GC55VH7 Mad For Science: Light Echo
Type: Traditional | Size: Small | Difficulty: | Terrain:
By: Triggur @ | Hide Date: 05/28/2014 | Status: Available
Country: United States | State: Colorado
Coordinates: N40° 45.460 W105° 33.148 | Last updated: 08/30/2019 | Fav points: 0
       

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You're looking for a small, well-camo'd, water tight container containing a log, a handful of foreign coins, and one of the copper vacuum seal rings from my fusion reactor.

If you find that your sunny day coordinates are different from my cloudy day coordinates, please do let me know and I'll update them!

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One of the most startling events to watch in the universe is the explosion of a star and see its light echo ripple out at the speed of light.

It's common to look at these and think, "But that means the debris is moving at the speed of light! That's impossible!"

Correct! However instead of debris flying out of the explosion, what we're seeing is the shell of light generated by the brief burst of radiation from the explosion, rippling out and bouncing off a surrounding nebula as it moves.

Thus, it's only light that's moving out, which doesn't violate any laws of physics.

The result is a beautiful sequence that illuminates the complex structure of the nebula surrounding the star. The diameter of the sphere is 2 light years for every year the explosion is old because diameter is 2 times the radius; thus if the event happened 2 years ago, the light sphere would appear to be 4 light years wide.

06/02/2015 By Pixel Magic
As I was moving along a (non-existent) pathway that roughly followed the arc of caches, I remarked to myself that I'm doing a fair amount of bushwacking and tree hopping. It has been a while since I've had to hop skip and jump from place to place. My comfort level increased as I got into a routine and my sense of balance felt good. This cache added boulder hopping to the array of obstacles encountered on my journey. I'm looking for something old and twisted. The first snag I encounter has nothing hanging from it so I check my coords and luckily I'm still 20 or so feet from ground zero. As I hop around I spot a likely prospect. Sure enough, I found it. What relief. I just spent hours searching for the previous two caches with no luck. I'm feeling good now.

The container had water in it. I drained it out as best I could. The log envelope was dry, but the vacuum ring envelope had water in it too. I waved the paper and shook the envelope and felt satisfied that the worst of the saturation was removed. I closed the cover and felt that the gasket should hold provided that the wind doesn't bang it around.

06/03/2014 By Denali41
As a scientist, this** Mad For Science:** series immediately captured my attention–especially when combined with its backcountry placements (the specific type of geocache locations that I favor as a cache hider and a cache seeker). Triggur has conceptualized and executed a wonderful series. I’ve loved the individual cache write-ups, the photography/illustrations that support the written material, the fantastic selection of cache hiding locations, and the intrinsically challenging issues of getting to and finding certain of the caches. I knew when my puppy Orizaba and I set out this morning hoping to find all eight Mad For Science caches that we had a long day ahead, some of it in very challenging terrain. And the day turned out as anticipated–long and challenging, indeed.



Because of very high flows in Elkhorn Creek, I decided to approach the caches from the north, to get to the farthest one first and begin with “Fusion”, and then to move clockwise from placement to placement. This might have been a mistake, because in retrospect it appears that the caches were hidden on two days, and they were most likely approached from different directions during the hiding activities. We got in to very challenging route-finding between Star Scale and the three caches to the north (DNA, Large Hadron Collider, and Light Echo). This is steep, treacherous terrain with very tough rock formations and many fallen trees to circumvent--at least it was on the general route that I chose. There might be a better way from the south, but finding that “better way” toward the north, if one exists, might take some real time and testing. It was while I was mired in this terrain trap that I began thinking the unthinkable–that we might run out of time and not reach all eight caches! We did run out of time. When we eventually finished the climb up to the “saddle” just west of the Large Hadron Collider, south of Light Echo, and East of DNA, it was clear that I had insufficient time for all three of them plus Exoplanets on the way down. Of course “Collider” was my focal point for the entire day, so in the end I opted for it and Light Echo, unfortunately needing to omit DNA from my plans. But I still felt really good about reaching and finding seven of the eight Mad For Science caches. Doing this in a single day is a good workout, for sure! It certainly represented the toughest outing yet for my young puppy Orizaba. She did amazingly well, and is beginning to better appreciate just how far she can extend herself on ascending and descending decisions involving very steep terrain or boulders. It was a joy to have her with me today.



Larimer County has regulatory restrictions related to sound decibels. When the County Commissioners figure out that the light shell from an exploding star expands to a diameter of 4 light years just 2 years after the explosion, who knows what type of regulatory review might get underway so lighting standards can be established...



I’ve been a backcountry cacher from the time I started geocaching. I believe this is the finest set of backcountry caches in a themed series that I’ve found. My congratulations and thanks to Triggur for their creation. I'm pleased to have the {FTF} on this great cache.

06/01/2014 By HighCountryAdmin
Published