The skies were gray but that didn’t detract from the beauty of the last space shuttle launch. It sounded like they might scrub the launch at the last minute due to the weather, but Atlantis lifted on-time, taking a huge load of supplies up to the international space station. I wasn’t lucky enough to be [...]
Archive of posts filed under the science category.
Remembering Challenger
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” – [...]
Full moon + lunar eclipse + winter solstice = wow
Did you catch the lunar eclipse this morning? My daughter and I got up at 3am to check out the red moon through the telescope. I think the coolest thing was being able to see stars around the moon through the telescope. Usually it’s so bright it will block out everything else nearby, but this [...]
Full Moon Fever
There was a beautiful full moon tonight and I got some pretty decent photos with my telescope and camera: I think I found my new desktop wallpaper.
WIJFR: Anathem
On the far-future Earth-like planet, Arbre, scientists, philosophers and mathematicians—a religious order unto themselves—have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. Their role is to nurture all knowledge while safeguarding it from the vagaries of the irrational saecular outside world. Among the monastic scholars is 19-year-old Raz, collected into the concent at age eight and now [...]
Julia Child, Mr. Wizard, Monty Python … Good Eats Turns 10
This afternoon I was at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, GA watching the live matinee performance of “Good Eats Turns 10″ with Alton Brown. What a blast! I had a fantastic time. I don’t think I’ve been to a live TV show recording before (except for sporting events), so it was cool [...]
The science of Folding at Home
I found this interesting article via slashdot that explains the science behind the Folding at Home project. I folded my first workunit almost two years ago on June 19, 2007. Since then I’ve contributed about 580 additional WUs by running the F@H client on my various PCs and servers at home (you can see some [...]
Coffee … in … spaaaaaace!
Now future space travelers won’t have to enjoy their morning coffee through a straw from a bag. Astronaut Dr. Don Pettit invented a zero-G coffee cup during his current stay on the International Space Station. I heard about this on episode #859 of Buzz Out Loud and from there found the clip above on collectSPACE. [...]
Mark your calendar (for the last time)!
Don’t forget that tomorrow is the end of the world! Or maybe not.
Orion XT6 telescope
This is technology of a different sort, but still cool. While in Arizona earlier this year on vacation, my wife and I stopped at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. The visit rekindled our childhood interests in astronomy. For our combined birthdays, we bought an Orion XT6 Dobsonian: a Newtonian reflector telescope with a 6″ mirror [...]
