Category Archives: Science/Engineering

The Old Farmer’s Almanac is right

Posted on August 28, 2009 | Comments Off on The Old Farmer’s Almanac is right

Sunspots, or their lack, really do affect global weather, and probably the climate as well. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has for many years been basing its annual forecasts on a formula involving Sol’s outbreak cycle, though frequently pooh-poohed by meteorologists. Hah.

Comments Off on The Old Farmer’s Almanac is right

Posted in Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate

Tagged , , , ,

Getting Spirit out of the sandtrap

Posted on August 26, 2009 | Comments Off on Getting Spirit out of the sandtrap

When all you’ve got on Mars is a six-wheeled rover, and no prospects of getting a person there in the next generation or two, there’s no end of ingenuity you won’t come up with to get the blessed thing out of the sandtrap it’s driven into. Especially when you have no certain idea of what the sand is actually like.

Comments Off on Getting Spirit out of the sandtrap

Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

Tagged ,

Climate Engineering

Posted on August 23, 2009 | Comments Off on Climate Engineering

ClimateEngineering.jpg

A proposed robot vessel for "whitening" clouds to adjust the global thermostat by reflecting sunlight back into space. From a report by UTexas mechanical engineering professor J. Eric Bickel that some think is quite mad. Bickel says this and other methods outlined to stop "global warming" would be cheap at just $9 billion and could be reversed if anything goes wrong. What could go wrong?

Comments Off on Climate Engineering

Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

Tagged , ,

We are star stuff

Posted on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off on We are star stuff

An old story, panspermia. But always nice to have fresh evidence. This time, it’s from a comet.

Comments Off on We are star stuff

Posted in Science/Engineering, Space

Tagged , , , ,

Space Elevator Games

Posted on August 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Space Elevator Games

The helicopter that was to hoist the one kilometer cable "beanstalk" for the entrant "crawlers" to climb has proved unable to hold the thing taut. So the games that were to have started today at Edwards AFB in California have been delayed "at least" a month. Pity. But it was an ambitious plan. It ain’t rocket science. It might be harder.

Comments Off on Space Elevator Games

Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space

Tagged

Where are the space aliens?

Posted on August 2, 2009 | Comments Off on Where are the space aliens?

One of the favorite games of Mr. Boy’s cub scout den, especially in the woods on camping trips, is to each get a stick and go hunt for aliens. Not the illegal sort, but the outer-space variety.

Most of it, of course, is spurred by Star Wars and similar epics. But it’s not as if scientists haven’t given it some thought. In fact, a lot of thought. For instance, the SETI program.

Three good essays on the subject are here, here, and here. I think they’re out there but, like most of the humans and the aliens in Poul Anderson’s Starfarers, they may well have long since turned inward in favor of exploring themselves.

Via Instapundit.

Comments Off on Where are the space aliens?

Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Science/Engineering, Space

Tagged

Pap & Tax

Posted on August 1, 2009 | Comments Off on Pap & Tax

While the Dems proceed with their potentially economy-busting climate change taxation scheme, the so-called Cap & Trade, more scientists are fleeing from the global warming fraud behind it. The latest are some members of the American Chemical Society, which bills itself as the world’s largest scientific society. And more on it here.

Via The Seablogger

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, a new Henrik Svensmark paper out today concludes that "a link between the sun, cosmic rays, aerosols and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale," meaning that an active sun decreases the amount of low-lying clouds which influences the warming of the earth far more than any CO2 increases. The sun’s recent inactivity thus may have influenced the current global cooling, and the northeast’s Year Without A Summer.

Comments Off on Pap & Tax

Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

Tagged , ,