Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Other than the pretty pictures…

Posted on April 15, 2007 | Comments Off on Other than the pretty pictures…

Some scientists, including astronomers, consider it heresy to ask what is the use of what they do. So it’s nice to find a good essay on the why, especially astronomy. Other than the pretty pictures…

"Astronomy’s appetite for computational power drove the development of many of the earliest electronic computers. The space age, which brought us the communication and weather satellites upon which we depend each day, would have been impossible without the fundamental knowledge of gravity and orbits discovered by astronomers. Radio astronomers led the development of low-noise radio receivers that made possible the satellite communications industry. Image-processing techniques developed by astronomers now are part of the medical imaging systems that allow non-invasive examination of patients’ internal organs."

Worth the read.

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Black hole eclipse

Posted on April 12, 2007 | Comments Off on Black hole eclipse

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 "NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has observed a remarkable eclipse of a supermassive black hole [just 60 million light years away], allowing a disk of hot matter swirling around the hole to be measured for the first time."

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

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Cooperative remembering

Posted on April 12, 2007 | Comments Off on Cooperative remembering

This seems right to me:

"The Internet as the new medium of cultural memory offers us never existing forms of creative and participative remembering, which can be practiced independently of time and place. It allows people all around the world to cooperate with each other."

It’s from a virtual reconstruction of building plans and other records: 

"…to remember more than 2200 synagogues that were closed, desecrated or destroyed in Germany and Austria during the Nazi regime."

Worth a visit. Via this article which I stumbled over looking for something else. Sunday, as it happens, is Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel.

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Posted in Israel, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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The hexagon of Saturn

Posted on March 28, 2007 | Comments Off on The hexagon of Saturn

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And you thought geometry was only for terrestrial engineers and architects? Apparently it’s involved in the maintenance of planets, as well. This six-sided hexagon–twice as wide as Earth–encircles Saturn’s north pole. It was first seen by the Voyager robot spacecraft in the 1980s and recently photographed (here, in infrared) by the Cassini spacecraft. There is some (disputed) thought that it is a vortex-like flow in the atmosphere of the gas giant. But its cause remains a msytery.

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Gore’s energy conservation

Posted on March 22, 2007 | Comments Off on Gore’s energy conservation
"The only place Al Gore conserves energy these days is on the treadmill. I don’t want to suggest that Al’s getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, ‘That reminds me — we have to do something about saving the polar bears.’"  –Ann Coulter
Even a crank is funny sometimes. For those who want the link. 

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What’s the normal global temperature?

Posted on March 19, 2007 | Comments Off on What’s the normal global temperature?

Global warming was already looking more political than scientific, especially with the despicable UN for top corroborator and Al "Big Electric Bill" Gore for chief spokesman. But now comes a rather fundamental objection: what, if it’s indeed possible to say, is the normal global temperature? Where, in other words, does one begin to calculate a rise or a fall? Could it be there are too many variables to say?

Indeed, concludes Danish physicist Bjarne Andresen in the "Journal of Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics": "It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate." 

Via Fresh Bilge   

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Very Long Base Array

Posted on March 17, 2007 | Comments Off on Very Long Base Array

We were delighted to find that our quarters near Fort Davis were a hundred yards or so from this huge radio telescope. So close that we could hear what we dubbed the mechanical moo sound when the telescope made directional adjustments. Judy Myers, one of the tour guides at McDonald Observatory, said it was part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Base Array, a collection of ten radio telescopes from St. Croix, Virgin Islands to Mauna Kea, Hawaii. They are linked electronically to operate as one. Ours, available at the link in a real-time shot, was said by the locals to have been installed by Harvard University. Hence the name of the nearby collection of motel-like rooms at the Sproul Ranch where we stayed was the Harvard Lodge.

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