it might not be obvious to those who do not write the date as month/day/year, but today's date is 3.14 for those of us that do! pi day.
while reading the rest of this post, feel free to listen to this slightly mesmerizing little pi song.
pi is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter, which is also equal to the ratio between a circle's area (pi*r^2) and its radius (in flat, euclidean space).
if you (d/dt) something then you are taking the derivative with respect to time. you are asking how the thing changes with time, which you call its rate. so (d/dt) of pi, or d*pi/dt, is finding the rate of pi, or pi-rate! hardy-harrrrrrrrr. ok, i'll stop now.
the crew of the international space station (ISS) is moving into the Soyuz due to danger of possible space debris impact. follow universe today for regular updates. estimated time of impact is 16:39 GMT - about 30 minutes!
i've added the third poll because the question was posed at the conference and i found it interesting. feel free to discuss the issue here and i'll expand more when i have some time....
- numbers increasing in percentage of women in STEM educational paths, and they are performing well! but not getting jobs in private sector, tech, eng. why??
- we are often taught about the few women throughout history who have contributed to astronomy. who are modern-day science heroines? Vera Rubin. Sandy Faber. Jocelyn Bell..... any young ones? sara seager? meg urry?
- we all think of einstein, newton, and darwin... the geniuses. who are the current science heros?
- at current rates of change, it will take 200 years for UK parliament to have equal number of women as men!
i've set up two quick polls on the right sidebar. if you wouldnt mind taking a few seconds to fill those out, it would be much appreciated! i'm curious as to the types of people who read this blog (aside from the spammers that have hit in the last week). this is a highly unscientific poll, but in light of today's fesitivities at the conference in london, i'm curious as to who i'm reaching with my writing in this format.
the 10 year old international space station (ISS) will benefit from this mission as the crew will install the final truss segment needed for the solar array! the full set of solar arrays will stretch out to 100 meters (the size of a football field) and will increase the energy available to the space station so that starting this year, six people will be able to live on the ISS instead of just three.
launch is set for tonight, 11 march, 2009 at 9:20 pm EDT.
my only complaint is that it's a 10x10 table - while normal times tables go to 12! although i'm not really sure why they go to 12. anyone know? do all kids everywhere in the world have to memorize to 12 x 12? why not stop at 10, or go to 13?
i always thought numbers times 11 were fun because the answers all have symmetry: 55, 88, 121... but numbers times 12 were harder to memorize because it took me longer to find a recognizable pattern!!
and anything times three is great, although i didnt know it (and it wouldnt have helped) when i was trying to memorize my times tables. you can tell if big numbers are divisible by three, by simply adding up the value of the digits. if the digits add up to a number that is divisible by three, then the whole number is divisible by 3! 8125 is not divisible by three, but 1905 and 9501 are!
its a neat little math trick, even if you don't get to use it very often!
in somewhat related news, i'm heading to london later this week to attend the one-day conference: Tomorrow’s Women, Tomorrow’s World: The science, engineering and technology workforce and workplace in 2030.
"Women form less than 25% of the workforce in most areas of science, engineering, and technology and are concentrated in the lower income levels. Can such a loss of talent and potential be allowed to continue?"
hopefully this conference will be interesting! i was the only female in my physics undergraduate program, but had many more female colleagues when i entered graduate school. i'd like to reach out to young people as much as possible to let them know that they can do anything they want, regardless of the typical populations of people who have done that thing in the past! hopefully, this conference will give some ideas as to how to communicate these ideas with the next generation of visionary thinkers!
i will be live-twittering the event, so you can follow along in real time here: thursday, 12 march 2009.
"The aim of the project is to provide neutral, informative and accessible information to female professional and amateur astronomers, students, and those who are interested in the gender equality problem in science. We believe that providing this information will help increase the interest of young females to study and pursue a career in astronomy."
i will try to write a bit more about these issues over the next couple days, and reflect on the conference after its over. in the meantime, here is a resource guide and a list of some of the women in astronomy.
i was just introduced to the haunting art of david ho which is described on his site as "dark digital art with irony." great description and worth a browse.
the moon continues to fill up with light over the next few nights as it passes by the constellation, leo. look to the east in the early evening to watch the moon slowly approach saturn. tonight, 8 march, 2009, saturn is at opposition - it sits opposite the sun in our sky, so it's up all night! if you have access to a small telescope (local astronomy clubs, friends, etc...) or binoculars, take a look! saturn's rings are edge-on right now from our perspective on earth, but its a nice treat to see saturn and the moon only 8 degrees apart in the sky... as they will be tuesday night, 10 march, 2009, when the moon is full!!
it makes sense that the full moon appears near saturn in our sky when saturn is at opposition. the moon shines because it reflects sunlight. when the moon is full, sun shine covers the entire surface of the moon that is visible to us. this happens when the earth sits between the sun and the moon so that the sun shining from behind us illuminates the moon.
tuesday night, both saturn and the moon sit exactly opposite of the sun in earths sky!
while not a part of this week's carnival of space, i'd like to highlight an excellent and thorough article by ian o'neil at universe today describing why the world will NOT end in 2012! i'm not looking forward to continuously responding to people over the next few years who unreasonably fear these silly doomsday predictions.
i've recently read about two interesting design structures in downtown liverpool!
turning the place over is a daring piece of public art by richard wilson that literally turns part of a building inside out! he cut out an 8-meter diameter piece of the facade of a building, and attached it to a giant rotating device that slowly spins the structure around every couple of minutes!
then there is the creation from la machine called la princesse - a 30 ft mechanical spider that lived briefly in liverpool as part of the capital of culture celebrations last year.
here is a haunting shot by dune_UK at flickr, showing the spider as it walks thru the city. notice all the people sitting on it to operate it!
this video by NASA, of last night's launch of the kepler spacecraft and its delta II rocket from the kennedy space center in cape canaveral, florida, is not the most visually exciting launch i've seen. but i think it's neat to hear updates on fuel usage and the distance the rocket travels in such short amounts of time!!
kepler successfully launched from the kennedy space center in florida last night at 10:49 pm EST! after lighting up the night skies, kepler separated from its booster an hour later as it sailed thru space to its earth-trailing orbital location.
i found some nice images of the launch from flickr:
a tag on kepler says "search for earth-size planets," by jonf
a couple days ago, i watched ane brun's beautiful recording of lullaby for grown ups in her black cab session. now i'm obsessed. i cant stop listening.
while the (embeddable) video recording i share below is lovely, its not quite as emotionally mesmerizing as the black cab session version. anyway... enjoy, but dont say i didnt warn you!!
kepler's mission is to detect earth-size planets around distant stars. this is the first telescope with the capabilities to find such small planets using the transit method. if a planet happens to pass in front of its star, it blocks a tiny amount of light output from the star. sensitive telescopes can detect this dip in the light from the star and then we can attempt to model how big the planet must be!
the graph above slightly exaggerates the dip in signal, but you can see that it does exist. after the planet passes in front of the star, the signal from the star remains constant while the planet continues on its orbit all the way around the other side of the star and back.
such a tiny planet is still impossible for us to detect around distant stars. but you can imagine that we will be able to find bigger planets more easily!!
good luck with the launch tonight!! hopefully we'll be hearing news about new earth-like planets being detected quite regularly when kepler starts taking data!
"The Kepler spacecraft will watch a patch of space for 3.5 years or more for signs of Earth-sized planets moving around stars similar to the sun. The patch that Kepler will watch contains about 100,000 stars like the sun. Using special detectors similar to those used in digital cameras, Kepler will look for slight dimming in the stars as planets pass between the star and Kepler. The Kepler's place in space will allow it to watch the same stars constantly throughout its mission, something observatories like Hubble cannot do."
rhett and link are a duo that continuously create funny songs. i had forgotten about their facebook song, but just listened to it again and am amazed that they made it two years ago!!
two other clever girls have written an adorable little song in response called i heart you online. here's the video:
it might not be obvious to those who do not write the date as month/day/year, but an upcoming date is 3.14 for those of us that do! pi day. i can never seem to remember more of pi than 3.14159, and i think that's enough.
in case you need to prepare for pi day, you can get your own pi ice tray...
sita sings the blues is a full-length animated film that was just released with a creative commons license. the animation, by self-taught comic artist nina paley, is very unique and interesting throughout. a couple stories with the same theme are told in parallel, while several themes surrounding a single story are expressed thru different types of animation.
a synopsis:
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina [Paley] is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”
i think the the original ending of the first back to the future movie is one of the best endings, and sequel introductions, of any movie, ever. but i was entertained by this alternate ending - which might disturb some readers....
if you look up in the sky tonight as the sun sets, you'll be sure to notice the crescent moon floating next to the amazingly bright planet venus in the western sky (assuming there are no clouds blocking the view!).
while the moon has passed by venus in our evening sky during the last several months, this will be our last opportunity to see the evening alignment for a while. next month, venus will pass between the earth and the sun so that it will rise in the morning sky for the rest of the year! venus will not be our "evening star" again until 2010!
according to solar system live, here is the alignment of the planets around the sun tonight:
if you imagine the earth spinning counterclockwise, you see that venus is in the sky as the sun is setting.
here is the alignment of the planets on 30 march, 2009, showing venus passing between the earth and sun.
in this case, venus rises in earth's sky just before the sun and is therefore visible in the morning! you can also see from these images, how much more quickly the closest planet, mercury, moves around the sun than the 4th planet, mars.
so... look up tonight, take some pictures, and enjoy venus next to the moon!
predictably, my little part of the world was covered by thick clouds last night, so i didnt have the chance to view comet lulin or the quadruple saturn transit :(
luckily, other people in the world have taken lovely photos of comet lulin! one of the coolest things i've seen so far is this MOVIE! by patrick colestock.
these images were taken by francisco rodriguez 22 feb 2009, from the canary islands!
while it seems that in the UK, they mostly celebrate pancake day.... i have to say i'm highly partial to the more festive mardi gras carnival celebrations!! i'll still be eating (perfect) pancakes tomorrow, but i might have to dress up to do it!
i've been listening to some great new orleans music from NOLA radio all day to get in the mood! now i want to cook a gumbo or etouffee!
here are a few photos of the carnival floats in sao paulo, brasil that i saw in 2007.
*fine print: calendars most relevant for beings whose location in the universe is on a planet called earth, located 150 million kilometres (93 million miles) away from its g-type sun, 26,000 light years from the center of the in the milky way galaxy, of the local group, virgo supercluster. thank you.
there's a big cloud of atomic gas around the comet. when streams of particles from the sun, called solar wind, react with the comets extended gas, they emit x-ray light! as far as i know, this is the first view of a comet with such a range of wavelengths!
there are many organizations out there that offer people the option to "buy" a star. in my experience, these are mostly silly because the profit goes to the individual seller and nothing changes regarding the star's working name.
the good news is that i recently found out about an organization that allows one to "adopt" a star and gives all the money to support scientific research! welcome the pale blue dot project, which is hosted by a non-profit organization - the white dwarf research corporation (WDRC)!
as i was investigating the validity of this project, i discovered that i know most of the members of the board of directors of the WDRC!! of the 6 BoD members, i've met ed, observed with anjum, danced the samba with kepler, played bluegrass music and sand volleyball with mike, and enjoyed a few beers in austin with travis! that's travis on the right, and nairn on the left, who informed me of the pale blue dot project.
so what is it you ask?
the members of the WDRC will help detect planets revolving around distant suns from the data of NASA's kelper space telescope, scheduled to launch next month! since the WDRC is a non-profit group and not funded by NASA, support for their analysis of Kepler's data will come from donations the public makes to the pale blue dot project to adopt a star! you can search thru a catalog in google sky and adopt any star available! as a result, you will "receive a personalized certificate by email and will be acknowledged in both the text version of the catalog, and in the placemark for their adopted star in Google Sky." cool!
each star that you can choose to adopt has a designated string of numbers like "022009" to identify it. amusingly, travis noticed that the catalog number of a particular star - 47 53787 - spells "Is Jesus" on a telephone!! therefore, he is offering the opportunity for one lucky bidder to officially adopt the "jesus" star on ebay!! the bidding ends 26 february, 2009! :)
as of today, humans have detected evidence for 340 planets outside of our solar system! none of these planets are earth-like as no current systems have the sensitivity to detect earth-like planets around other stars! astronomers predict that with kepler, we should be able to find hundreds of planets the size of earth or bigger at various distances from their suns!
to hear more about the process of how the white dwarf research corporation will search thru kepler's data for new exosolar planets, here's travis (metcalfe) speaking for a google tech talk on january 13, 2009.
info on the video:
ABSTRACT: In February 2009 NASA will launch the Kepler satellite, a mission designed to discover habitable Earth-like planets around distant Sun-like stars. The method that Kepler will use to detect distant worlds will only reveal the size of the planet relative to the size of the host star, so part of the mission is devoted to characterizing distant Suns using a technique known as "asteroseismology". I have developed an automated approach to matching computer models of stars to such observations, based primarily on a parallel genetic algorithm. I will give a broad overview of how we can probe the insides of stars using seismology, and I will provide a general background on the operation of our model-fitting application. I will conclude with our first results on a nearby star: the Sun.
Speaker: Travis Metcalfe Travis Metcalfe is an astronomer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. He started his career in the backyard of his childhood home in rural Oregon, and continued it in such places as Tucson, Austin, and Boston before landing in Boulder four years ago.
link
