30,000 feet above Greenland, on an international flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt, I look out the window and my jaw dropped. Luminous green ribbons of aurora borealis, rippling and flashing against the dark starry sky, right outside the airplane window. For three hours I stared out the window in utter awe of the natural world.

In simple terms, the Aurora Borealis (in the North) and the Aurora Australis (in the South) happen when charged particles (electrons, protons, and what-have-you) released by the Sun collide with the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The glowing green and red light comes from these particles exciting oxygen in the upper atmosphere (other colors = other gasses). These particles are guided by Earth’s magnetic field lines and pulled toward an area around 65º North or South latitude (Alaska, northern Canada, Siberia, Iceland, southern Greenland, northern Scandinavia and Finland, and the coast of Antarctica).

Two weeks ago, at the Bay Area Maker Faire, I bought an “Aurorarium” – although it doesn’t actually create an aurora, it makes aurora-looking light patterns on the walls and ceiling. It is a Japanese Gekkan science kit and comes with a cool glossy color magazine about Aurorae: available online at the Maker Shed for $29.95.
It’s pretty damn pretty.

BBC’s Chris Lintott shows us Aurora Borealis over Norway:



Snap, Crackle, and Glow Bonus Round:
Listening to the radio discharges of Aurora Borealis:

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The Day the Earth Stood Still

Keanu Reeves comes
to Earth and gets all preachy.
With a big robot.

It lacked the key phrase;
no Klaatu Barada Nikto.
But had a cool orb.

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Thursday November 20th, 2008.
Around 5:30PM.
Edmonton, Canada.
A police car dashboard camera caught this on tape: A meteor between 1 and 10 tons fell from the heavens.
Yahoo! news link

End of the World Bonus Round:
See the meteor falling from multiple camera angles.

(via Geekologie)

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Say what you will about the United States government, but they can no longer be accused of being unconcerned with the world’s dwindling water supply. With all the extra cash we’ve had kicking around lately, NASA has been pissing away a reported $154 million into a Urine Recycler project… we kid you not.

The device is apparently an absolute necessity for life on the International Space Station, whose occupancy will double in bladders next year – since we have no other pressing concerns at the moment. On a more serious note, I’m sure there are prospects for this technology to have a huge impact in the developing world, where access to water is a serious concern, but we can only hope that there will not be too many severe blockages to getting this technology downstream.

As for any sneek peeks as to what the technology looks like… no such luck. On the other hand, we’re sure you remember the last time a ton of money was flushed down the toilet on a pee-drinker.

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This is my one-year-old nephew and niece (twins).
My older sister made them Halloween costumes:
Luke Skywalker and Princess Lea.
Sweet!

I have to admit – the lightsabers strike me as a little obscene.
I’m lobbying for them to go as “Siamese twins” next year.

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(artists’ concepts of Fomalhaut b. Left image by David A. Hardy)

A few days ago a team from UC Berkeley, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Lawrence Livermore Labs, and NASA JPL announced in Science that they have taken a photograph of a planet outside of our own solar system. Though numerous planets outside our solar system have been discovered in recent years, this is a rare example of an extrasolar planet identified through photographs. This planet – between one and a half to three times the mass of Jupiter – orbits the star Fomalhaut (25 light years away) in the constellation Piscis Australis (”The Southern Fish”). The star Fomalhaut is about twice the size of our Sun, but 15 times as bright, glowing bright blue-white. Remarkably, this young star has features similar to our early solar system: it has a large disk of debris surrounding it, serving as a “nursery” for young planets.

Several years ago, scientists noticed that this debris ring has a sharp inner edge (as if something large is shaping the inner edge) and that it is not entirely centered around the star (as if some other mass is pulling the ring slightly off-center). A comparison of photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004 and 2006 revealed an object in orbit around Fomalhaut on the inside of the star’s debris ring – this planet moves at a pace of 872 years for one complete orbit around the star.

This planet is named Fomalhaut b: it’s one and a half to three times the size of Jupiter, it appears to be a giant ball of gas (much like Jupiter or Saturn), and may have a large ring system of its own (and much larger than Saturn’s).

Hubble Website Link

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If you have a little time, sit back and enjoy this hilarious two part film by Tom Sachs and the Neistat Brothers: “A Film About the Space Program.”

I love their stuff.

(part 1)

(part 2)

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