Archive for the ‘It’s Only Rocket Science’ Category
Science-Book Grab-Bag
I've been reading lots of good books this year, several that I can count for my own commitment to the Science-Book Challenge, but I am only now catching up on writing about them. Tonight I wanted to mention a trio of top-notch books from three different domains: cosmology, probability & statistics, and history of science […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Attenborough on Creationism
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance." Telling the magazine that […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
On Reading The Little Ice Age
Earlier this year I read the book Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age : How Climate Made History 1300 – 1850, by Brian Fagan (New York : Basic Books, 2000; 246 pages). He takes a close look at the relatively cool period between the "Medieval Warm Period" and the current warming period, and considers in […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Park's "Physics Plan" Diet
Conservation of Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics are probably the two most important concepts in physics that have thwarted the aspirations and claims of inventors and charlatans for decades. Someday we hope that the public will understand this. WEIGHT-LOSS: SCIENCE CONFIRMS THE “PHYSICS PLAN“. Atkins, Pritikin, Jennie Craig, South Beach, NutriSystem . . […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
Pretty Sky Alert
A special notice from Spaceweather.com: PRETTY SKY ALERT: When the sun goes down tonight (Friday, Feb. 27th) step outside and look west. Venus and the crescent Moon are having a beautiful close encounter in the sunset sky. If you point a small telescope at the pair, you will see that Venus, like the Moon, is […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Meteoroids, not Space Debris
SpaceWeather.com (operated by NOAA) reports that people all over the US are seeing meteors and are concerned that it's space debris from that dramatic orbital collision between Iridium 33 and Kosmos 2251. Apparently there was also a large meteor seen over Italy that led to similar thoughts. I've also seen reports that the FAA has […]
In: All, Current Events, It's Only Rocket Science
Decorative Arts, Spectral
Still in operation, NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliophysical Observatory) spacecraft orbits the sun (not the Earth) in step with the Earth, by slowly orbiting around the First Lagrangian Point (L1), where the combined gravity of the Earth and Sun keep SOHO in an orbit locked to the Earth-Sun line. The L1 point is approximately 1.5 […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
Beard of the Week LXX: "Disproving" Darwin
This week's beard belongs to birthday boy Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), born 200 years ago on 12 February 1809. This photograph (which I have cropped) was taken in 1882 by the photographic company of Ernest Edwards, London.* Many people call Darwin's great idea, common descent through evolution by means of natural selection, the greatest scientific […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science, Reflections
Beard of the Week LXVII: The Age of the Sun
This week's majestic beard belongs to Sir William Thomson, Baron Kelvin* (1824 – 1907) or, simply, Lord Kelvin as he's known to us in the physical sciences. This is the same "Kelvin" as in the SI unit "Kelvins", the degrees of the absolute thermodynamic temperature scale. The photograph was taken c. 1900 by T. & […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science
Perigee Moon
This just in from Spaceweather.com: FULL MOON ALERT! This weekend's full Moon is the biggest and brightest of 2009. It's a "perigee Moon" as much as 50,000 km closer to Earth than other full Moons we'll see later this year. Perigee moonlight shining through icy winter air can produce beautiful halos, coronas, moondogs and other […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Look! Up in the Sky!
All sorts of stuff has been going on up in the sky lately. There's just so much to look at. For instance, NASA sent word today (SpaceWeather for 6 December 2008) that the SOHO spacecraft, the orbiting solar observatory,* has only hours ago taken this picture (like this one, which I've cropped quite a bit; […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week LIX: Accepting PI
This week's beard belongs to Euclid (c. 365 BCE — c. 275 BCE) of Alexandria, Egypt, possibly one of the earliest celebrities to use only one name. Euclid is famous, of course, for writing Elements, his 13-book exposition on geometry and the earliest mathematical textbook and second only to the Bible in the number of […]
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Beard of the Week LVI: Hand-Made Vacuum Tubes
This week's beard belongs to Claude Paillard, also known since 1959 as F2FO when he apparently received his amateur-radio license. M. Paillard's beard is on view after about 15 minutes in this 17 minute video, although his hands are visible much more frequently. The title of the film, "Fabrication d'une lampe triode" ("Build a triode […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, Curious Stuff, It's Only Rocket Science
On Reading The Carbon Age
I recently finished reading The Carbon Age : How Life's Core Element has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat, by Eric Roston (New York : Walker & Company, 2008. 308 pages). I very much enjoyed the act of reading it, but it was only when I was writing about it that I realized that is really an […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week LV: SX-70
This week's beards belongs to an anonymous actor in this film from 1972. The film is 10:47 long; the actor who provides the excuse to include this first-ever video at Beard of the Week appears very, very briefly at the 1:48 mark; or, if you prefer, it's a different actor who appears very, very briefly […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science, Music & Art
On Hydrogen (& Physics Humor)
I recently finished reading the book Hydrogen : The Essential Element, by John S. Rigden (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2002. vii + 280 pages). Here's my book note. It's a book I can recommend. As I mentioned in the book note, the "hydrogen" of this book is the physicist's "hydrogen",* the simple atom […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
More About Noise
In my post about noise yesterday I added a rather inscrutable footnote about noise and power spectra. Thoughtfully, Mel asked: I don't quite understand this, though: "Pink noise" has a power spectrum that rolls off as the inverse of the frequency. Could you explain what that would look like, for really elementary level brains like […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
McCain's Dangerous Science Illiteracy
At the most recent presidential so-called "debate" (that would be debate #2, the "town hall meeting" format), John McCain, trying to score cheap points against rival Barack Obama, referred to earmark money Obama voted for that included "$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois". Of course, as many of us […]
In: Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
Seeing Halfway to the Beginning of Time
Once again Physics News Update delivered what I thought was a really cool story. It concerns an incredibly bright gamma-ray burst from an incredibly distant object–more distant than anything ever seen before: 7,000,000,000 light years away! The object exploding was an old star that had used up all its fuel, the end of the sequence […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
California Forests Slipping as CO2 Storage Tanks
The following news arrived in my email recently as a "Physics News Update" item. I thought it interesting enough to share. ———- CALIFORNIA TREES NOT KEEPING UP WITH CO2. Forests aren't absorbing as much carbon dioxide as in the past, and fire suppression might be to blame. Fire suppression in forest encourages the growth of […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science