January 2012
23 posts
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: Auroral Doughnut
We discuss the recent solar storm and associated aurora. Chris has tips for how to get drunk in Norway. We wonder just who Norman Pogson was and if spacecraft should be renamed quite so easily.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #18. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x. Follow us on Twitter...
“WhaleFM already has produced the equivalent of years of cataloguing work by...”
– Citizen Scientists Study Whale Songs: Years of Work Done in Months | @ScientificAmerican
WhaleFM rolls on and the pairings keep coming in. I’ve been building up a cool map of the emerging call categories as the project continues. I hope to share it later this year when it starts to be...
“Few physical scientists use blogs, Twitter, Open Notebook Science, social...”
– Online tools are ‘distraction’ for science - physicsworld.com
I believe I was one of those interviewed for this study and sort of assumed that this would be the main finding. I think that it is hard to change the way people do their work. I also think that this shows that meetings like...
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: SETI, WETI and PETI
Rob has been to the Royal Society to meet real life jounralists, while Chris has been on the telly (again) for BBC Stargazing Live. Planet Hunters had a really big week and the Fermi paradox is back on our minds.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #17. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x....
Oxford Solar System Walk
If you live here in Oxford you can now explore the Solar System amongst the spires!
Originally created for Tal’s Good Feet, this walk turns Oxford into a scale model of the Solar System. It takes 60-90 minutes to walk out to Neptune and back. You can download the walking tour as a PDF leaflet, or use the embedded map below.
We will be doing some of these walks tomorrow. as guided tours...
Science in Real Time
This past week has been busy thanks to some great media coverage for the Zooniverse, both online, on TV and at the big astronomy meeting in the USA last week (AAS in Austin, Texas).
You can read about the specific AAS science highlights on Chris’ Zooniverse blog post, and about the meeting itself from various other sources. It features the most exciting pixel that Kevin Schawinksi has...
“The result reported in the new paper: 5,106 bubbles - suggesting that our...”
– Nice quote from @astrobiased about @milkywayproj on this BBC News article: Bubble-blowing stars seen in the thousands by public
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: A Very Large Jansky
Chris is in Texas for AAS, whilst Rob (and Milton) stay home in Oxford. Janskys, the Zooniverse and the Journal of Urology all feature in an episode that includes a performance of the shortest physics paper ever and a big fat cluster.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #16. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at...
“We used to think that the Earth might be unique in our galaxy. But now it seems...”
– New results suggest that planets abound in our Galaxy.
Stargazing Oxford! →
On Saturday 21st January, we’re having a massive #BBCStargazing event in the department. There will be telescopes, talks, crafts and even modern art. It will also feature ‘Universe-ity Challenge’, a familiarly formatted quiz, with teams of astronomers from different backgrounds.
Testing the universality of star formation.... →
Great paper on arXiv that seeks to test various initial conditions for star formation with simulations and then compare ‘observations’ with real star-forming clusters.
“Professor Brindley, still in his blue track suit, was introduced as a...”
– How (not) to communicate new scientific information: a memoir of the famous Brindley lecture
“So, yes, owning an electric car is worse for the environment than owning no car....”
– Maggie Koerth-Baker - Hey, electric cars don’t totally suck: A realistic sort-of rebuttal
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: SONG and BEER
More bad acronyms from Chris, as well as a tale of woe that is Richard Hammond’s fault. Rob is worried about spying in space and has been watching the Quadrantids.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #15. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x. Follow us on Twitter @recycledelec.
Links:
How the...
Dan Savage on Rick Santorum →
“The GOP has doubled down on homophobia in an attempt to appease its
increasingly elderly, marginalised and out-of-touch base. Betting on
homophobia may pay off politically in the short run (ask Rick
Santorum), but it is a losing bet for the GOP in the long run – one
that will cost them at the ballot box this November”
Clay Shirky on Newspapers and Paywalls →
December 2011
22 posts
Solar Panels In Paint Form? Scientists Just Did It →
The Huffington Post, huffingtonpost.com
Green homeowners may soon be able to say goodbye to unwieldy solar panels thanks to a new paint that generates electricity by harnessing energy from “power-producing nanoparticles, researchers have announced. The paint, dubbed…
Solar-power producing paint? Apparently.
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: Fish That Had No Real Opinion
We talk about planet-spotting (with both your eyes and Kepler’s), there’s a gas cloud that’s DOOMED! Also, can Tweets predict citations? Ching-ching-ching it’s a festive episode (only in that Rob says ching-ching-ching a lot).
[MP3 Link]
Episode #14. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at...
Timeline
You can add all sorts of bizarre and specific ‘life events’ to Facebook with the new Timeline feature. These include ‘piercing’, ‘new vehicle’, ‘change of belief’ and ‘loss of a loved one’ - where creepily you can specify the person who died if they are on Facebook.
I can’t figure out if this future is a good or bad thing....
WatchComet Lovejoy (2011 W3) rising over Western Australia (by Colin Legg)
Faster Than a Speeding Cyclist
After a particularly awful few days of bus commuting, I have been considering the merits and pitfalls of my method of travel to work. Mostly I began by trying to figure out whether the effort put into cycling to work would be worth any saved time or inconvenience.
Rather astonishingly, my average speed on the bus works out as between 6 and 12mph. That takes the distance between each end and...
WatchMEarth is a project surveying 2000 small, nearby M dwarf stars. MEarth is looking for periodic dips in light, due to the presence of habitable super-Earth-sized exoplanets transiting in front of the star.
This video, from a fisheye camera camera, shows a timelapse of the 8 MEarth scopes in action one night. Thanks to @EchoLilyMai for pointing this out.
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: Olaf Stapleton and the Higgs...
Higgs Boson alert! We record shortly after listening to the Higgsish announcement and end up arguing about science-vs-the-media. We also discuss tests of GR using the SKA, and the Fermi paradox.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #13. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x. Follow us on Twitter...
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: Back to Prohibition
The Higgs rumours are flying, SCUBA-2 is finally going online and Kepler-22b is another ‘Earth-like’ planet. That and we talk about drink a lot for some reason.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #12. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x. Follow us on Twitter @recycledelec.
Links:
Higgs...
2 tags
Recycled Electrons: I Want Real Change
Rob is talking (to) whales and Chris wants a ship in a bottle. We talk about the nature of ideas and also death. B2FH is back on Rob’s mind and Chris hates forced acronyms.
[MP3 Link]
Episode #11. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://bit.ly/uQP71x. Follow us on Twitter @recycledelec.
...
Watch
Pointed to this footage of the Sky at Night, from 1963, by @chislintott. The episode features an interview with Arthur C. Clarke where he and Patrick discuss possible moon bases. Man had not yet set foot on the Moon and people widely expected Moon bases to exists before the end of the century. The footage was rescued by its accidental discovery recently in an African TV station.
November 2011
22 posts
Whale FM
Today saw the launch of a website I have been working on for the past few months: Whale FM. This project is attempting to crowd source the work of pairing up more than 16,000 unique whale calls. The sound shave been recorded by various teams around the world and chopped up into distinct calls - think of them like words - of whale communication.
On the site, you listen to sounds and then try to...
Space Ipsum →
A space-themed lorem ipsum generator.
