Missiles in the Marshall's

The largest coral atoll in the world is Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Although like some if its neighbours this atoll hasn't been used for nuclear testing It is used by the US as a missile-testing facility with two airbases currently in operation on the windswept island.

http://virtualglobetrotting.co
m/map/kwajalein-atoll/view/?se
rvice=0

The twilight of a great Endeavour

As an addition to the below STS-130 Endeavour stuff, my favorite astronomer Phil Plait aka BadAstronomer has just posted this blog post which has a stunning movie and photo of Endeavour in twilight, probably for the last time,beautiful but kind of sad really.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.
com/badastronomy/2010/02/13/t w ilight-of-the-shuttle/

Something for Valentines weekend and space lovers

Want to impress the Geek in your life?

Here are the instructions for a mathematical multi dimensional Valentine card.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/02/make-a-mathematical-valentines-card.html

Now for some International Space Station news.

The last big piece of construction is going on up there at the moment as a bay window and extra crew space is being installed by the STS-130 crew.

Here are links to the STS-130 launch (the last night launch planned for the program)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsx0NsPlZ_M

and a story about the window and the room called “tranquillity”.

http://nwitimes.com/news/national/article_155273d2-685c-5b50-a5c3-08434418a3dc.html

Finally here is another video showing a recent tour of the ISS from end to end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rHarp1GEE

Look out for the Loo, the speed limit sign and just how cramped it is up there! (Whistlers and claustrophobe’s need not apply)

Let me know you love me

The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

Understanding if something is endothermic or exothermic

To illustrate these two opposites in terms of thermodynamics (and a bit about Boyles law) I thought I’d share a classic exam answer from 1997.

Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, was known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was thus: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.

Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and souls go to hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:

1. If hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will increase until all hell breaks loose.

2. If hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during Freshman year, "that it will be a cold night in hell before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have NOT succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic."

The student, Tim Graham, got the only A.

Go West

Hawaii is moving toward Japan at a rate of 4 inches every year.

Cold Calm

The calmest place on Earth is on top of an icy plateau in Antarctica known as Ridge A, several hundred miles from the South Pole. It is so still that stars do not twinkle in the sky because there is no turbulence in the atmosphere to distort the light.

The fastest manned vehicle/So near and yet so far

The fastest manned vehicle record has been standing for quite some time as it's held by APOLLO 10 which was crewed by Thomas Stafford, John Young and Eugene Cernan. On their return journey from the moon they clocked an impressive 39,897km/hr (11.08km/s or 24,791mph) on the 26th May 1969.

Apollo 10 was a dry run for the eventual first landing of APOLLO 11 and Young and Cernan in the lunar module "Snoopy" came within 15.6km of the Sea of Tranquility (the module was deliberately not set up to land so that the crew, however tempted, wouldn't attempt an unauthorized landing).

PS.Young and Cernan would join the elite 12 on later Apollo missions though, so they did eventually set foot on Luna.

Why do Bats hang upside down?

Bats leg arrangements are not the same as birds. The thin membrane of a bats wing stretches from its elongated fingers to its legs, and is then attached to the sides of its body. Most bats also have a large membrane connecting both legs, which acts like a pouch and is used to capture insects. This means the legs of a bat are not free to do their own thing, but are tangled in wing and tail membrane.

This has meant that bats have not been able to develop the many different types of legs we see in birds – long legs, short legs etc. Anyhow the evolutionary upshot of all this is that for bats it appears the easiest way for them to stow away the membrane is to hang upside down.

A different way of seeing things

Animals do not necessarily see things the same way that you do. While we have three cone cells which allow us to see colour, some birds and fish have four types of cone cells, so their colour vision could be described as more precise than ours. Owls, however, like many other nocturnal animals, have no cone cells. While they have excellent vision, they perceive the world in black and white. Bug zappers use ultraviolet lights to attract mosquitoes because they see the short-wavelength violet and ultraviolet light, but not yellow or orange. And you know how a matador uses a red cape to entice a bull to charge? Well, the colour is for the spectators. Bulls have only two kinds of cone cells and they do not perceive red as a colour at all.