Video
esiegel | August 9, 2012"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." -Carl Sagan
Our night sky, quite literally, is our window to the Universe.
Image credit: Miloslav Druckmuller, Brno University of Technology.
Well, it's kind of a window to the Universe. I say only "kind of" because, with the exception of those two faint, fuzzy clouds in the lower right, everything else visible in the image above is part of our own Milky Way galaxy. In fact, practically…
esiegel | July 5, 2012"We knew that we had indeed done something that was very different and very exciting, but we still didn't expect it to have something to do with physical reality." -Gerald Guralnik, co-developer of the Higgs mechanism
Might as well make this entire week "Higgs week" here on Starts With A Bang, given how important yesterday's discovery/announcement was! It isn't every day, after all, that you see a theoretical physicist on the 7PM news. (Video here.)
Image credit: KGW.com.
(So proud of Portland, OR's local TV station, KGW NewsChannel 8, for being willing to promote science to the whole city…
drorzel | June 23, 2012I had hoped to get the next Ten Years Before the Blog post queued up for today, but what with one thing and another, that didn't happen. It probably won't happen before Monday, either, as the weekend will be full of family-type activities-- taking SteelyKid to soccer this morning, and her summer camp orientation tomorrow, and so on.
So, here's some cute-kid material in honor of that. The featured image above (not visible in the RSS feed, alas) is me with the two kids, The Pip sporting the Yankees outfit his Aunt Mary sent him (Uncle Dick would've been proud), and SteelyKid in her spiffy new…
drorzel | June 3, 2012In which we look at the very latest in amphibian science.
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The embedded video shows one Prof. S. Kid describing her latest observations in detail. It's a very comprehensive study.
jtoney | May 30, 2012
Robots are now commonplace for cleaning carpets (random walk), remote sensing, even swarming. But robot boogie? Fun for some, profound for others. Thanks, MIT!
At the beginning all the robots are waiting for my signal to start. While dancing, they are constantly synchronizing with each other, so if a robot lags behind they will wait for him and the late robot will accelerate. When I remove a robot from the choreography, the others continue dancing. When he stands up again and resumes his dance, he asks the others for a starting position. Then he goes to this position, and starts dancing…
jtoney | May 3, 2012
With 3D videoconferencing now a reality, teleportation - "Beam me up, Scotty" may be in our future!
jtoney | April 3, 2012
Hunger Games - World Food Programme.
Hunger Games portrays a grim future in which the "bottom 99%" must ration their food to reduce the chance that their children will be sent as "tributes" to compete in a game to the death.
But -
What if, together, we can identify thousands of new paths out of poverty around the world in just 48 hours?
Imagine thousands of Katniss Everdeen-inspired avatars battling hunger - for real.
{Today} the Rockefeller Foundation and the Institute for the Future (IFTF) will join forces with people across the globe and ask them to help solve global poverty through…
jtoney | March 28, 2012
How could Israelis love Iranians? This compelling video points a simple truth: how can you hate someone you don't know? Could this be a game changer?
Such an approach can, and should be, applied to any culture. It's a beginning, and much is at stake.
From PRI's The World:
For the first time, Israelis went out to protest on Saturday night against an attack on Iran. About a thousand people turned up for the demonstration in Tel Aviv. Intentionally or not, the event got a boost from a couple who launched an anti-war campaign on Facebook a little over a week ago.
Israeli teacher and…
drorzel | March 26, 2012The title says it all: an animated video of Heisenberg singing about the Uncertainty Principle:
So, you know, there's that. It's pretty good, but he's no Feynman:
And that's your silly musical break for the day.
jtoney | March 26, 2012Fern Roof (Kathrin Marks)
Imagine that you're a spore nestled on a leaf in a sleepy forest. It's a dry, sunny day. All of a sudden - within 0.00001 seconds, you are flung into the air with an acceleration of 100,000 times the force of gravity. What happened?
The play by play of this extraordinary voyage is now explained:
The whole annulus is thus bent out of shape, much like an accordion in the hands of a musician.
The sporangia open when dehydrating and use the stored elastic energy to power a fast closure motion that ultimately ejects the spores. The beauty of this dispersal mechanism…
jtoney | March 12, 2012
You might ask yourself, "What in the world is this guy in the white lab coat talking about?"
Something potentially very cool, and possibly beautiful - although mostly fictional -, but it is lost in translation. This is a startling example of why we as scientists must be better communicators!
This scientist is about as effective a communicator as Charlie Brown's teacher:
Thanks, Cara Santa Maria, for sharing!
drorzel | March 8, 2012Yesterday was a really grueling day, and I'm home with The Pip today, so no substantive blogging. But here's a song about the universe, written and performed by one of my colleagues:
If this becomes the next LHC Rap, remember you heard it here first.
By a weird coincidence, we've been watching our Animaniacs DVD's with SteelyKid, and just a couple of days ago got to this one:
So that's not one, but two songs about the universe. Which ought to be enough to keep you entertained for the day.
jtoney | March 7, 2012
Here is a fascinating insight into President Obama as a young law student at Harvard, in 1991.
Barack Obama in a 1990 video at Harvard protests in favor of the cause of Professor Derek Bell and the hiring of more minority faculty members.
jtoney | March 5, 2012Ads of the World.
Can business cards evoke creativity, spark interest? Standard business cards seem outdated, dull, uninspiring. Liberate your shoelaces, your flexagons!
Consider shoelace business cards for Adidas employees, a highly creative approach to grabbing attention, and importantly, explaining what you do for a living.
A design colleague of mine, Prof. Rose Gonella, suggested that I use a flexagon business card, because my job involves so many facets - teaching, research, administration,...
It's easy to make a flexagon:
Give up those dull business cards! What's your design?
jtoney | March 3, 2012
This undersea video looks like science fiction showing an icy finger of death killing everything in its path, but is a stunning portrayal of freezing point depression - with narrative by the inimitable Alec Baldwin of "30 Rock" fame on NBC.
A brinicle, or brine icicle, plunges toward the Antarctic seabed from the ice shelf above, killing everything in its path. This had never been filmed before Frozen Planet, premiering March 18 on Discovery Channel.
Here's a brief description of what's going on:
As the seawater freezes and salt is forced out of the pure ice crystal lattice, the…
jtoney | February 29, 2012
"Air guitar" has taken on almost cult status in some circles. How about "couch guitar"?
This video is a clever application of robots, engineering and music.
From the University of Pennsylvania:
Quadrotors designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of…
jtoney | February 24, 2012
(Not Really) the Last Word on DNA from Virginia Hughes on Vimeo.
Science writer Virginia Hughes brilliantly explains how DNA is packed into our cells using animation.
jtoney | February 23, 2012
Can global warming (weirding) lead to smaller mammals?
This, hot off the press in tomorrow's issue of Science:
Body size plays a critical role in mammalian ecology and physiology. Previous research has shown that many mammals became smaller during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), but the timing and magnitude of that change relative to climate change have been unclear. A high-resolution record of continental climate and equid body size change shows a directional size decrease of ~30% over the first ~130,000 years of the PETM, followed by a ~76% increase in the recovery phase of…
jtoney | February 23, 2012
To me, Ndugu, the little Tanzanian boy, embodies potential. Now he would be a teenager. What ever happened to Ndugu?
He is a fictional character in the wonderful film "About Schmidt," the little boy that Jack Nicholson portraying Warren Schmidt sponsors, sending him checks and his rambling but insightful letters. Could such a small, compassionate act really make a difference?
I recently learned about Chris Mburu, whose real life began on a similar path. Living in poverty in Kenya, there was little hope for Chris as a young boy, until he was sponsored by Hilde Back, now the namesake of…