Archive for August, 2007
This week’s carnivals
Plenty of good weekend reading material is available, courtesy of a fresh batch of sciencey blog carnivals: The 133rd Carnival of EducationCarnival of Space #17Friday Ark #153Grand Rounds 3.48 (medical stuff)I and the Bird #56Philosophia Naturalis #13 (”The Carnival of the Damned”)Happy reading, all…
The original Futurama — dreams of futures past
At the World Fair in New York, the General Motors pavilion featured something called Futurama — a look at the wonders of the far-off world of 1960! In this thrilling visiion of the future, 7-lane superhighways are everywhere (mind you, in 1939, most roads in the U.S. were still unpaved), car traffic is rendered safe through radio-based driving systems (!), and “most towns” have electricity.
Another silly online test…
Your Result: Science/Math Nerd (Absolute Insane Laughter as you pour toxic chemicals into a foaming tub of death!)Well, maybe you aren’t this extreme, but you’re in league with the crazy scientists/mathmeticians of today…. Thank whosever God you worship, or don’t worship, so thank no deity whatsoever in your case, for you people!
Here comes the Sun…
In late June, a global dust storm kicked up on Mars, leaving the little solar-powered rovers little energy to do anything — even just keep themselves from freezing.Perspective: before the storm, the rovers were at top condition, with each generating about 700 watt-hours of power per day (so, enough to run an average light bulb for seven hours)…. So the good news is that things have lightened up enough that both rovers are again charging up their batteries (Spirit is fully charged, Opportunity nearly so), and their temperatures are rising.
Going looney
I don’t know if there’s any deeper significance to this, but there seems to be a lot of moon-related news out there of late.First off, Arizona State University is teaming up with NASA in order to make old Apollo images of the moon both sharper and more readily available…. This will be the first ever digital archive of every image that the Apollo missions took of the moon — both from orbit, and from the surface.
