In Memoriam

By a quirk of fate, three major events in space flight happened at this time of year namely.

On the 27th of Jan 1967 Apollo Astronaut's Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee sadly lost their lives in a fire aboard Apollo One.

On the 28th of Jan 1986 we lost Challenger on takeoff with the loss of Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ellison Onuzuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe.

On the 1st of Feb 2003 we lost Columbia on re-entry with the loss of Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, and Laural Clark.

I myself watched the TV with horror for the last two and wanted to pause for a moment to remember their names and say a quick poem.

High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941

Rest in Peace.

Something for the Weekend

Thing one is a nice infographic (oh how I love these things) which shows the many various sciences and the links between them. It shows off nicely that no science exists in isolation and that they feed off advances in each other.

http://hvarfredriksen.posterou
s.com/map-of-science-looks-li k e-milky-way-1

BTW click to enlarge.

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Thing two is something to look out for tonight ie. the 29th/30th Jan. There is going to be the largest full moon of 2010 as our satellite will be at its closest and will be about 12% bigger than average.

Here is the link to Astronomy.com all about it http://www.astronomy.com/asy/d
efault.aspx?c=a&id=9022

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Finally, although I didn't see it myself I understand a strange thing happened to the moon last night too, it got a halo/pillar. This link gives more info on something which is pretty rare, so kudos to anyone who was lucky enough to see it.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool
/Astro/moon/moonring/

The wandering Earth

The shape of the Earth's orbit stretches from circular to more elliptical and back again, with a periodicity of about 100,000 years.

Just beaten by Lucy

Boron Nitride (BN) in its cubic form is the second hardest substance known to man, only beaten by Diamond. It is commonly used as an abrasive when machining steel and is insoluble in iron and nickel, something it has over Diamond which is soluble in both to form carbides.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect

This phenomenon is considered to be due to critical mass. When a limited number of people know something or do something in a new way, it remains the conscious property of only those people. The Hundredth Monkey Syndrome hypothesises that there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field of “energy” is strengthened so that new awareness is picked up by almost everyone.

The Hundredth Monkey Effect was first introduced by biologist Lyall Watson in his 1980 book, ‘Lifetide.’ He reported that Japanese primatologists, who were studying Macaques monkeys in the wild in the 1950s, had stumbled upon a surprising phenomenon. While they were studying the habits of monkeys on some islands in the ocean off the shores of Japan, they found one particularly smart little fellow and taught it to wash its food before eating it. He learned to do this quite quickly. Soon the other monkeys in his family also began to wash their food before eating it. Later this behaviour spread to other monkeys in the clan. About the time one hundred monkeys were washing their food prior to eating it, suddenly all the monkeys on all the islands, some thousands of miles away, began to wash their food before eating it. This surprising observation became known as the Hundredth Monkey Effect and has been repeatedly observed in nature. Incidentally this same phenomenon is true in humans as well. It is part of the reason we have trends in fashion, the economy, and politics, etc.

Awww shucks

When you blush your stomach lining also reddens, strange but true.

Who first determined the speed of light and how did they do it ?

The velocity of sound in air is slow enough that we can easily detect time delays as it travels. For instance, the slap of distant thunder is delayed five seconds for each mile traveled. But light must have a much larger velocity because it appears to arrive at all observers instantaneously. To produce an easily measurable time delay, the light must travel a very large distance.

The first person who observed and measured such a delay was the Danish astronomer Olaf Romer in 1676. He made careful observations of the "moons" of Jupiter. The innermost moon goes around Jupiter in less than two days and is eclipsed by Jupiter once in each orbit. Romer found that this moon did not reappear at exactly the time he expected. Instead, the time of the eclipses varied periodically during the year. When the Earth was farthest from Jupiter, the eclipses were about 11 minute late; when the Earth was nearest Jupiter (about 6 months later), they were about 11 minuets early. Romer deduced that this variation must be due to the annual variation in the distance the light had to travel to get to the Earth from near Jupiter. The 11-minute delay must be about he time that it takes light to travel a distance equal to the radius of the Earth's orbit. More refined measurements of the eclipses gave a value of about 186,000 miles per second for the velocity of light. That is a million times faster than sound!

Something for the Weekend 2.0

This evolution infographic shows nicely, A. How late in the game humans have evolved and B. That 99.9% of evolutionary branches are dead ends. Makes me think how lucky my DNA is to be here at all, how about you?

http://evogeneao.com/images/Ev
o_large.gif

Something for the Weekend

This weeks something should be titled how to make £20,000 look like about 20 billion (the rough cost of the Hubble) as that's exactly what amateur astronomer Peter Shah from the UK has done in his back garden. Here is the link to his site showing his images taken over the last six months or so, which just go to show what one dedicated and talented guy can achieve.

Link to site: http://astropix.co.uk/index.ht
ml

Link to images: http://www.astropix.co.uk/ps/i
ndex.htm

Ps. its worth looking at his equipment page as that shows his set up.

Our skin of four colours

All skin, without colouring, would appear creamy white. Near-surface blood vessels add a blush of red. A yellow pigment also tints the canvas. Lastly, sepia-toned melanin, created in response to ultraviolet rays, appears black in large amounts. These four hues mix in different proportions to create the skin colours of all the peoples of Earth.

So be you from Haiti or Helsinki, its all just a slightly different mix of the same stuff.