Category Archives: Science/Engineering

It’s a boat, 3

Posted on June 10, 2007 | Comments Off on It’s a boat, 3

Got the mainsail up for airing, and inventoried stuff to see what could be thrown away. Among them an empty Cetol can, which needs replacing for painting the teak trim. Glad to see no dirt dauber nests (or cells, as the learned say) on the sail or inside the horse blanket. But the activity summoned a good many daubers from elsewhere on the dock, because of all the spiders uncovered when the sail was hoisted. Daubers are evil looking wasps, but I’ve never been stung. Not even when I’ve uncovered a bunch of their cells and thrown them overboard. They are considered beneficial because they eat bugs, particularly controlling spiders which they line their nest with for their larvae to feed on. So you put up with them.

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Posted in Sailing, Science/Engineering

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Extinction for magnolias

Posted on May 21, 2007 | Comments Off on Extinction for magnolias

The neighbor across the back fence at the rancho has a towering magnolia whose big white blossoms we get to share even as the big pointed, oval leaves litter our yard from time to time.

"Magnolias are among the most ancient groups of flowering plants and have long been cultivated by mankind. Some specimens growing in the precincts of Chinese temples are estimated to be up to 800 years old."

I planted one once in South Austin. It was ten feet high and sprightly the last time I looked. I’m surprised to hear wild magnolias are facing extinctions in the forests of the world, including north America.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Hubble’s successor

Posted on May 10, 2007 | Comments Off on Hubble’s successor

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 Hubble, due to be fixed next year by shuttle astronauts, would continue as our eye on the sky until 2013 and the launch of this larger James Webb Space Telescope. It would be parked at L2, about 930,000 miles from home, and therefore inaccessible to the shuttle, which should be retired by then in any case. This one’s hexagonal mirror will be almost three times the size of Hubble’s.

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Posted in Science/Engineering

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The new energy economy

Posted on May 10, 2007 | Comments Off on The new energy economy

Make photovoltaics cheap. Replace noble metals like platinum with abundant metals like iron. Split water with light. MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera explains:

"It’s hard for me to say exactly what that technology will look like, because the science is missing. But at the beginning of the 1900s, we built an entire society based on a new energy system. And I believe, once solar is in place, with help from biofuel, with a little help from wind, we will invent our society again from a new energy source."

Read it all. Via Pajamas Media

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Posted in Science/Engineering

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Ice miners

Posted on May 3, 2007 | Comments Off on Ice miners

NASA’s orbiter, Mars Odyssey, has found the perfect occupation for the first Martians: digging up all the ice for water to drink and grow things. The ice beds are estimated to be available on about a third of the planet, at varying depths.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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Almost zero G

Posted on April 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Almost zero G

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking, advocate of humanity migrating into the solar system and beyond, will soon get his first experience with microgravity in a Boeing 727 on a parabolic flight:

"To be allowed to carry Prof. Hawking, Zero-G needed to obtain a unique certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)–no one has ever flown a disabled person in weightlessness before. Prof. Hawking will be accompanied by a team of three doctors and at least two of the Cambridge professor’s experienced caregivers."

I had the chance for a similar flight out of Houston a few years before I retired, but passed on it. I get rather seriously seasick, and sometimes airsick, and while I would jump at an opportunity to go into space, a minute or less in microgravity (bookended by a stomach-churning 1.8 Gs) hardly seems worth it. Though it does look like fun.

UPDATE  Post-flight, Hawking tells the BBC: "It was amazing.The zero-G part was wonderful and the higher-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come!"

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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Red sun, all the time

Posted on April 24, 2007 | Comments Off on Red sun, all the time

Imagine living on a world where the sun, a red dwarf, is twenty times the size of the moon, and hangs permanently in the sky. That’s because the planet doesn’t rotate, but has one side permanently light and the other permanently dark. The temperature range, however, is roughly that of Earth, meaning you might have running water. That’s if a new discovery by European astronomers, using telescopes in Chile, holds up. But because it’s 120 trillion miles away, and its information has to be inferred rather than seen, it might not.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space