{"id":3023,"date":"2025-12-21T11:29:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T19:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/?p=3023"},"modified":"2026-01-27T05:23:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:23:42","slug":"scary-barbie-and-other-celestial-transients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/?p=3023","title":{"rendered":"celestial Transients"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3024\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3024\" style=\"width: 1350px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Celestial-Transients.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3024\" src=\"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Celestial-Transients.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1350\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3024\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Celestial Transients.\u00a0 Artistic rendering by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American magazine.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Happy Solstice!\u00a0 As good a day as any to talk about &#8221; . . . <em>Celestial transients, which are astronomical objects that appear suddenly from nowhere and usually disappear soon after, that contradict the standard truth that the universe changes predictably and slowly over billions of years. They include what the typically staid National Academy of Sciences called \u201cthe most catastrophic events in spacetime.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>[Quote from a <strong>Scientific American<\/strong> newsletter article titled, <strong>Mysterious Bright Flashes in the Night Sky<\/strong>, December 16, 2025, by Ann Finkbeiner and Clara Moskowitz.\u00a0 \u00a0[Click on image to enlarge].<\/p>\n<p>This is a relatively long read, but well worth the time it takes if you are feeling self-important at the moment.\u00a0 Prepare to be humbled by the immensity and the mysteries of the cosmos.\u00a0 Astrophysics is experiencing a golden age, thanks to the tools . . . orbiting telescopes, ground based radio telescopes, stellar and interstellar probes, etc., and the ever greater computing power available to process data.\u00a0 Of still greater importance is the international cooperation of scientists\u00a0 made possible by the World Wide Web.<\/p>\n<p>Go to www.scientificamerican.com to sign up for the free <em><strong>Today in Science<\/strong><\/em> newsletter.\u00a0 You can then choose from specific newsletter topics like: Mind &amp; Brain,\u00a0 Health &amp; Medicine, etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Happy Solstice!\u00a0 As good a day as any to talk about &#8221; . . . Celestial transients, which are astronomical objects that appear suddenly from nowhere and usually disappear soon after, that contradict the standard truth that the universe changes predictably and slowly over billions of years. They include what the typically staid National Academy &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/?p=3023\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">celestial Transients<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3023"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3023\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maxvollmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}