a nice, though rainy, walk in the woods.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
nikola tesla
to entertain and teach us of the electric rise and fall of nikola tesla, marco tempest made an incredible presentation at a TED conference. enjoy!
Friday, November 9, 2012
ohio halloween
i spent halloween in the US this year, which i havent done for a long time. this is such a fun holiday and the people in my sister's town, certainly get into it!
the kitty pooh was DELICIOUS!
the hamburglar and i visited the school for their halloween parade. probably for the best, the kids had no idea who the hamburglar is/was! one confused kid asked if i was a skunk. i went with it, since i only just wanted to wear the wig!
the homemade wall-e really stole the show, in my opinion.
chillin
keldan carefully rinsing pumpkin seeds for roasting.
fresh hot apple cider and apple butter. two of my autumn favorites!
for dinner i made the kids "worms in dirt!" (**recipe below) everyone was skeptical at first, but then ate it right up, with my niece even asking "auntie, can i have some more worms? i really like them!" :)
unfortunately, it was cold and rainy during the trick-or-treating hours, so we only made a quick trip around the neighborhood.
i was pretty amazed that she instantly found the pumpkin to color inside her sack and ripped it open before even contemplating the candy!
** worms in dirt
black beans
hot dogs
greens or sprouts
i rinsed a can of black beans then heated them with a splash of water in a pan. i added a small bit of salt and roughly mashed them with a fork until it looked like a pile of dirt. i cut up hot dogs in thin strips and then boiled for a couple minutes. they curl up in the water!
the kitty pooh was DELICIOUS!
the hamburglar and i visited the school for their halloween parade. probably for the best, the kids had no idea who the hamburglar is/was! one confused kid asked if i was a skunk. i went with it, since i only just wanted to wear the wig!
the homemade wall-e really stole the show, in my opinion.
chillin
keldan carefully rinsing pumpkin seeds for roasting.
fresh hot apple cider and apple butter. two of my autumn favorites!
for dinner i made the kids "worms in dirt!" (**recipe below) everyone was skeptical at first, but then ate it right up, with my niece even asking "auntie, can i have some more worms? i really like them!" :)
unfortunately, it was cold and rainy during the trick-or-treating hours, so we only made a quick trip around the neighborhood.
i was pretty amazed that she instantly found the pumpkin to color inside her sack and ripped it open before even contemplating the candy!
** worms in dirt
black beans
hot dogs
greens or sprouts
i rinsed a can of black beans then heated them with a splash of water in a pan. i added a small bit of salt and roughly mashed them with a fork until it looked like a pile of dirt. i cut up hot dogs in thin strips and then boiled for a couple minutes. they curl up in the water!
Monday, November 5, 2012
watching words
there is a clever book called watching words by ivan chermayeff and tom geismar that i'd like to look all the way through. so far i've only seen a few pages, and i like them very much!
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
milky way's neighborhood
here is a lovely map of the close vicinity of our milky way galaxy, recently published in nature.
click on this link to get a full-size version of the image and explore all the components.
our galaxy is a flat disk, consisting of spiral arms with billions of stars, gas, dust and some other stellar remnants. from the southern hemisphere, you can see the dwarf galaxies, the magellanic clouds, with your naked eye on a clear night. eventually these galaxies will interact more strongly with the milky way and become part of it. this is what is happening to the sagittarius dwarf galaxy as revealed by observations of the sagittarius star stream.
all of this lives inside a huge spherical halo of dark matter.
nice neighborhood!
click on this link to get a full-size version of the image and explore all the components.
our galaxy is a flat disk, consisting of spiral arms with billions of stars, gas, dust and some other stellar remnants. from the southern hemisphere, you can see the dwarf galaxies, the magellanic clouds, with your naked eye on a clear night. eventually these galaxies will interact more strongly with the milky way and become part of it. this is what is happening to the sagittarius dwarf galaxy as revealed by observations of the sagittarius star stream.
all of this lives inside a huge spherical halo of dark matter.
nice neighborhood!
Monday, October 29, 2012
bic pen for her
i wasnt too sure about this new product: bic pens for her. while the reviews on amazon have been refreshingly helpful, ellen has put everything in perspective for me. i mean, i've been using man pens all this time!?!
here is ellen's take:
my favorite line: just think, over the last twenty years, companies have spent millions of dollars making pills that grow men's hair and fix men's sex lives, and now ladies have... a pen.
here is ellen's take:
my favorite line: just think, over the last twenty years, companies have spent millions of dollars making pills that grow men's hair and fix men's sex lives, and now ladies have... a pen.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
time traveling
i'm getting ready to time travel again! aboard the worlds longest flight, i leave
sydney, and 17 hours later, i arrive in dallas 1 hour before i left.
too bad this flight still uses a 747 aircraft and not the much-more-comfortable airbus A380. hopefully soon.
anyway, i'm ohio bound and very excited to enjoy some holiday time with my family.
also, it's been a long time since i've spent halloween in the US! i get to trick-or-treat with my niece and nephew this year! woo hoo!! i cant wait.
anyway, i'm ohio bound and very excited to enjoy some holiday time with my family.
also, it's been a long time since i've spent halloween in the US! i get to trick-or-treat with my niece and nephew this year! woo hoo!! i cant wait.
galaxies in the thick of it grow up fast
my first science press release came out this week! it has been an exciting and frightening experience. i'll get to that, but first, the science!
you can read the full AAO press release, here and there was also an official release from the fresh science event i attended last week.
we looked at one of the most massive galaxy clusters as it was 11 billion years ago. such clusters of galaxies are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, and are some of the first systems that formed after the Big Bang. here's an image of it:
almost all the little smudges you see in this image are entire galaxies, each harbouring hundreds of billions of stars.
you can see lots of red galaxies clumped together at the center of the cluster. we found that the galaxies in the center of the cluster are all very massive and no longer forming stars. they have reached "maturity." but the galaxies outside that central region are still growing and forming new stars. we are continuing to study what sort of physical processes within the cluster environment affect these galaxies.
do the galaxies in the center stop forming stars because the they live in a sea of hot gas that exists throughout the cluster, between the galaxies? has all their gas been completely stripped away so that there is actually no fuel from which to form new stars? or do they have internal supplies of gas that cannot cool, condense, and form new stars? more to come....!
the interesting/frightening part of this whole press release business is that the material inside the news articles that have been posted in some australian print media, does not really focus on my actual research project much at all! i wrote last week about my experiences with the media training i received as part of the "fresh science" program. it was very good training overall, but i still was not prepared enough, apparently.
the articles that came out in the papers have had titles like "Our galaxy is going to crash. Everybody panic ... in a billion years, or two" and the not-quite-so threatening "Billions of years until galaxy collides."
the thing that i failed to get across during my interview with the guy from the australian associated press was that my research actually looks at the processes that *stop* star formation, not potential causes of new star formation, like interactions between galaxies. he got very excited about the interaction between the milky way and andromeda, even though i tried to emphasize, not strongly enough i see now, that my research focuses mostly on the very distant galaxies.
so while i'm excited about having a press release and proud of the research i've done, i'm honestly a bit embarrassed by the resulting media stories, because they are so far off of what my actual research is. luckily, this misinterpretation doesnt really matter in terms of our daily lives, as i dont work in the medical field or with major industry businesses, who might make the inaccuracy much more seriously. as the journo quoted me "the sun is more of a worry than the galaxy collision." sheesh.
so... lesson learned - the hard way, despite all that training i went through!!
this research was published as:
Bauer, A. E.; Grützbauch, R.; Jørgensen, I, Varela, J.; Begmann, M., 2011, "Star formation in the XMMU J2235.3-2557 galaxy cluster at z= 1.39," MNRAS, 411, 2009.
Grützbauch, Ruth; Bauer, Amanda E.; Jørgensen, Inger; Varela, Jesus, 2012, "Suppression of star formation in the central 200 kpc of a z= 1.4 galaxy cluster," MNRAS, 423, 3652.
you can read the full AAO press release, here and there was also an official release from the fresh science event i attended last week.
we looked at one of the most massive galaxy clusters as it was 11 billion years ago. such clusters of galaxies are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, and are some of the first systems that formed after the Big Bang. here's an image of it:
 |
| Galaxy cluster XMMU J2235.3-2557 Credit: Piero Rosati (ESO) and Chris Lidman (AAO) |
you can see lots of red galaxies clumped together at the center of the cluster. we found that the galaxies in the center of the cluster are all very massive and no longer forming stars. they have reached "maturity." but the galaxies outside that central region are still growing and forming new stars. we are continuing to study what sort of physical processes within the cluster environment affect these galaxies.
do the galaxies in the center stop forming stars because the they live in a sea of hot gas that exists throughout the cluster, between the galaxies? has all their gas been completely stripped away so that there is actually no fuel from which to form new stars? or do they have internal supplies of gas that cannot cool, condense, and form new stars? more to come....!
the interesting/frightening part of this whole press release business is that the material inside the news articles that have been posted in some australian print media, does not really focus on my actual research project much at all! i wrote last week about my experiences with the media training i received as part of the "fresh science" program. it was very good training overall, but i still was not prepared enough, apparently.
the articles that came out in the papers have had titles like "Our galaxy is going to crash. Everybody panic ... in a billion years, or two" and the not-quite-so threatening "Billions of years until galaxy collides."
the thing that i failed to get across during my interview with the guy from the australian associated press was that my research actually looks at the processes that *stop* star formation, not potential causes of new star formation, like interactions between galaxies. he got very excited about the interaction between the milky way and andromeda, even though i tried to emphasize, not strongly enough i see now, that my research focuses mostly on the very distant galaxies.
so while i'm excited about having a press release and proud of the research i've done, i'm honestly a bit embarrassed by the resulting media stories, because they are so far off of what my actual research is. luckily, this misinterpretation doesnt really matter in terms of our daily lives, as i dont work in the medical field or with major industry businesses, who might make the inaccuracy much more seriously. as the journo quoted me "the sun is more of a worry than the galaxy collision." sheesh.
so... lesson learned - the hard way, despite all that training i went through!!
this research was published as:
Bauer, A. E.; Grützbauch, R.; Jørgensen, I, Varela, J.; Begmann, M., 2011, "Star formation in the XMMU J2235.3-2557 galaxy cluster at z= 1.39," MNRAS, 411, 2009.
Grützbauch, Ruth; Bauer, Amanda E.; Jørgensen, Inger; Varela, Jesus, 2012, "Suppression of star formation in the central 200 kpc of a z= 1.4 galaxy cluster," MNRAS, 423, 3652.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
moving a grounded space shuttle
NASA's space shuttles have retired to nice homes in museums around the country. last month, the shuttle endeavour landed at LAX airport and was then maneuvered on trollies along city roads to its final resting place 15 miles away at the california science center.
this timelapse video captures the comedy and cuteness of the whole process!
this timelapse video captures the comedy and cuteness of the whole process!
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