April 29, 2012
The Milky Way’s 100 Billion Planets This artist’s illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations. A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the microlensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The average number of planets per star is greater than one. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth. The results are based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, which was founded in 1995. The study concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds. This is based on calibrating a planetary mass function that shows the number of planets increases for lower mass worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy. The results were published in the Jan. 12, 2012, issue of the British science journal Nature. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)

The Milky Way’s 100 Billion Planets

This artist’s illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way.

The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations. A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the microlensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The average number of planets per star is greater than one. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth.

The results are based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, which was founded in 1995. The study concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds. This is based on calibrating a planetary mass function that shows the number of planets increases for lower mass worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy.

The results were published in the Jan. 12, 2012, issue of the British science journal Nature. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)

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Filed under: science Astronomy 
April 17, 2012
Imaged Above: Emiliania huxleyi cells in an electro-microscopic picture. (Credit: Lennart Bach, GEOMAR Fossil fuel derived carbon dioxide has a serious impact on global climate but also a disturbing effect on the oceans, know as the other CO2 problem. When CO2 dissolves in seawater it forms carbonic acid and results in a drop in pH, the oceans acidify. A wealth of short-term experiments has shown that calcifying organisms, such as corals, clams and snails, but also micron size phytoplankton are affected by ocean acidification. The potential for organisms to cope with acidified oceanic conditions via evolutionary adaptations has so far been unresolved. Evolution at Sea: Long-Term Experiments Indicate Phytoplankton Can Adapt to Ocean Acidification   Continue Reading

Imaged Above: Emiliania huxleyi cells in an electro-microscopic picture. (Credit: Lennart Bach, GEOMAR

Fossil fuel derived carbon dioxide has a serious impact on global climate but also a disturbing effect on the oceans, know as the other CO2 problem.

When CO2 dissolves in seawater it forms carbonic acid and results in a drop in pH, the oceans acidify. A wealth of short-term experiments has shown that calcifying organisms, such as corals, clams and snails, but also micron size phytoplankton are affected by ocean acidification. The potential for organisms to cope with acidified oceanic conditions via evolutionary adaptations has so far been unresolved.

Evolution at Sea: Long-Term Experiments Indicate Phytoplankton Can Adapt to Ocean Acidification   Continue Reading

(via mapmeoblivion)

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Filed under: nature ocean science 
March 18, 2012

Looking at the Sky

I never will have time
I never will have time enough
To say
How beautiful it is
The way the moon
Floats in the air
As easily
And lightly as a bird
Although she is a world
Made all of stone.

I never will have time enough
To praise
The way the stars
Hang glittering in the dark
Of steepest heaven
Their dewy sparks
Their brimming drops of light
So fresh so clear
That when you look at them
It quenches thirst.

by Anne Porter, from Living Things: Collected Poems 

Moons outnumber the planets by around 20 to 1 - here is a guide to ten of the solar system’s most noteworthy moons   10 Moons Every Person Should Know

(via npr)

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Filed under: astronomy moon science space poetry 
March 17, 2012
Mimas, moon of Saturn Beloved if only because of its resemblance to a certain sci-fi film location… Mimas is small and icy, but it’s also home to “Herschel” — the name astronomers have given that massive crater situated on the moon’s leading hemisphere. At 139-kilometers wide, Herschel is almost one-third the diameter of Mimas itself, and is what makes it seem so Death Star-ish. (BTW, the Herschel crater was discovered three years after the release of that Star Wars - but those films do have a knack for predicting some astronomical discoveries). Plus, it’s also geeky cool that temperature maps of Mimas reveal hot regions that look like Pac-Man eating a dot.

Mimas, moon of Saturn

Beloved if only because of its resemblance to a certain sci-fi film location…

Mimas is small and icy, but it’s also home to “Herschel” — the name astronomers have given that massive crater situated on the moon’s leading hemisphere.

At 139-kilometers wide, Herschel is almost one-third the diameter of Mimas itself, and is what makes it seem so Death Star-ish. (BTW, the Herschel crater was discovered three years after the release of that Star Wars - but those films do have a knack for predicting some astronomical discoveries).

Plus, it’s also geeky cool that temperature maps of Mimas reveal hot regions that look like Pac-Man eating a dot.

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Filed under: moon astronomy science space 
March 1, 2012
If you roll a circle inside one 3 times its size, it will actually trace out a 4 pointed star shape called an Astroid (this shape is traced out in the animation in orange).  But what if inside the smaller circle, there is an even smaller one tracing out a smaller Astroid?  This animation shows the intricate shape that is generated by adding the effects of all the Astroids.  [code] 

If you roll a circle inside one 3 times its size, it will actually trace out a 4 pointed star shape called an Astroid (this shape is traced out in the animation in orange).  But what if inside the smaller circle, there is an even smaller one tracing out a smaller Astroid?  This animation shows the intricate shape that is generated by adding the effects of all the Astroids.  [code] 

(Source: matthen, via ailaza)

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Filed under: animation science 
February 27, 2012
Feeling Uncertain?

On this date in 1927, physicist Werner Heisenberg first described his Uncertainty Principle in a letter.

In a nutshell, the Uncertainty Principle states that the more precisely we can determine a particle’s momentum, the less information we have about its position, and vice versa. The principle represents one of the most fundamental differences between quantum mechanics and classical physics.

Albert Einstein — who was a classical physicist — disagreed with quantum mechanics in general and the Uncertainty Principle in particular.

Einstein said: “I like to believe that the moon is still there even if we don’t look at it.”

I’m with Al in my uncertainty about uncertainty.

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Filed under: Einstein science birthday 
January 28, 2012
"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."

— Niels Bohr

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Filed under: quotes science 
January 24, 2012

Plants are now part of the social media universe.

This kit lets you program your plants to tweet whenever they need water.

I would love to see my African violet becomng a trending topic.

via Tuesday’s Tech of the Week

(Source: brit, via sayitaintsho)

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Filed under: technology plants science 
January 22, 2012
Today’s Birthday Party

Blowing out candles at the table today are Sir Francis Bacon (1561) and Lord Byron (1788).

Bacon was a philosopher, a statesman, an essayist, and a champion of modern science. Queen Elizabeth named him Lord Chancellor but he was convicted of accepting bribes in 1621, and banned from political office for the rest of his life.

He spent much of his intellectual life challenging Aristotle’s view that knowledge should begin with universal truths. He said, “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” In Novum Organum (1620), Bacon wrote that scholars should build their knowledge of the world from specific, observable details. His theory is now known as the scientific method, and is the basis of all experimental science

British Romantic poet Lord Byron was born George Gordon in London and was an impulsive, compulsive, and given to excesses with lovers of both sexes. He had an incestuous relationship with his half sister, Augusta, and may have been the father of one of her children. He was sexy, charismatic, witty, athletic, and bipolar.

I like the description by one of his lovers, Lady Caroline Lamb, who said he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”

He left England to live abroad, and never returned.

She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes

As he lay dying,  he requested that his body be left undisturbed. Sadly, his wishes were disregarded; doctors cut him open almost upon his last breath, removing parts of his skull and organs for souvenirs. His remains were denied burial in Westminster Abbey for reasons of “questionable morality.” He was buried at the church of St. Mary Magdalene in Nottinghamshire.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org

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Filed under: birthday writer poetry science 
January 11, 2012
Would this happen today? No way. Some pharmaceutical company would have made millions or billions from it. Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine

Would this happen today?

No way. Some pharmaceutical company would have made millions or billions from it.

Jonas Edward Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995) was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine

(Source: project-argus)

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Filed under: science 
November 21, 2011
The Arrow of Time

I watched an episode of The Fabric of the Cosmos last night on PBS. It is a series on NOVA hosted by Brian Greene from his book of the same title. This was part 2 on “Time and Experience” which deals with something we all think about (perhaps too much) and yet don’t really understand.

I have read a lot on the topic of time, particularly time travel which has long fascinated me. I have read many versions of the “time as a river” flowing past us (the observer) with the past downstream and the future upstream.

In this program, Greene talks about the “Frozen River” and questions whether time really does “flow.” What is interesting in this approach is that it touches on some ideas that we might once have read as fringe science or new age non-science…

continues

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Filed under: paradelle science time 
November 7, 2011
Now this is a geeky comic — a panel from Feynman, a graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani

Now this is a geeky comic — a panel from Feynman, a graphic novel by Jim Ottaviani

(via nabokovsnotebook)

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Filed under: science comic books graphic novel