I love that this happened just down the road from where I live. Police called out to a 999 call about an unexplained object in the night sky solved the mystery straight away for their when they realised it was actually the Moon. Well worth listening to.
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 startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation.
If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out,” says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it.”
Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now…
I rather like this one!
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
We were just chatting in coffee and the topic of ‘light bulb’ jokes came up (along with some serious dubious jokes involving snowmen). Here are some astronomy examples of the staple ‘light bulb’ joke. Please add any more in the comments.
Q. How many physicists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Eleven. One to do it and ten to co-author the paper.
Q. How many astronomers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None, astronomers prefer the dark.
Q. How many radio astronomers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. They are not interested in that short wave stuff.
Q. How many general relativists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Two. One holds the bulb, while the other rotates the universe.
Q. How many science fiction writers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Two, but it’s actually the same person doing it. He went back in time and met himself in the doorway and then the first one sat on the other one’s shoulder so that they were able to reach it. Then a major time paradox occurred and the entire room, light bulb, changer and all was blown out of existence.
Q. How many infra-red astronomers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Two, one to change it, and one to bang on about the one they once changed while they were at the VLT.
“Academia is an accreditation of real stupidity - deadly to all humanity. Dumb ass teachers fear Time Cube and will eat dung before debating it. Dumb students are educated stupid.”
This is just one amazing quotation from the website of ‘Dr.’ Gene Ray, self-proclaimed wisest human. His site, timecube.com outlines in near gibberish the fact that we have all been deluded into not thinking that that Timecube exists.
What is the Timecube? Well obviously it is the fact that we think we have 24 hour days, but actually we have four sides of a 96 hour timecube. Duh! Apparently he’ll give you $1000 (or $10,000) if you can disprove the Timecube. It took me some time to glean any of this information. The website is very hard to read and quite entertaining for its random defiances against a ‘queer god’ and ‘dumb teachers’. I mostly consists of racist, homophobic hate speech, but there are some real gems!
“Greenwich 1 day is a lie. 4 quadrants = 4 corners, and 4 different directions. Each Earth corner rotates own separate 24 hour day. “
“Earth entity does not exist - for it is composed of opposite hemispheres which rotate in opposite directions - equating to a zero value existence, and to nothing as a “singularity”. “
and my favourite so far:
“You have a cyclop perspective and taught android mentality = lobotomized analytical ability. Educated singularity stupid - You can’t think 4 corner days. ”
I found this website after a few of the other students were talking about it at coffee. There are other sites linking off of it, one includes the above diagram which is so fabulously nonsensical that I almost want to frame it on my wall in the office.
Don’t you just love the ‘You Are Here’ pointer? That cleared it all up for me! I looked to see if it was all a joke, but alas, it seems that this guys really does represent the best and worst things about the internet. Oh and he has a Wikipedia entry for the effort he’s put in.
If you think I haven’t explained this very clearly then by all means go over to the Timecube site and see if you can make more sense of it than I did. One of my favourite websites of the week!
If, like me, you’ve been lucky enough to have flown with an airline that stocks the Sky Mall catalogue then you’ll know it’s brilliant. This is a magazine specially designed for people who have been sitting on an aeroplane for hours and have nothing to do. Why else would you buy anything from it? It’s overpriced and almost totally worthless. It does however make me laugh.
Here are the 10 most ridiculous Sky Mall items that I found in an issue on a Northwest flight home from Alabama last month.
10. The Relax ‘n’ Nap Pillow
Sky Mall tells us that this product “relieves tension on neck, back and shoulders and lets you sleep like a baby!”. It also helps you look like an idiot. But there’s more! The “patented ‘air portal’ ventilation system allows you to rest face down in comfort while breathing fresh clean air.”. Where are you sleeping? A forest? I can just imagine the muffled and inaudible pillow talk now. And it’ll only cost you $60! At prices like that you can’t afford not to look stupid.
9. Kitty Washroom Cabinet
Nothing will quite match the experience of letting house guests use the bathroom knowing that the cat may be in there at the same time. This kitty washroom is designed to go in your own washroom so that the cat can literally scare the crap out of you by appearing at random times during your bowel movements. A steal at just under $100.
8. Super Sized TV Remote
If you keep losing your remote down the side of the sofa then you know there’s only one solution: buy a remote that’s bigger than your children - you never lose them… right? This giant, and apparently extremely basic, remote can also be used as a small coffee table or for attacking burglars. Only $19.95.
7. 8-Day Auto Pet Feeder
Are you a pet owner? Fed up of having to put your pet into someone else’s care while you’re on holiday? Worry no more! The 8-day Auto Pet Feeder means that your dog can sit at home while you’re away and still eat a full meal every day. 8 compartments rotate on a timer to give your pet regular meals. I for one would feel perfectly happy to trust this obviously well manufactured device to dispense unfailingly every day. I also assume there are similar products that will give the animal love and attention for the week you’re away. And another to clean up your dog’s shit and piss daily too. I couldn’t find them on Sky Mall, but I assume they’re there somewhere. They must be or else Sky Mall is a reprehensible company with no regard for animal safety.
6. BOB The Screentime Controller
‘So what exactly is this?’, I hear you ask. Well BOB controls TVs, PCs and other electronic devices with an access code system. It is designed in the words of Sky Mall to be the “answer to the endless fight over screentime struggles in today’s home”. Each child has a code and the parents program in how long they can spend watching TV each day. Each child logs into the TV and after the time is up the TV automatically turns off. Handily, it also eliminates any last trace of discipline left in the household, as well as being so easy to circumvent that it’s laughable (just unplug it!). Parents, you’ll never have to interact with your children again. Only $80.
5. and 4. Pet Travel Systems
Unable to decide which of these two was funnier, I’ve included both. Whilst the dog’s facial expression in the red carrier cracks me up, the image of the little white dog being walked around the park in what is essentially a pram is also deeply disturbing. Best of all these things cost between $100 and $160, making them essentially a tax on idiotic, pampering pet owners.
3. Palette Mag-Titan Bracelet
According to Sky Mall “the Palette bands are made with pure Ti-22 Titanium. Titanium in its pure form has therapeutic power, due to its negative electrical potential, to draw out positive ions from the body.” Whoa, back up there a moment. Titanium is permanently and magically electrically charged?! Why all we need is a source of positive ions and we’d have a machine of infinite power! Surely this bracelet has been cursed by a wizard or warlock? What else could have prevented it from coming under the scrutiny of scientists for so many millennia?
Oh wait, it’s just bullshit. My mistake. $150 worth of bullshit though.
2. Cat Laser Beam Toy
Why not buy this and eventually blind your cat? Better yet, buy it for someone else and blind their cat. Brilliant! Only $19.99.
1. Day Clock
This is the ultimate in stupidity. Ever get confused and not know what day it is? Well not anymore! The Day Clock will always point to the day of the week. Its singular and very slowly moving hand takes one whole week to go around the face of the clock, always steadfastly ensuring that you know what day it is. If you can think of anyone who needs this clock, please report them to the authorities immediately. Oddly it is priced at $39.98, a rather complicated figure for such a ridiculously dumb target audience.
If you can find any other morbidly stupid items which are available at Sky Mall, I’d love to see them, please comment below.
I can hardly type this without thinking of the Muppets’ ‘Pigs in Space’. Whilst writing about space debris recently, and preparing to do a talk on the subject of stuff that we’ve put into space, I got to once again thinking about those frogs that NASA put into space in 1970 (for which this very blog is named).
How many other animals have been put into space and why? Looking into the subject, it’s quite entertaining. so here’s my top ten list of animals sent into space:
10. Flies
In 1942 the first animals were put into space. they were ironically flies. Fruit flies and corn seeds took a one way trip on a US V2 rocket, (you know the ones they built using Nazi technology and slaves).
9. Dogs
On November 3rd, 1957 the first animal in orbit was Laika, the Russian space dog. She flew aboard Sputnik 2 and died during the flight. The Soviets flew 10 more dogs on that programme until April 12, 1961 when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit.
Belka and Strelka (seriously, who named these dogs?) were the first mammals to be successfully returned to the Earth after orbital flight in 1960. you can them in the picture. The other canine record holders are Veterok and Ugolyok, two dogs that spent 22 days in space before returning unharmed in 1966.
Strelka’s puppy, Pushinka was given as a present to the Kennedys and many of her descendants are known still today.
8. Fish
Several fish have visited space. specifically the species Mummichog, Japanese Killfish and Zebra Danio. The Killfish were in fact the only survivors of the Columbia distaster.
More than anything I was simply pleased to find out there is an animal called a Mummichog.
7. Spiders
Experimenting with low gravity environments is obviously a big reason behind putting animals in space. So can a spider build a web in orbit? The answer is yes. Anita and Arabella were two garden spiders that flew on SkyLab in 1973.
The webs were seen to be finer that on Earth and to have variations in thickness throughout each web, unlike the highly uniform webs spun on Earth. Anit’s remains are still kept in a jar at the Smithsonian for all to see. You can see her web above.
6. Cats
Two cats have graced the skies, both put there by the French. The first was Felix in 1963, who survived his trip despite having electrodes implanted into his brain. The second cat’s name does not seem to be obvious, but he did not survive. I can has spacesuit?
5. Newts
In 1985, the Russians sent 10 newts into space after amputating their forearms. They were trying to study the regeneration of cells in low-gravity.
4. Mice and Rats
Many mice have been into space. The US reportedly put loads of them up there in the 1950s, but only the first one survived. In the 1960s, China, the USA and Russia all put many mice into space and into orbit. Nothing much seems to have come of this so far as popular culture is concerned. Douglas Adams, may have had other things to say about that though.
Russia flew rats and mice, as well as hordes of other animals, during its Bion programs in the 60s and 70s. Bion spacecraft (shown above) were designed to test organisms in space. As you can see they look very comfortable. If only NASA had made them, they would have at least had cupholders.
3. Frogs
My favourite space dwellers are the Orbiting Frogs that were sent up in 1970. Why? Well of course it was to sudy motion sickness in space. Don’t you know that frogs get carsick?
The Orbiting Frog Otolith housed the bullfrogs for a week as they circled the Earth. Scientists measured their vital signs and once the experiment was over the simply left the frogs to work it out for themselves. Needless to say it pleases and disturbs me greatly that there are possibly still two frogs up there somewhere.
Also, Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist, carried a tree frog with him on a visit to Mir in 1990.
2. Tortoises
The tortoise is held in my esteem on this blog entry because it is the unlikely holder of not one, but two space records! In 1968 a Russian Tortoise became the first animal to go into deep space when it orbited the Moon and returned safely to the Earth.
There must be something about Tortoises that Russian space scientists like (or dislike) because a Tortoise also hold the record for longest flight time in orbit. In 1976 two tortoise and a fish spent 90.5 days in orbit on Salyut 5. They were never recovered and the craft burned up during re-entry in 1977.
1. Monkeys
Of course I had to end with monkeys. On June 11th, 1948 a monkey named Albert was the first to be put into space by NASA the Americans. He was under anesthetic during the launch and never returned. Many other monkeys have famously been put into space.
In 1959, Able and Baker, a rhesus and squirrel monkey respectively, were the first to survive spaceflight. It sounds like the premise of a Warner Brothers’ cartoon. They were placed in the nosecone of a missile and shot nearly 400 hundred miles above the surface of the Earth and over a distance of 1,700 miles. They travelled at 100,000 mph for 16 minutes. Needless to say they experience G-forces above and beyond anything normal (Wikipedia says 16g).
Able died a few days later from complications related to one of his implanted electrodes, but Baker lived until 1984 in the NASA Spaceflight centre in Huntsville, Alabama, possibly running the place.
In 1961, Ham the Chimp was launched into orbit. He was been trained to operate his craft (seriously, Warner Bros again?). He survived and lived a life of luxury afterwards. He appeared many times on television and even starred in a film with Evel Knievel!
17 more monkeys and chimps were flown in the years that followed, by the US, Russia and France, including two that went up on one of the first space shuttle missions.
I would like to end on the tragic is the story of Gordo. A young squirrel monkey from South America, Gordo also flew in the nosecone of a missile. In fact he paved the way for Able and Baker to do so more successfully a year later. He rocketed upward and survived the 10g launch, to the delight of NASA supervisors. However, during the 100,000 mph re-entry, whilst experiencing a whopping 40g, Gordo’s parachute failed to deploy. The squirrel monkey, sealed in the nosecone, sonicly-boomed into the ocean, more than a 1000 miles from Florida. He has never been recovered.
Just a quick note to point out Stuart’s post at the Astronomy Blog, showing off some packaging for a telescope produced by Oxford University:
I am tempted to write to them, but worry about offending them. Probably because I’m a Libra.
Well its finally here! I have just upgraded my Macbook to the new Westie operating system and I’m already seeing the advantages. For starters my lovely white mac has already acquired a really handy muddy fringe just below the trackpad. Gorgeous!
For ease of use, Westie also allows you to browse your files in Westieflow, which shows you thumbnail images of all your files as if they have been chewed up and torn apart. You can also use QuickBark to try and access these files without leaving the Finder. When you do this, the documents will run away from you playfully, getting more and more torn up as they do so.
Westie also lets you use Spaces to do several things at once. So let’s say you’re browsing the web and preparing a photo album in iPhoto at the same time. You can put each of these activities into a different workspace. When you do, Westie will put itself into a third space where it will growl and wiggle, alerting you to much needed attention in that space. The fourth space is always reserved entirely for Westie where it can tug on your virtual trouser leg and ask to be let in/out of the Finder window.
The improved DVD player in Westie allows you to watch movies like never before. If any of your movies happen to feature dogs, cats or other animals Westie will flash up handy messages like ‘hey, there’s a dog on screen’ and ‘hey, look at that - a dog!’.
The new stacks feature in Westie lets piles of documents sit in your dock. You can even make Smart Stacks for movies and downloaded files. For your convenience, Westie has placed a ‘Walk’ stack in your dock. Whenever you even go near the Walk stack with your mouse, Westie will make your mac vibrate and bleep. It will use the new in-built motion sensor to show you where the front door is and begin preparing to eject any disks that are currently loaded. (This will also happen if you type walk into any document; or even if you play any songs with words that sound like the world walk, including talk, squark and work).
Finally, Westie now has Boot Camp built in, which means you can start-up your Mac in Shih-Tzu, Spaniel or even Collie*.
Westie is available pretty much anywhere, in various levels of naughty, cheeky and loveable. Don’t worry about training. Westie will train you how to use it within a few weeks of installing.
Have fun!
*Spaniel is great for games in the first couple of years but then really slows down and needs upgrading. Shih-Tzu is really more of a compact OS that can often be run from a memory stick (it doesn’t require much memory). If you really wanna get some work done, go for the Collie option.
