simra.net Doing stuff since 1973

http://www.dudek.org/blog//107?

In which Greg experiments with videoblogging and reviews a portable star finder.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080306/full/news.2008.653.html

I guess it's science week over here this week... A binary star system is likely to collapse in the next hundred thousand years or so. Depending on how fast it's spinning, we're staring down the barrel of a potentially significant gamma ray burst. In the immortal words of Mary "Vonnegut" Schmich: Wear sunscreen.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/03/05/the-universe-is-1373-12-bi...
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101shape.html

The most accurate survey of the sky ever reveals some interesting facts: the universe is 13.73 +/- .12 billion years old, going to expand forever, and made up of less than 5% 'normal' matter-- normal matter as opposed to dark matter and dark energy. As the BABlog puts it: we live on a razor-thin slice of reality.

What I find most interesting is that the universe is flat, as far as we can tell. Our best measurements suggest that the density of the universe is very close to the 'critical density', which determines its shape. Here's a nice moment for Occam's Razor to show its stuff- if it's measurably very close to the critical density, then there's a reasonably high likelihood that it's exactly the critical density, since that would be the simplest model. (I'm hand-waving here, so bear with me). Of course, my favourite Bayesian hammer isn't always right- after all, Newtonian physics turns out to just be a very good approximation.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/21/mars-is-hell-2/

Bad Astronomy has an interesting discussion concerning why Mars may not be as Earth-like as once believed, with oceans of sulfurous acid, and an atmosphere full of sulphur dioxide.

In honour of the Winter Solstice, Crooked Timber has a great post on Newgrange, a megalithic tomb in Ireland which acts as a seasonal clock.

Here's looking forward to longer days.

I had to laugh today. How nostalgic to get this message in facebook, which reminded me of the heyday of ridiculous email chain letters. Just replace Zuckerberg with Bill Gates, and Facebook with Windows95 and you've got 1996 all over again.

Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you're active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg 

But in far more serious news: Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet [via slashdot]. Before you make your donation to facebook, please consider contributing to my charity drive to send a thousand free AOL CD's and 50 Bic lighters to the hapless victims of system 3C321. Where is FEMA when you need them?

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/06/0048217

We've gone and lost the missing intergalactic mass again. What, exactly, is this universe made of?

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/08/1635219&from=rss

One of those nights where I post EVERYTHING... slashdot links to some good content on our degraded ability to see the stars. There's something symbolic about losing contact with the galaxy- as we progress we're becoming an increasingly insular species. We've already forgotten most of our 'wilderness wisdom'. Will we someday forget that there were once stars in the sky?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/hugeholefoundintheuniverse;_ylt=AqYC63AOdB...

Astronomers have located a big empty hole in the universe- bigger than conventional models of the universe would tend to predict. No galaxies, stars, dust, not even dark matter.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/06/24/braking-news-for-creationi...

A neat post about stellar braking and why the sun has less angular momentum than Jupiter. Not that I've ever really wondered, or even had a clue.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070410_water_exoplanet.html