a micrometer from here

the name of this video caught my eye, but i thoroughly enjoyed the short film. the artist, amit zakai, describes the film: "my graduation project, at the HIT israely academy for design, is a comic film measuring daily life in single units and multiplying them by powers."

i particularly like (and dislike) the eyeball part around 3:05... it's uniquely done but makes me cringe, as anything in close proximity to the eye does!


"a micrometer from here" (eng sub) from amit zakai on Vimeo.

oxford, england - part 1

belinda grew up in oxford and took me along for a weekend family visit! shenanigans ensued....


belinda drives.

glad i'm not driving.



gorgeous old victorian homes.


evidence of belinda's existential phase of youth!







when belinda first told me the name of this bridge, i heard the "bridge of size." and i thought to myself, "but its not really that big!" then i read the little sign and realized my mistake... the bridge of sighs - oh! that name made much more sense when i heard the story of the original bridge of sighs in italy. still, i dont understand why the british didnt give this one their own, less depressing name!




a couple characters in front of the bodleian library


a rather large key hole!




annoying uber-tourist!

more to come...

fossil fuels

imagine that you're scientist dr. raul cano, on an expedition to find ancient microscopic creatures that might have some kind of medical value. instead, you find an ancient bee entombed inside a chunk of amber 45 (+- 15) million years ago (think jurassic park)! using a somewhat controversial new technique, you extract 45 million year old bacteria and yeast from inside the gut of the bee!!

what do you do?

you brew beer, of course! introducing the fossil fuels brewing company.


i'd very much like to try a pint whenever i visit northern california!

posh fish.

now serving free coke with any kebab!


seen in oxford, england.

TEDprize - james nachtwey

after watching this TED video by james nachtwey, i'm intrigued. he has been a war photographer for the last several decades - a witness to events that "should not be forgotten and must not be repeated." he shares a sobering series of photos and stories during his 2007 TED prize talk:



as the winner of the 2007 TED Prize, he was awarded $100,000 and one wish: "I'm working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age."

tomorrow, october 3rd, 2008, the story breaks... and i'm interested in the experience.

jules verne's journey to earth

in this case, i'm referring to the european space craft named jules verne, which just descended from orbit. in march of this year, i described the awesome triple flyby that we saw when jules verne approached the international space station (ISS), just after NASA's space shuttle endeavor undocked from the ISS! it's six months later now, jules verne successfully delivered the supplies it needed to deliver to the ISS, and it was time to return to earth's surface. jules verne was sent thru a de-orbit procedure that allowed it to re-enter earths atmosphere, break into several pieces, and crash the remaining pieces into the pacific ocean! you can watch a video of the event: HERE.

trouble for hubble

bad news, the hubble mission has been postponed until next spring :(

in short, no data is being sent from hubble to earth. NASA thinks they can put together a quick fix while astronauts train to accomplish the news tasks scheduled for the spring mission. a lot of training is needed for the simplest tasks, even for these amazingly capable space walkers! hopefully we'll be able to receive data again in a few weeks, and repair many things in addition to adding new instruments in the spring.

lots of people reporting on this so i'll direct you to other places for more details info:

NASA
dynamics of cats
julianne at cosmic variance
bad astronomy
NY Times

vinyl sound waves

its unfortunate to think how much is created and preserved with current technology, which will probably not be available at some point in the near future as technologies change. the print on old books fades, the floppy disk with my high school english writing project is unreadable, unless i buy a record player i cannot accept the wonderful gift of micheals jackson's bad on vinyl from my mother, all the cassette tapes i collected in college of live shows by various bands are now gone, etc...

here's an art installation by jean shin that nicely summarizes the point.


it's called "sound waves" and was highlighted in a NY Times article. the artist melted old vinyl records and "the resulting structure speaks to the inevitable waves of technology that render each successive generation of recordable media obsolete."

the observable universe

the observable universe - xkcd style. fantastic, from top to bottom!

space welcomes the chinese taikonauts

china has become the third country to develop an independent space program to put its "taikonauts" in space (the others being the US and russia). you can watch a video showing the first chinese space walk, which is interesting. something i noticed in the video is that the chinese space mission control center seemed a little... tight, didnt it?

here's NASA's mission control center in houston:


here's the russian mission control center:


and here's the chinese one they show in the video!?


is it just me? they seem rather tighly squeezed into those rows! or is this not the real control center?

writing about the LHC

chris wilson at slate wrote a great article called: atomic prose - Why can't science journalists just tell it like it is when it comes to particle physics? he eloquently describes the challenges faced by journalists while covering the workings of the large hadron collider (LHC), and ultimately, how they have failed.

some excerpts i particularly enjoyed:

No one ever said writing about particle physics was easy—the field of quantum mechanics shares a kind of proverbial inscrutability with rocket science, and nonscientists are understandably reluctant to dig in. But the best way to meet that challenge is to address it head-on, with clear analogies and straightforward language. The puzzles of the subatomic world—and specifically, the quest for the Higgs boson, a particle theorized to endow all others with mass—are interesting and entertaining in their own right; dressing them up in florid language only adds another layer of confusion between the author and the reader.

...

On the whole, the best writing about physics for a general audience seems to come from physicists, not journalists. This isn't due to the fact that physicists understand the subject matter better—if anything, people who spend all day in the lab are often the worst at explaining the big picture. Rather, they're better at writing about physics because they don't try so hard to make you care. They don't believe their readers must be seduced with colorful wordplay or end-of-the-world melodramas. Journalists writing popular treatments of subatomic physics could take a lesson from the scientists: Tell it straight and have a little faith that the subject matter itself—a major advance in our understanding of the cosmos—can generate its own wonder and excitement.

he also shares yet another gem from richard feynman's impeccable ability to describe complicated phenomena...

Feynman was fond of comparing the process of exploring the atom to smashing two pocket watches together and then trying to figure out how they worked by examining the debris—an analogy that neatly captures how particle physics is a distinctly forensic exercise.

carnival of space - 72

this week's carnival of space is hosted at twisted physics - unravelling our strange universe.

i contributed an entry showing the relative sizes of objects in our solar system and other well-studied stars.

this doorway is no more

this doorway is no more! it has ceased to be! it has expired.
this is an ex-doorway!!

seen in oxford, england.

shuttle to hubble delayed

complications resulting from hurricane ike has delayed the target launch date for space shuttle atlantis' STS-125 mission to work on the hubble space telescope. now we can forward to october 14, 2008 at 10:19 p.m EDT.

in light of the atlantis launch delay, the shuttle endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station has also been delayed a few days. now they will try to lauch endeavor on november 16 at 7:07 p.m. EST.


you can read a bit more from nancy universe today, who also found the wonderful picture above, released by NASA, showing both shuttles on the launch pad: Atlantis and Endeavour on pads 39 A and B.

pin hole cameras

seeing these creepy pinhole cameras at boy of blue indistries reminded me of a cool post by julianne at cosmic variance a while ago describing the
effects of pin hole cameras found naturally in every day life. dont know if i'd like to use the skull-version of the ancient pin hole camera, but it looks cool and is functional!



"a 4”x5” camera made from Aluminium, Titanium, Brass, Silver, Gem Stones and a 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl. Light and time enters at the third eye, exposing the film in the middle of the skull."

LHC - down for the count

...at least until the spring of 2009, anyway.

considered by most to be the most complicated piece of technology ever created by human kind, it's no wonder that a couple technical glitches finally suspended operations at the large hadron collider. as a press release from CERN revealed yesterday, a large helium leak and a faulty electrical connection have stopped scientists ability to slam proton beams together at amazingly high speeds! well, they actually hadnt started the collision phase yet, but now they wont be able to try again until at least next spring, while they fix the present malfunctions!


the image above is a small hint at things to come. it shows "the debris of particles picked up in the detector's calorimeters and muon chambers after the beam was steered into the collimator (tungsten block) at point 5." cool!

relative sizes

i never get tired of visual effects used to showcase the relative sizes of planets and stars.




the music is Rubber Bullet by stakka and K Tee. i found the video from digg via neat-o-rama.

if you like this, check out the powers of ten video by the eames, played to the galaxy song by monty python: HERE.

or see how hurricanes relate to spiral galaxies and brain cells relate to large scale structure in the universe!

claire de lune - bossa nova

laurindo almeida not only transcribes my favorite piece, claire de lune, into a beautiful guitar piece, but he also adds some bossa nova flair! i'm extremely impressed by both of these skills!



i loved playing this piece so much when i first learned it, that i wrote a little report on the history of the song and claude debussy for my high school french class. i even recorded myself playing the song and played it for the class as i gave my broken-french report. the thing that aggravated me the most was that the teacher took points off my grade because the title "claire de lune" was wrong. she claimed it should be "claire de la lune." from a grammar perspective, i understood her point, but i argued that i wasnt about to change the name of a song given to it by the french composer! she didnt agree, i didnt change the name, and my grade was marked down. i was livid... and apparently i'm still a little perturbed by her. oh well. i still love the song!

thanks for the heads-up from the jackass penguin show.

carnival of space - 71

for your space reading pleasure, check out the 71st installment of the carnival of space at .astronomy (clever name for a blog!).

LHC == Halo

as readers of the blog have informed me, they've changed the public name of the large hadron collider to "halo". the new name is fine, although its unfortunately lacking onomatopoeia. oh well.

i thought the suggestion of "The One Ring" was pretty funny. any other ideas?

the bottle to bang - small pie collider - LHC

here are two very interesting and very different descriptions for how the large hadron collider (LHC) works.

the first is the "small pie collider" from an enthusiastic "mad scientist" who gets major points for creativity! (although the analogy doesnt relate all that well to the LCH, in my opinion.)



the second is an excellent visualization video called "the bottle to bang," created by chris mann at CERN.

NASA student ambassador - IYA 2009

as part of NASA's participation in the international year of astronomy (IYA 2009), applications are being accepted until sept. 29, 2008 to be a student ambassador.

The NASA International Year of Astronomy Student Ambassadors Program is designed to encourage undergraduate and graduate students to participate in NASA's IYA activities and to help generate excitement about NASA scientific discoveries in astrophysics, planetary science and solar physics within their local communities and beyond. These students will serve as role models to others in the community.

Up to 52 students will be selected for a one-year award of up to $2,700. Students will receive a $2,000 stipend and up to $700 for reimbursement of materials, supplies, and travel expenses for the execution of their activities.

Two NASA IYA Ambassadors will be selected to participate in the IYA Opening Ceremony in Paris, France, January 2009 and each will received a travel allowance of up to $5000. Only undergraduate students are eligible for this component.

Participate in activities that align with the NASA IYA goals “to offer an engaging astronomy experience to every person in the country, nurture existing partnerships, and build new connections to sustain public interested in astronomy” to help generate excitement.

Full details and instructions, including an online application form, are available at http://spacegrant.org/niya/. The National Space Grant Foundation administers this program under a grant from NASA. Applications are due Sept. 29, 2008. Questions about this opportunity should be directed to webmaster@spacegrant.org

good luck all!! let us know the results!

milky way and andromeda collision

we all live on a pale blue dot we call earth, which orbits around the sun, along with many other planets, rocks, and dust, to form our solar system. the sun, along with about 400 billion other stars, make up our the milky way galaxy. the milky way galaxy is one of the biggest galaxies inside our gravitationally bound local group of galaxies. there are roughly 45 observed galaxies in our local group. the milky way and the andromeda galaxy (M31 - shown below) are the largest galaxies in our group, while the others are all tiny little asymmetrical things like the clouds of magellan (small and large), the draco dwarf galaxy, the carina dwarf spheroidal galaxy, et cetera, and my new personal favorite: dwingeloo 1 (i just think the name is awesome)!



the milky way and andromeda galaxies dominate our local group. they dance around each other, spinning in circles around their shared gravitational center, while all the small galaxies cluster around the two big ones. slowly, the two massive spiral galaxies will shrink the distance between them, spiraling closer and closer, until they eventually become one galaxy. i say they are moving slowly because it will take them another 4 billion years or so to fully merge, but andromeda approaches the milky way at 300,000 km per hour!!!

our visual intuition of what a galaxy merger looks like is generally not what really happens. you see no massive fireworks that you might assume would occur when those billions of stars smash into each other. the thing is... stars nearly *never* come into violent contact! the distance between individual stars is so huge, that even though both andromeda and the milky way have hundreds of billions of stars each, it will be very unlikely that any two will get close enough to feel each others heat! just think that our sun's nearest stellar neighbor, alpha centauri, is 4 light years away! it takes *light* 4 years to travel to the closest star to our sun. thats *very* far away! even inside of densely packed globular clusters, star dont collide.

so if nothing explodes when galaxies collide, what do mergers look like? here are some examples of simulations that show the eventual merging of andromeda and the milky way. the merger will take place in about 4 billion years, so nothing to fear... don't worry! in fact, if humans were still around as that time approached, it would be fantastic because you could see the andromeda galaxy shining in the sky! you can see it now with the naked eye as a tiny little smudge... if you know where youre looking on a very clear night.

here's a quick video showing how the two massive galaxies will come together. the first time they go near each other, they pass thru each other like ghosts (no fireworks). gravitational forces dominate the interaction, drastically warping each galaxy.



this excerpt from a full program shows the collision in a bit more detail. the video clip describes the sloan digital sky survey during the first 4 minutes (this is where the galaxy zoo gets its millions of galaxies), and then shows visualizations of the milky way - andromeda collision starting around minute 4. they also show what the night sky might look like from earth's surface when the warped milky way disk and the beaming bright andromeda spiral dominate the view!



here's a scientific simulation produced by the N-Body Shop at the university of washington. props to them for displaying their very cool, physically motivated simulations on youtube for all to enjoy! this video shows how the milky way galaxy may have formed, with many small objects coming together under gravity's influence to form one galaxy.

signs of nottingham

advertising is a funny thing. when i visit foreign countries whose languages i barely speak, adverts remain a bit of a mystery, as i must gather information thru colors, shapes, and product placement. in england, i speak the language relatively well, and have discovered some highly entertaining labels and signs! enjoy!

not everyone takes refuge in maths and physics...



why is this word so freaking difficult to spell?!?



spam stores? off license? what is this store trying to sell me?



i wasnt sure what this little old-fashioned camera sign meant. i looked around for a "scenic view" but didnt really find one. so i figured it was telling me to take a picture of *it*!



they could probably use a bigger sign to advertise their yoga class. this single sheet of paper was posted on the side of a gigantic stone church building!



ah, robin hood....


... your style is legendary. even thru the bus window on a rainy day.


an innocent little poker game sitting in the corner of a pub.
(quid : pounds :: bucks : dollars)
brilliant name!


can i have one non-innocent smoothie, please? (and no banana flavored milk, yuck!)



this might be one of the best-spotted and least-safe-for-work pictures i've ever taken...


i first noticed it from the bus window before the red writing was added and i thought to myself.... that sign is just begging for graffiti! it took about 2 more days before it happened! the sign only stayed up for a day or so, but i managed to get a shot ;)

anti-theft lunch bag

brilliant!



found by andrea harner

man pole spam

occasionally i glance thru my spam filters just to make sure everything is working properly and i havent missed any important emails. today i found a spam email with possibly the best title ever:

"super size your man pole now"

just so you know.

2008 paralympic photos

there's an incredible series of photo of the 2008 paralympic games at the big picture from boston.com.


this is melissa stockwell of the USA. she is one of two US veterans competing in the beijing games, who were injured in iraq.

folks near cincinnati, ohio!!

to all my family and friends near cincinnati,

this saturday, september 13, there is an all day, family-friendly event called SCOPE OUT at the cincinnati observatory at Mt. Lookout. if you didnt know that this was the first public observatory in the US, or one of the oldest operational telescopes in the country, then you should definitely go check it out!

the events during the day are free, and you can register for the evening dinner featuring a very exciting keynote speaker... *the* bad astronomer himself, phil plait! here we are in austin last january during the AAS meeting. he's the second from the left....


the events take place from noon - 10:30, with the dinner from 6-8pm. i hope you can go and enjoy this great feature of my home town!

you just blew my mind. (i know)

stuart at the astronomy blog has found the online logbooks of the LHC scientists! how fantastic that they instantly make these available to the public! most entries don't make any sense to those of us not involved in the action, some show awesome graphs of colorful detections, and one demonstrates that physicists can maintain a sense of humor (despite the underwhelming opposition)!


in other LHC news, part 3 (of 5) is my favorite so far of the LHC series at PhD Comics this week.

what teachers make

slam poet extraordinaire, taylor mali, has a message we should all hear:



thanks ze frank for finding and sharing this video... one of the best things i've seen on youtube.

now can we show this to school boards or the legislature or whoever determines teachers's salaries? because teachers are not appreciated enough and DO NOT make nearly enough money for all the crap they have to deal with!

googley LHC

google honors the large hadron collider

refractive macro-photography

an article at scienceray reminds me that i will never tire of refraction in photography.


image by steve took it at flickr


image by scarbody at flickr