life
esiegel | April 7, 2008What's going to happen to all the stars in the Universe as they get older? Well, just as nothing can live forever, stars can't live forever also. Why? Because they run on fuel: burning hydrogen into helium, for example. When they run out of fuel, something's gotta give. Barbara Ryden reminds us of an excellent and appropriate quote by Dylan Thomas:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
But what exactly happens to the star depends very sensitively on what the mass of the star is.
If you've got a tiny little star, less than about 40% of the mass of…
esiegel | March 31, 2008 Those of you who know me know that I'm unhappy living here in Arizona. The landscape and ecosystem of the Sonoran Desert, while beautiful to many, is too dry, rocky, and devoid of life for me to enjoy living here.
After my time here, I've decided that, were it somehow offered to me, I would probably pass on the opportunity to go to Mars. And so I present to you a little game I call "Mars or Arizona," where I will show you some pictures, and you get to guess which ones are pictures of Mars and which ones are pictures of Arizona. Sound easy?
Well let's bring on the pictures, and see if you…
esiegel | March 3, 2008People love to speculate that Mars was once a great place for life to form, and claim that there is plenty of evidence that there used to be oceans and rivers there. But this isn't true. People used to claim there were big Canal-like features on Mars, and used this as evidence that Mars was very wet.
It was later realized that these weren't canals, but rather geological features caused by impact craters from astroids. But more recently, people have been claiming that images like the one above are examples of dried-up riverbeds.
But this turns out not to be the case. When we take a closer…
esiegel | February 19, 2008What? Is this a joke, Ethan? Have you been watching Jurassic Park again, drinking Dino DNA or something? No, I got an interesting question from startswithabang.com reader and ichthyophobe Lucas:
Over the years a few intact, frozen woolly mammoth have been found and procured by different scientists and governments, most recently Japan. What are they doing with these ancient popsicles? Cloning? Could a frozen woolly mammoth be effectively cloned?
Aaah, the woolly mammoth, something we think of as ancient, but really it only went extinct an estimated 3,700 years ago, with the last mammoths dying…
esiegel | February 16, 2008So I am preparing an audition video to be Dangerman this weekend, which will go up on youtube and get posted here next week. In the meantime, as promised for the weekend, I have a new weekend diversion for you: the archer fish, a.k.a. toxotes jaculatrix (hee hee). But what makes it so cool? Oh, I don't know, how about this slow-motion video:
Did you see that?? It's a fish that hunts insects by shooting them with water, and then eating them when they fall into the water, often catching them before they ever leave the air! What's really amazing about this is that the fish needs to be able to "…
esiegel | February 11, 2008Ever get sick of your life here on Earth? What about really getting away from it all; what if you wanted to live in space, orbiting the Earth, away from everyone. (At least for awhile, like a summer home.) What would you need to do it, and what would it consist of?
I propose an idea which I'll call a "space house," where I'll go through what I think is the cheapest and easiest way to get all the things you would need to comfortably survive in space for an extended period of time. First off, let's go over all the things a human would need to survive, while still having a good life, in space:…
grrlscientist | November 15, 2007tags: book review, Susan Richards, Chosen By a Horse
This wonderful book is the poignant memoir of a woman who rescues a maltreated horse, and discovers that this amazing horse ends up rescuing her. Chosen By a Horse: How a Broken Horse Fixed a Broken Heart by Susan Richards (NYC: Harvest; 2006) is the amusing and touching true story about the author's decision to take in a starved and abused standardbred broodmare that was part of a group of 42 racehorses rescued by the local SPCA. At first, Richards chose a horse from a list based on her name but then, when she and the animal control…
laelaps | October 17, 2007Normally I try to write something substantial for this blog every day, even if it can't be a thoroughly-researched mega post like some of my more notorious writings. Yesterday was no exception, especially in light of the fact that a Rutgers philosophy professor, Jerry Fodor, has recently published a rather incoherent piece that's critical of the role of natural selection in evolution (you can read "Why Pigs Don't Have Wings" at the LRB website, although it may induce migraines). In fact, I actually wrote up a lengthy response to Fodor's piece, but when I was finished I didn't feel quite right…
chaoticutopia | January 16, 2007If you are love reading great science blogs, and wish you could read them while you are away from the internet, check this out: The Open Laboratory: The Best Writing on Science Blogs 2006:
A collection of 50 selected blog posts showcasing the quality and diversity of writing on science blogs till 2006.
With the help of his readers, fellow ScienceBlogger Bora Zivkovik (better known 'round these parts as Coturnix at a Blog Around the Clock) has scoured the web to find the best science writing in the blogosphere, and compiled it all in one easy-to-read volume. It is now available to purchase…