“Prof Chandra Wickramasinghe and Dr Janaki Wickramasinghe claim Venus’s clouds contain chemicals that are consistent with the presence of micro organisms.”
These two are from Cardiff’s centre for Astrobiology and the elder of the two has singlehandedly given the field a bad name over the past twenty years.
The whole concept of this idea is that life [...]
Ah here I am in ever-so sunny Aix in the south of France. I’m blogging from my iPhone right now because I’m by the pool and too comfy to go and find my laptop. I’m also testing out the Wordpress app from the App Store.
The skies here are big and clear and even these early [...]
Was just looking through the App Store on iTunes and found an astronomy application for the iPhone/iPod Touch called Starmap. It will be fun to play with this tomorrow when I can actually install any of these apps. Why Apple has let me browse and buy these things a full day before I can even use them, I don’t know. (Screenshots inside).
Mang is hosting his first Carnival of Space this week. I’d like to highlight a couple of articles from the list here, too.
President Sarkozy is looking for UK support to bolster his ideas as France takes over the ESA presidency today. He wants to lead Europe into space in a way that doesn’t leave it trailing the likes of Indian, China and Japan.
Almost one in four secondary schools in England no longer has any specialist physics teachers, a survey suggests.
It doesn’t seem that long ago I hosted my first Carnival and that was number 40. Now the Carnival gets a bus pass as it turns 60.
An awesome page about atmospheric effects on Mars, including a great dust devils animation. Mars has a rich atmosphere and this is the first planet for which we are really starting to understand the climate.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tat8BH6kMcE 351 291]
Here is a short science experiment at home. They guy seems to be showing us how to create a plasma inside our microwaves (please be very careful if you actually want to try it). The video is hilarious though for the reaction of the guys wife/girlfriend at the very end.
YouTube – Home Made [...]
This week’s Carnival is up so get over there and get reading!
Also found this image via the Carnival which I rather liked.
The future of eMerlin, a crucial upgrade to the world-famous Jodrell Bank observatory, in Cheshire, is starting to look brighter.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Jodrell Bank future looks better
According to Dr. Tegmark, “there is only mathematics; that is all that exists.” In his theory, the mathematical universe hypothesis, he updates quantum physics and cosmology with the concept of many parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time. This is a cool idea. read more | digg story
A peculiar little way of visualising your own brief existence with that of the whole universe: in pixels. Illustrates the point nicely. read more | digg story
Universe Today is reporting what I have seen other sites reporting on over the past few days: a lack of sunspots. It seems there is “a small worry” that something untoward may be afoot with the current lack of magnetic activity on the Sun two years after Solar minimum.
The 58th Carnival is up and it is being hosted by Universe Today, who of course operate and run the Carnival on behalf of the community. It’s a good collection. Go and check out Ethan’s three-part series on the Natural history of the Universe on the ‘Stars with a Bang’ blog, amongst other highlights. I’ll [...]
Astronaut Ron Garan works on assigned tasks during the last scheduled spacewalk of the STS-124 mission specialist. A great photo of one of Colbert’s heroes at work.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuYMOWyawe8 351 291]
YouTube – Phoenix Descends – a video from Bad Astronomy which I rather enjoyed.
Stuart has the lowdown on the agreed name for a certain type of object that orbits beyond the distance of Neptune. Formerly an icy dwarf planet-type thing, now they shall be known as ‘plutoids’.
May 22 marked a live demo of the first four-continent, Very Long Baseline Interferometry observations.
“VLBI uses multiple radio telescopes to simultaneously observe the same region of sky. Essentially creating a giant instrument as big as the separation of the dishes. VLBI can generate images of cosmic radio sources with up to 100 times better resolution [...]
Just a nice little post from Pamela Gay about how IYA might sound to someone who really cares about, well potatoes perhaps.
Star Stryder – 2008 The Year of the Potato
Cool, check out Solar Probe Plus. A (really) heat resistant craft that could dive into the outer layers of the Sun’s atmosphere. Its very sci-fi – as all the cool ideas are. Space tourism to the sun in 50 years, would be my conservative estimate. read more | digg story
I have been featured by Improbable Research for my Chinese Satellite Debris tracking Google Earth gizmo. I don’t seem to be able to leave a comment on the page, but I’d like to point out that I did, as the author suggests, create a similar file for the US spy satellite that was shot down. [...]
Images of the Earth from space are always beautiful. Some of these are not quite in that category but on the whole this collection of stunning images is. This is a great collection, well worth a look. read more | digg story
Nice short post over at the 433rd about how sometimes a telescope isn’t what you need: a great pair of binoculars will do. Mang’s Bat Page: Binocular Astronomy
The first sample of Martian dirt is not yet in the testing oven on Phoenix. The reason is unclear, but the lander will today try to shake loose the soil and see if it has helped. After teasing us all with ‘trial digs’ this is frustrating. read more | digg story
For a while now, I have been watching my Technorati rank gradually improve. I set myself what felt like a lofty goal of a technorati authority of 100. I am currently at 99. If you’ve ever wanted to throw me a link then now’s the time. I wanna break that barrier!
Astronomers are suggesting a new approach for finding advanced alien civilizations: look in the areas of the sky where the aliens would have the easiest time detecting us. This Wired post, echoing what has been mentioned elsewhere this week, gives a quick summary. read more | digg story
Out of the Cradle hosts this week’s Carnival of Space (the 57th carnival so far). Go and take a look, browse, leave some comments and maybe even find some new RSS feeds for your daily digestion.
A nice piece from the New York Times about dark energy, what it is and why its interesting. Dark Energy is a bit like big money being spent on studying gravity waves: its bothers me. If you don’t get that reference you obviously don’t read my blog hard enough – get to work! read more [...]
From Digg: The result of over 800,000 individual images collected by the Spitzer Space Telescope, it is the largest, highest-resolution, and most sensitive infrared picture ever taken of the Milky Way (and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future). read more | digg story
Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Simpson. Twitter @orbitingfrog
