Neptune's Year

On July 12 of this year, Neptune will complete its first transit around the sun since its discovery in 1846. A Neptunian year is 164 Earth years.

JFK to Lyndon Johnson

Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man. Is there any other space program which promises dramatic results in which we could win?

Letters of Note: Is there a space program which which we could win?

Foucault's Pendulum Snaps

Times Higher Education:

If there were ever any truth in the esoteric tales of Umberto Eco’s bestselling novel Foucault’s Pendulum, it seems that the key to that knowledge has been lost.

The original pendulum, which was used by French scientist Leon Foucault to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth and which forms an integral part of Eco’s novel’s labyrinthine plot, has been irreparably damaged in an accident in Paris.

The pendulum’s cable snapped last month and its sphere crashed to the marble floor of the Musée des Arts et Métiers.

30 Real Animals with Science Fiction Names

30 Real Animals with Science Fiction Names

The longest solar eclipse of the century

The longest solar eclipse of the century

Dozens of photos collected on the ever-stunning The Big Picture. Love the one with the dinosaur. Wish I’d been on the other side of the planet yesterday.

Holy Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon

Holy Shit, Man Walks on Fucking Moon

Classic Onion front page from July 21, 1969.

Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage

Apollo 11 Live TV Coverage

Watch the moon landing coverage as it happened, starting later today.

Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Remembering Apollo 11

40 photos from 40 years ago.

The blue and the green

The blue and the green

Wild optical illusion.

How many balloons would it take to lift a house like the one in Pixar's Up? - By Nina Shen Rastogi - Slate Magazine

How many balloons would it take to lift a house like the one in Pixar’s Up?

I can just see Mythbusters trying to get the budget to buy all those balloons.

Sarah Palin Thinks Dinosaurs Lived at the Same Time As Humans

The Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States of America actually believes that dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans.

There are many issues on which I respect that people have different opinions than I. This isn’t one of them. If you vote for John McCain, you’re endorsing the possibility that someone could be in the White House who doesn’t believe very basic facts about science and history.

FM 100 Hue Test

FM 100 Hue Test

Cool color perception test. I scored a four (zero being best).

Sol 30

Earth’s summer solstice (the longest day of the year) was last Friday. Today is the Martian summer solstice. Mars has 668 Sols in its year, equivalent to 684 of Earth’s Days, but its moons don’t create separate seasons. New blog The Big Picture has some amazing landscapes of Mars, including a sunset, and a breathtaking view of Earth from there.

Discovery of the Planet Vulcan

I took a class in college called Philosophy of Science. One of the things we studied was how scientific hypotheses can be based on foundations that may turn out to be flawed. Over time, even the simplest things we think we know from our observations of the world can be called into question as we discover new complexities. The story of the planets Neptune and Vulcan illustrate this beautifully.

The planet Neptune was officially discovered in 1846 by Johann Gottfried Galle, but its existence had already been proven by Urbain Le Verrier. Scientists had noticed irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. Using their knowledge of physics, they were able to deduce that the planet’s orbit was been affected by the gravity of another object in the sky, which turned out to be Neptune. The math told them that the planet had to be there. All that was left was for someone to look for it. (Not that it was staring us in the face of course.)

Having predicted Neptune, Le Verrier then went on to examine the orbit of Mercury. Using the same calculations, he predicted the existence of another yet undiscovered planet which he named Vulcan. Vulcan, according to the calculations, was about one-seventh the size of Mercury and orbited between it and the Sun. Its existence would make Earth the fourth rock from the sun, not the third. Except that it doesn’t exist. The math all worked out, just as it had for Neptune, yet no planet was ever observed. Decades later, Albert Einstein’s theories demonstrated that our understanding of physics had been too simple. Relativity could describe the orbit of Mercury where the sciences of Newton and Kepler could not. The numbers had all added up, but the mathematical systems themselves turned out to be inadequate. Extrapolating on this idea, one comes to the humble conclusion that any idea whatsoever can be called into question if one can poke holes in the underlying assumptions on which the idea depends. No matter how solid you think your ground may be, some jerk like Einstein can always come along and pull the rug out from under you.

ISS_Media_2008.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Here is a PDF list of all the books, movies, and music in the library on the International Space Station.

Boomerangs in space!

Boomerangs in space! Video of a Japanese astronaut throwing a boomerang.

Research Monkeys

You may recall an article I linked to years ago on Slate about whether or not human DNA is compatible with any other animals. Stalin had the same questions (and who doesn’t‽), and in fact had a small program where they tried to mate humans with monkeys. Apparently those monkeys’ decedents are still hanging around the Research Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy in Abkhazia!

Few townspeople use the fancy name anymore; they just point toward the building on the hill and speak of the “monkey sanctuary”. The 286 surviving animals are descended from the thousands that populated the laboratories of the Soviet Union’s preeminent primate research institute.

[…]

Many of the monkeys escaped into snowy winters and harsh wilderness, or were freed by sympathetic bystanders who realized they were starving, unwittingly dooming many to death from exposure. In the wildest days of bloodletting, with primates running loose, some of the soldiers took to keeping baby monkeys perched on their shoulders as surreal mascots. Only a few of the animals survived in their cages, kept alive by a few stalwart staff members and tenderhearted locals.

Dinosaur Genders

It’s almost impossible to figure out the sex of a dinosaur from its fossil. Thus, it’s very hard to know anything about their mating behaviors. Olivia Judson, writing for The New York Times, gives it a stab.

Scientific American: Ask the Experts: Archaeology/Paleontology: What is the latest theory of why humans lost their body hair? Why are we the only hairless primate?

Scientific American: Ask the Experts: Archaeology/Paleontology: What is the latest theory of why humans lost their body hair? Why are we the only hairless primate?

Schrodinger's lolcat on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Schrodinger’s lolcat on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I think this wins the lolcat game. Time for something new.