I always hear people talk about this but what is it exactly? What happens? Is it simply when an application freezes and you have to force quit? Or is it something more? How can you tell the difference? Sorry for the dumb q's, thanks...
It signals the death of a far off star, millions of light years away.
Actually, it's when your computer isn't reacting to something correctly. Often it's related to hardware: something not installed properly, not working, or some kind of error in general. It's not the same as Force Quiting, as with that you still have control over your computer. When a kernel panic occurs, it requires you to shut down. A transparent, grey screen slowly drops down like a curtain, and presents the message of doom.
It looks like this. And you'll know when you get one.
It's the UNIX equivalent of the BSOD. The name is actually pretty descriptive. The OS kernel, for one reason or another (bad hardware, bad driver, etc) runs into a situation it can't safely get out of. It's response is to freak out and ask you to restart. If it happens in a normal session in OS X, it looks like so:
Yeah right! Even though it's more work to post a thread than to click google and type(I know that's what you were suggesting, but just thought I'd say it for our lesser knowledgeable posters...), guess some people are just post number bumping eh...