either be extinct or have left long before that.

Of course, these events could be very different if we start deliberately messing with the Sun, once we develop the required technology, but that's another story.

I learned that one of the candidates for the leadership of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has been voted "Parliamentary Beard Of The Year" on five occasions.

Everyone had their own view on what is bad luck.

The man working in the cigarette store not only is nice and let me hang up my flier, but is fascinating, really smart, and super well informed. He should be teaching at a university or motivational speaking.

I learned today that the Northern Territory in Australia is working towards becoming an actual state in the next 3 years, rather than remaining a territory with partial oversight by the federal parliament.

It's always confused me as to why the Northern Territory wasn't already a fully self-governing state. They already have the third-largest land area of any state/territory in the country, along with their own government, flag and emblems. On top of this, as a territory they have diminished representation in the federal parliament, which currently can also overturn any laws passed in the NT. This actually happened in 1997 when the federal parliament blocked the territory's new law legalising euthanasia.

Apparently there was a referendum in the NT back in 1998 on whether or not to become a fully self-governing state, but a majority of voters at the time voted 'no'. It seems that a lot of voters supported the idea of full statehood, but didn't like the details of the proposed new state constitution and state government put forth by the then-Chief Minister.

Hopefully those issues will be sorted out this time around. Personally I'd like for the Northern Territory to finally gain equal standing with the other Australian states.

^ Interesting. I wonder what will happen to its name if it does become a state. Maybe Northern Australia? I also wonder if the same can happen to ACT. Maybe not as it's a special territory and it's way too small.

^ Yeah, that'll be interesting. "Northern Australia" or "North Australia" would seem to be the most likely candidates for a new name. Personally I'd like to see something a little more creative, like "Capricornia". Or better yet, let's have at least one state with an Aboriginal name, to match the one major Australian city with an Aboriginal name – Canberra. But yeah, I can't see the ACT becoming a state, though.

The Northern Territory will probably need to change their own flag to something more consistent with a state; in other words, something with a Union Jack in it. Tony Abbott thinks there might need to be a change to the national flag too, to accommodate a new 7-pointed Commonwealth star to represent seven states. Hmmm ... I wonder how long it's been since the Prime Minister has seen what the Australian flag actually looks like. (I assume he means a new 8-pointed star; or the current 7-pointed star to actually represent seven states, rather than 6 states + 1 point for all territories.)

I have learned today what I'm writing about is needful for this generation, and that is frakking humbling.

Regarding the life cycle of stars:

Being able to distinguish the point at which a star is in its cycle is almost... well, pointless, due to the fact that they are so far from Earth; the Universe itself could have ended many millions of years ago, and we wouldn't know for another million years (give or take), due to the time it takes stars' light to reach our planet. (The study of Astronomy is, in actuality, the study of history, not the study of anything in so-called 'real time').

That astronauts are required to learn Russian as a language as part of extensive training, and need to run the ISS using Russian-language instruction books if needed.

^ Well, now you've learned something else.

But no, you're not ignorant. There are plenty of born-and-bred Aussies (you know, the ones that "grew here" instead of "flew here" ) who wouldn't know what the large star on the Australian flag means. Heck, even our Prime Minister gets it wrong on occasion.

That there is a flavor of Oreo called green tea Oreos, but they're only sold in Japan.