timelapse of shuttle launch preparation

ever wonder how the shuttle gets from the big storage locker to the upright launchpad position? this incredible ~4 min timelapse video from Scott Andrews, Stan Jirman and Philip Scott Andrews tells the six-week story of the preparation for launch.


[embedded video was a pain, so please CLICK HERE to view]

the video shows the discovery shuttle preparing for the STS-131 mission. make sure to watch there very end, when the shuttle returns to earth!

atheists don't have no songs

steve martin is apparently tired of making funny films and writing books and has decided to take his banjo-playing a little more seriously. he released a record last year and has been hitting several music festivals this year with the steep canyon boys. here they are singing a little song called "atheists don't have no songs."

triforce

i managed to cut myself while gardening, then burn myself across the cut in a perpendicular direction while cooking. it looks like a little dagger from zelda.

chemistry of the world cup trophy

periodic videos has a timely discussion on what the world cup trophy might be made of.



i can imagine the green malachite stripe being a question in a pub quiz this week.... we'll see!

"the case for mars," a song

the youtube contributer melody sheep has created another interesting song and video using snippets from different scientists like carl sagan, robert zubrin, brian cox, and penelope boston.



more videos can be found at symphony of science.

guatemala sinkhole

it has certainly been a rough week for the central american country of guatemala. the big picture gives a rough idea of the aftermath of the volcanic ash from pacaya volcano eruption, landslides caused by tropical storm agatha, and this amazing photo of a sinkhole that swallowed an entire building in guatemala city!!


the sink hole is estimated to be 30 meters wide and over 60 meters deep. and looks like something straight out of science fiction. incredible.

these things have formed before, could easily occur again, and maybe shouldnt be called sinkholes.

mmm... quarks!

here's a new sixty symbols video on quarks, those flavourful little elementary particles that combine to make protons and neutrons and other not so well-known hadrons.

new favorite band

the devil and daniel johnston

a couple weekends ago i went to a music festival called all tomorrow's parties which was curated by simpsons creator matt groening (pronounced GRAY-ning, apparently).


interestingly, in order to get to the festival, we had to drive by a local power plant which i like to call england's "springfield."


as the curator, matt groening chose and invited all the bands that came and designed the programs. he made four different program covers... the one on the right features the strange-looking and energetic iggy pop and the left shows daniel johnston with his famous hi, how are you character, jeremiah the frog.


one of the most memorable acts for me was definitely daniel johnston.


i highly recommend the documentary film the devil and daniel johnston.



our crew...

clocky

clocky is an alarm clock that runs away from you and hides after you hit the snooze button. when the alarm goes off again, you are forced to get out of bed and find clocky, therefore making you less likely to snooze indefinitely.



this clever little device was invented by gauri nanda while she was a graduate student at MIT. she published the study and earned herself a 2005 Ig nobel prize! the Ig nobel prizes are awarded each year by an organization called improbable research to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

so, congratulations gauri... only a few years too late ;)

a plethora of condiments

the rose and crown pub in nottingham offers a plethora of condiments to choose from when eating in their establishment:


ironically, HP sauce, which is commonly called "brown sauce," has a blue packet.

i wondered whether the contents of the packets offered as wide a variety of colors as their containers. the answer is simply, no.



we considered doing a blind taste test in our office to see whether people could identify each condiment by taste alone. in the end, we didnt go thru with this experiment. the results didnt seem to be worth the flavours.

the turkey that ate st. louis

seth shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI institute, but he used to make films when he was in graduate school. great to see old hobbies of well-known astronomers!



seth writes:
"One of the many doubtful activities of my youth was making films. I started doing this at age 11, and by the time I was a teenager, my buddy Jerry Rebold and I had already constructed a sound system that occasionally worked with our wind-up, 16mm camera.

In 1967, while in grad school, fellow student Bob O'Connell, Jerry Rebold and I made a half-hour film entitled "The Teenage Monster Blob from Outer Space, Which I Was." This parody of 1950s sci-fi films starred six pounds of Play-Doh.

The film bombed. It was, as O'Connell called it, "a turkey." This disgusting failure prompted us to change our cinematic strategy in two ways: (1) our next film was just going to be a trailer, rather than a complete film -- that way we could save money and just put in the good parts, and (2) if we were making turkeys, why not make a REAL turkey?

Ergo, this short "preview" film, shot mostly at Caltech and at that school's Owens Valley Radio Observatory. Observant viewers will note then-department chair Jesse Greenstein in the role of Walter Cronkite, and a few other astronomers too (including yours truly).

"The Turkey that Ate St. Louis" was entered in the Baltimore International Film Festival, and automatically inserted into the feature-film category, where it faced competition from major motion pictures from both America and Europe. Despite this uneven playing field, "The Turkey" lost.

"The Teenage Monster Blob" eventually became more popular. Too late."

world cup build up

holy crap, i'm so excited!!

another one bites the dust

the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and i´ve been bombarded by birthday besitos already! me gusta mucho.

so far barcelona has proven to be a fascinating city to explore. from getting lost in the gothic neighborhoods to finding the modernista architecture, its certainly not a boring place to be! i´m going to walk around montjuic park today, and then try to think of something interesting to cook for my wonderful hosts for dinner.

i´m staying in the big city until friday, then i head off along the coast for the rest of my trip. happy happy joy joy.

a world cup of crisps

in honor of the world cup next month, a pub near my house is offering sausages from a dozen different countries playing in the tournament. it really made me laugh when i saw the sign, but now i'm curious about what sausages will be featured from various countries like the US, france, and even england. so of course i will be watching at least a few matches there!

i think the sausage variety is a much better idea than the one developed by Walkers crisps (potato chips). they have created 15 new flavours of crisps from different countries in the world cup, including: South African sweet chutney, Spanish chicken paella, Irish stew, American cheeseburger, Japanese chicken teriyaki, etc...



you should read the hilarious results of charlie brooker's taste test.

i mean, the british love their crisps and they certainly have an arsenal of unique and interesting flavours already on the shelves (eg. "prawn cocktail" or "smoky bacon"), but i think maybe this has gone too far....?

fuschia flower

of course the fuschia decided to bloom just in time for me to go on holiday!

solidly in the thirties

once i recognized the pattern, i knew it had to be continued: i'm going to try to spend my birthdays in different countries for as many years as i can!


all birthdays were celebrated in the US until...

2007: buenos aires, argentina (photos)

2008: austin, texas, usa (post-phd party)

2009: i turned thirty in england's peak district (photos)

2010: BARCELONA, SPAIN! (if the volcano allows...)


i'm leaving ridiculously early in the morning. cant wait! chao!

saturn's aurora

the spacecraft cassini continues to explore saturn's environment and captured this lovely timelapse of saturn's aurora between october 5th and 8th, 2009.


auroras (aurori? aurorae?) occur because energetic particles coming from the sun react with a planet's magnetic field. magnetic fields naturally have directional field lines which act as "traffic lanes" that guide the electrically charged solar wind particles to the north and south magnetic poles.

once concentrated at the poles, the particles begin to react with the gas in the planet's upper atmosphere. the atoms and molecules of the atmospheric gas absorb some of the energy of the foreign particles and become "excited." when they get exhausted from being excited, they return to their relaxed state by sending off a photon of light which we see collectively as the glow of an aurora.

the type of gas in the atmosphere that reacts with the solar particles determines the color of the aurora we see. on earth, the gas is mostly atomic oxygen (which produces a red glow), molecular nitrogen (blue), and molecular oxygen (green).

the animated image of saturn's aurora is almost as mesmerizing as voyager's approaching view of jupiter in the late 1970s.

here's lookin at you, kid.

by karen roe at flickr

perspective

via

sixty symbols: foam physics

what is the connection between giraffes, wine corks, and the distribution of galaxies in the universe? watch the newest sixty symbols video to find out! i found this one really interesting...

how do you "go" in space?

astronaut mike massimino, who was on the mission to fix the hubble space telescope, teaches us the process of how one uses the toilet while in the weightless atmosphere of space. the astronauts discuss their individual techniques (not in too much detail, dont worry), and they also reveal the dirty little secret of NASA space flight: the "alignment camera."

astronomy and pornography

is it bad that i feel proud after reading this opening phrase from a blog post by professional astronomer peter coles?

"I started thinking about the analogy between astronomy and pornography after seeing a hilarious blog post by Amanda Bauer..."


astropixie: because astronomy is the pornography of science

wait, what?

i dont know.... back to work.

crescent moon and venus tonight!

if you have clear skies today, look for the tiny crescent moon and try to spot venus nearby! its rare (and exciting, i think) to see another planet during the day.


the pair will be brilliant in the evening sky as well!

leaf tie

leaf ties* provide a clever and super cute way to organize and decorate!



found at lufdesign via tywkiwdbi.


*fyi: my birthday is at the end of may

crazy clouds from space

wired science has a nice gallery of clouds from space. the image below was taken by the Landsat 7 satellite in September 1999 and shows a pattern known as a von Kármán vortex street.


the spiral pattern is caused by processes of fluid dynamics. if you look to the lower left of the image, you see a little island just where the vortices start. as wind blows from the lower left to the upper right, it runs into the island and starts spinning into vortices, which are only visible because the clouds are there.

the same process happens when you stand in the ocean and a receding wave forms vortices as the water rushes past your ankles.

fiery milky way

the royal observatory greenwich has posted the new "astronomer's gallery" for the month of may. this month's astronomer is stuart lynn who blogs at we are all in the gutter and works at oxford university with the makers of galaxy zoo and the new moon zoo.

stuart's gallery is called stories in the stars and shows an impressive collection of space imagery. this is my favorite:


it was taken by bobshots on flickr. i love the ancient tribal feel of the photo. the light from the huge fire sets the stage for the fresh outdoor atmosphere, and it almost looks like the milky way rises up as the smoke from the fire!

click through to stories in the stars to read stuart's impressions on these lovely images, and share your own!

moon zoo

from the great group of people who brought you the wildly exciting, fun, and scientifically productive galaxy zoo, comes the new moon zoo!


using images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can explore the surface of the moon in great detail, helping to identify and describe craters so that scientists can learn more about the history of our moon.

from the website: "Craters can tell us more than just the history of the lunar surface though. In particular, you're asked in Moon Zoo to look for craters with boulders around the rim. Boulders are a sign that the impact was powerful enough that it excavated rock from beneath the regolith (the lunar 'soil') and so by keeping an eye out for these we can begin to map the depth of the regolith across the surface of the Moon."

enjoy the moon zoo!

sixty symbols does the solar system

now that we've completed videos on each of the major bodies in the solar system, brady has created an offical sixty symbols does the solar system webpage. you can go there for the full collection!


mercury's symbol kinda looks like a little devil, no?