October 2011
56 posts
Astronomy Eye-Candy →
feedproxy.google.com
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Here are a few beauts to share with you guys today from Universe Today: IC 1396 by John R. Taylor Milky Way by Brent Hall Tiangong 1 by Tavi Greiner ——-Sharing via these buttons will share…
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“Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn’t something you do for money. It’s something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we’re going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we’re gone.”
—http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/10/thoughts-on-joining-club-that-would.html (via neil-gaiman)
Emptyage: Generation X Doesn't Want to Hear It →
emptyage.com
Earlier generations have weathered recessions, of course; this stall we’re in has the look of something nastier. Social Security and Medicare are going to be diminished, at best. Hours worked are up even as hiring staggers along: Blood from a stone looks to be the normal order of things “going…
Color is in the eye of the beholder. →
akindofterminus.tumblr.com
We think of a physical object’s being a certain “color” as a solid, immutable property (grass is green, lemons are yellow, et cetera). However, the way our brains see and process color is largely determined by the language we learned as an infant.
Case in point: the Himba tribe of remote…
“It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs. This means no change: one website, one account, one password… in other words, no Qwikster.”
—Reed Hastings • In a very short post on the Netflix blog about the about-face his company did regarding Qwikster. He added: “While the July price change was necessary, we are now done with price changes.” That’s all you needed to say. (via shortformblog)
Doctor Who Story Chronology →
en.wikipedia.org
This is massive and wonderful and, yes, I do get a little thrill from seeing something I worked on there on the list.
Sad that you’re all out of Who until the Christmas special? Have at it, m’dears and see that you’re good for the next couple of years.
Exoplanets seen by Hubble in 1998 finally revealed →
blogs.discovermagazine.com
In 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at HR 8799, in hopes of seeing any potential planets that might be orbiting that nearby, Sun-like star. None were found… but in 2008 images using the Gemini telescope found several planets orbiting HR 8799. In fact, four planets were discovered there!
“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine — couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”
—Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)
Space: The European Space Agency is officially sending a probe to the Sun(via @io9) →
io9.com
What costs a billion euros, can operate in temperatures in excess of 500 degrees celsius, and orbits the sun closer than any spacecraft in human history?
Dark Energy FAQ →
blogs.discovermagazine.com
This made my brain hurt a bit, but it’s worth a read if you’re interested in what all this dark energy talk is about.
(via Cosmic Variance on Discovery)
In honor of the Nobel Prize, here are some questions that are frequently asked about dark energy, or should be.
What is dark energy?
It’s what makes the universe accelerate, if indeed there is a “thing” that does that. (See below.)
So I guess I should be asking… what does it mean to say the universe is “accelerating”?
First, the universe is expanding: as shown by Hubble, distant galaxies are moving away from us with velocities that are roughly proportional to their distance. “Acceleration” means that if you measure the velocity of one such galaxy, and come back a billion years later and measure it again, the recession velocity will be larger. Galaxies are moving away from us at an accelerating rate.
But that’s so down-to-Earth and concrete. Isn’t there a more abstract and scientific-sounding way of putting it?
