man i'm such a science dork. for some reason i was reading about helium-3 in a BBC article ... they were claiming that the large abundance of helium-3 on the moon made it a great fusion source. then i started reading on helium-3 and superfluidity. then i saw my chem buddy britt online (he's in norway studying transition-metal catalysts.. i forget specifically what), and we started talking about superfluidity.

basically a "superfluid" is a liquid that has no inner friction or inner viscosity. in theory, if you set a super fluid swirling in a bowl, it'll flow forever. the only problem is that you need to get helium-3 to about 0.004 K or so before it reaches a superfluid state (0 K is 'absolute zero' where there is no movement; it's impossible to attain in reality).

anyway, i remembered that i had actually read a book in the past year - brian greene's "the elegant universe." it's a great book about string theory, quantum mechanics, black holes, and other dorky physics things.

i actually think i'm gonna read that book again - i did thorougly enjoy reading it, although i couldn't finish the last few chapters (there was some wacky stuff that i just did not understand in the last few chapters regarding black holes [i think, i can't remember what the last chapters were about]).

anyway, here's a thought:

the earth and sun are separated by roughly 500 light seconds, meaning that the light that hits the earth is actually light that left the sun a 500 seconds ago (~8 minutes). now, if the sun were to spontaneously blow up ...

would the earth propel into the netherlands of space instantaneously or 8 minutes later?