Space, Science, Technology
Line 1. Let’s start with 'typical' humans. The average human adult male is 1.75 metres tall - that's 3.83 cubits or 5.74 feet. The average female is 1.62 metres - that's 5.4 light-nanoseconds or 0.008 furlongs. You live on Earth (Sol d, perhaps?). This is an Earth-like planet in a Sun-like star system. The third planet of eight... Continue Reading →
I’ve been called a lot of things but ‘rebel’ hasn’t come up too often. Not that I mind. As part of a Mazda campaign, I’m being highlighted as one of four TED Fellows* who are ‘Mazda Rebels’. The other three are thoroughly impressive and I recommend you take a look. There’s an online vote where... Continue Reading →
Executable papers are a cool idea in research [1]. You take a study, write it up as a paper and bundle together all your code, scripts and analysis in such a way that other people can take the ‘paper’ and run in themselves. This has three main attractive features, as I see it: It provides transparency... Continue Reading →
Today is the start of the UK National Meeting in Portsmouth. I’ll be there tomorrow, and running the NAM Hack Day on Wednesday with Arfon Smith - which is going to be awesome. Today at NAM, the nation's astronomers will discuss the case for UK involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project - the LSST. The... Continue Reading →
We're expanding the Zooniverse team in Oxford and we're looking for web developers. You need to be able to work in Oxford (which is a lovely place to work) and you need to want to change the way science is done! There are four positions we need to fill: Infrastructure Engineer Senior Front-End Developer Data Scientist/Hadoopist... Continue Reading →
We recently posted news of a Planet Hunters planet discovered as part of a seven-planet system. Like all the Planet Hunters stars this is one seen in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Dubbed Kepler-90 this system is a peculiar microcosm of our own Solar System, with small (probably rocky) worlds in the middle, and larger (probably... Continue Reading →
I've just hit 'publish' on the latest episode of Recycled Electrons, my (almost) weekly podcast with friend and Zooniverse colleague Chris Lintott. We started podcasting to 'The Listener' in September 2011. This was episode 87 - 'Very Nice Equipment' - and since it's now two years that Chris and I have been producing this weekly... Continue Reading →
Join us at the Physics Department on Keble Road, near St. Giles in Oxford. From 2-10pm we’ll be manning stands, doing craft activities and answering questions. We’ll also be doing some remote observing throughout that time and there will be a planetarium continuously in operation too. In our auditorium there are mini lectures (in groups... Continue Reading →
Last week we launched a brand new Zooniverse site: The Andromeda Project. We’re asking people to spot star clusters in the Andromeda galaxy in data from the Hubble Space Telescope. You might think it sounds like menial work but it’s strangely addictive - and incredibly useful for the researchers behind the data. This project joins... Continue Reading →
I had a good discussion/argument with a colleague last week who thinks we should be trying to make remote attendance at conferences a reality. Unless we’re talking about the Texai Remote Virtual Presence, shown above in the Big Bang Theory, I disagree. Astronomers probably rank highly in their use of carbon, as they fly around... Continue Reading →
Orbiting Frog 