Simian Design

Ran across this from Make.  The GeoEye-1 (Google’s satellite) took pictures of President Obama’s inauguration the other day. Luckily it was a clear day, and the pictures, taken from 423 miles up, look great.

(via Make)

This is straight out of a Lovecraftian nightmare. It even looks like Shub-Niggurath.

Shub-Niggurath here, or Shub as I like to call him, is comprised of several different, totally individual organisms that have decided to basically live all up in each others shit. They take on the characteristics of a single large organism. It’s like a hive mind taken to the next step.

Two groups of astronomers have taken the first pictures of planets going around other stars.   This is just astounding.  We’re now able to view OTHER PLANETS.  This just makes me giddy. 

Dr. Christian Marois is with a team from the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia that recorded three planets circling a star (HR 8799) that is 130 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

Paul Kalas, leading a team from UC Berkeley, photographed a planet orbiting Fomalhaut, which is 25 light-years away in the Piscis Austrinus constellation.

Granted, if you go look at the photos, they are scratchy, grainy images with little pixels jumping around.  But if you’re an astronomer, you see this and you see planets.  Kepler himself would feel right at home looking at these images. 

Now we’ve discovered 300 extrasolar planets out there, but based on indirect observation.  This is mostly done by measuring dips in starlight as the planet passes in front of it.

“Every extrasolar planet detected so far has been a wobble on a graph,” said Bruce Macintosh, an astrophysicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and a member of Dr. Marois’s team. “These are the first pictures of an entire system.”

These new planets are HUGE.   Just to put this into perspective, Jupiter is two and a half times larger than ALL the other planets in our solar system combined.  It’s 318 times more massive than Earth (it’s diameter is equal to 11 Earths.)  And we’re GREATLY expanding this size with these planets.  Hell, Jupiter is so big it’s barycenter is actually above the Sun’s surface. (A barycenter is the point between two objects where they balance each other. In other words, it is the center of gravity where two or more celestial bodies orbit each other.)

The three planets orbiting HR 8799 are roughly 10, 9 and 6 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbit their star in periods of 450, 180 and 100 years respectively, all counterclockwise.

The Fomalhaut planet is about three times as massive as Jupiter, according to Dr. Kalas’s calculations, and is on the inner edge of a huge band of dust, taking roughly 872 years to complete a revolution of its star.

I feel strongly that we, as a race, need to move to the stars.  We need to find other planets, other places where we can expand and grow.  These sort of studies and findings are crucial to that sort of growth.  That’s why I get so excited.

NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds.  My brain has officially been blown.  This is just staggering to me.

A laser instrument designed to gather knowledge of how the atmosphere and surface interact on Mars has detected snow from clouds about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) above the spacecraft’s landing site. Data show the snow vaporizing before reaching the ground. 

I realize that the economy is doing a nose-dive, but there is no way in hell we should stop explorations like this.  Moon, Mars, all of it needs to continue.    Photo is of a Mars sunrise, taken on the 101st day of the Mars Rover.

Wow.  This blows my mind.  Scientists have recently found that pain signals that originate in arthritic joints actually cause  the arthritis to expand.  The pain signals cause disease along both ends of the nerve (spine and joint).

Pain is more than a symptom of osteoarthritis, it is an inherent and damaging part of the disease itself, according to a study published today in journal Arthritis and Rheumatism. More specifically, the study revealed that pain signals originating in arthritic joints, and the biochemical processing of those signals as they reach the spinal cord, worsen and expand arthritis. In addition, researchers found that nerve pathways carrying pain signals transfer inflammation from arthritic joints to the spine and back again, causing disease at both ends.

One of the great things of this find is that there are drugs out there that interfere with these inflammatory receptors.  These new drugs could potentially help treat Alzheimer’s, dementia, multiple sclerosis, and osteoarthritis.  This is great news.   As someone who deals with chronic pain, I’m hoping that this leads to many new ways to possibly treat it.

Somebodys granddaughter works at NASA and had these phenomenal photos from a Shuttle mission.  They are just stunning.  They look so peaceful.  I would image the urge to just simply float away is a strong one, and that keeping focus is difficult.

Have a happy day on Mars.

This picture of a crater resembling a “happy face” was acquired by the Context Camera CTX on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 28, 2008. The unnamed crater is about 3 kilometers 1.9 miles across. It is located among the Nereidum Montes, north of the Argyre basin, near 45.1°S, 55.0°W. North is toward the right and sunlight illuminates the scene from the upper right. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS

Create your own simple homemade Van de Graaff generator.

This project will show you how to build a device that can generate 12,000 volts from an empty soda can and a rubber band. This is capable of drawing 1/2 inch sparks from the soda can to my finger. The spark is harmless, and similar to the jolt you get from a doorknob after scuffing your feet on the carpet.

To build the toy, you need:

* An empty soda can
* A small nail
* A rubber band, 1/4 inch by 3 or 4 inches
* A 5×20 millimeter GMA-Type electrical fuse (such as Radio Shack #270-1062)
* A small DC motor (such as Radio Shack #273-223)
* A battery clip (Radio Shack #270-324)
* A battery holder (Radio Shack #270-382)
* A styrofoam cup (a paper cup will also work)
* A hot glue gun (or regular glue if you don’t mind waiting)
* Two 6 inch long stranded electrical wires (such as from an extension cord)
* Two pieces of 3/4 inch PVC plumbing pipe, each about 2 or 3 inches long
* One 3/4 inch PVC coupler
* One 3/4 inch PVC T connector
* Some electrical tape
* A block of wood

Robert Krampf is my hero of the week.  His online video on how effective water is at absorbing heat is brilliant.  Quick and simple, it’s the sort of thing you can do with kids that will probably give them at worst, a momentary thrill, but at best, a passion for hands-on science.

I’m totally doing this with my kids this week.

This is like magic.  How To Crack A Combination Lock. A mathematical process to figure out what the combination of any rotary-type combination lock.

My favorite step is the first step, where you put tension on the lock, find the numbers, get rid of the .5’s, get rid of the ones that end in the same number, and left with one single number.  It’s like a freaking magic trick.  Quite cool.

Of course this information and video is for informational purposes only, and should only be used for good, not evil.