A Sense of Scale
Wow, I love this movie. It shows the relative scale of astronomical bodies, from Mercury (~â…“ the size of Earth) to W Cephei (almost 300,000 x Earth)Space Station video
We could have made a video like this up in Algonquin if we had the equipment. We all watched the International Space Station fly overhead nice and bright until it disappeared in Earth’s shadow.What is Ivan up to?
Mentos experiments at Andy’s place
We went to Andy’s annual BBQ tonight, and I brought along our camera. There were a series of “drop the mentos into the bottle of Diet Coke” experiments. I dutifully recorded them all and herein are the links to the videos on YouTube:And here’s an alternate viewpoint of the same event:
Deep Impact has .. impacted!
Just watched
NASA’s Deep Impact
space probe crash into the Tempel 1 comet.
Yowza!
The impact was way, way brighter than people were expecting.
One guy on NASA TV wondered if they happened to hit a pocket of gas underground or something.
*My* theory is that the comet is partially made of nitro-glycerin..
Michael and I tried to find something on TV, checking Discovery, the Learning Channel.. but nothing.
Discovery was busy playing MythBusters.
CNN was talking about sports when we checked, although John Chew told me he was watching spotty coverage
that consisted partially of assurances that the impact would not send the comet to earth, destroying civilization.
Egad.
I tried various means by which to get to NASA TV, including RealPlayer and Windows Media Player,
but what ended up working best was Video Lan Client on my PC (wouldn’t work on my Mac).
Here are some pics..
Ivan in Michael’s textbook
Michael showed me page 451 of his science textbook just now, and I had to scan it and post it here.
Ivan in Michael’s text
See the
full-sized image on flickr.
Andy’s pic of M42
Andy took this picture of M42, the Orion Nebula
CBC’s /Nerd
You can subscribe to Tod Maffin’s /Nerd podcast and hear shows a couple of days before they are aired. Cool. In other news, the late nights continue. They should be finished by Wednesday. Ronnie is feeling a little sick, with a sore throat. I may have to take time off or work at home or something.StarFest 2004
Posted by rae in science
at 9:37 am on Monday, 23 August 2004
at 9:37 am on Monday, 23 August 2004
The moon, taken with my Olympus D-510 through Jeff’s telescope. Click picture for larger version.
The sun. Click picture for larger version.
The sun through an H-Alpha filter, so you can see the prominences. [sp?] Click picture for larger version.
A panoramic view of the tent village at StarFest, with Jeff and Michael next to a telescope. Click picture for a very much larger (11,244 x 936, and 1,269k) version.
Nanotechnology rave
Posted by rae in science
at 10:20 am on Monday, 19 April 2004
I posted this to
a slashdot thread
If we somehow do manage to get home “makers” (as they’re sometimes called in SF), it’s true that the economy will go to Hell in a handbasket. However, everyone’s dependence on that economy will follow. In effect, everyone will be able to make their own food, CD players, etc, etc. It will be the beginning of the Real Information Age™. People will trade nanorecipes for fridges, stoves, ovens, photovoltaic arrays, computers, and cars over the internet. Just about anything you buy right now will be “downloadable”. Like the latest Porsche? Here, someone scanned the one he bought (by dumping it into a maker in “record” mode) and uploaded it to at 10:20 am on Monday, 19 April 2004
rec.maker-recipe.auto.
Aside from social needs (hospitals, internet service, transportation, government) there won’t be a whole heck of a lot left for people to do. Expect the cost of physical labour (and people’s incomes from that) to dwindle. Expect the cost of goods to do likewise. “Knowledge workers” who design new items, the recipes for which can be sold over the Internet will do well. These will be people who know How Things Work, and who are currently emplloyed in the manufacturing industry, so at least some people will make the transition nicely.
In a lot of ways it will be good. It will remove a lot of resource bottlenecks such as food, water, oil, .. chocolate. How it will impact our need for energy depends on the efficiency of the technology. Will the energy cost to make a barrel of oil be higher than a barrel of oil? If not, we’re in good shape. If so, then we would be in for interesting times.