Early yesterday, Google launched their next phase of interstellar domination with Google Sky. This is an addition to the Google Earth app that allows you to navigate the heavens by way of constellation maps, Hubble satellite images, and planetary orbit animations. Not to mention the ability to aimlessly wander space the traditional Google Earth way by panning, zooming and rotating your view. I have to say, this is pretty freakin’ sweet. Check it ›
Behold! The Super-Awesome Action Hero Name Generator!!! Push the button for non-stop crime-fighting Action Hero names!!! You can’t fight zombies with a name like “Scooter.” Push the button and get ready for ACTION!!! [Does not work well with Internet Explorer - the browser of the feeble].
©2007 Blogadilla
Concept (and names): Timbotron
Actual Labor and Creation: Steve B
Machete Photograph: Y. Trottier.
[For those of you who are not knee-deep in geekery]: Cthulhu (usually pronounced KThoo-Loo) is a sinister ancient deity from the works of early 20th century science fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft. Cthulhu is described as being gigantic and green, with rubbery skin, having an ‘octopus head’, a large belly, claws on its hands and feet, and thin wings emerging from its back. In Lovecraft’s universe, Cthulhu came to Earth (from somewhere in the distant cosmos) hundreds of millions of years ago and currently rests undead and “dreaming” among the remains of the buried alien city of R’lyeh, which lies beneath the most desolate area of the South Pacific (47° 9′ S, 126° 43′ W). In Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu,” Cthulhu is described as contacting people in their dreams (usually in mid-March), and by these means Cthulhu generates cults of human worshippers around the world who await his eventual awakening; according to Lovecraft, the powerful leaders of the Cthulhu cult live “in the mountains of China.”
Needless to say, Cthulhu has serious geek appeal. There are Cthulhu role-playing games, Cthulhu is a figure in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, there are numerous Campus Crusade for Cthulhu movements, and the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has created an awesome 1920’s black-and-white ’silent movie’ of “The Call of Cthulhu.” They do a good job of following the original story and their visuals and musical score are stellar (watch the trailer). The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society also offers a number of cool Cthulhu downloads, including the kick-ass cellphone wallpaper above.
To make sense of who is out there, I generated a nice chart of “the neighbors” in our outer Solar System (Photoshop generated images based upon color and composition data and/or estimations for each body; the data are very limited for some of these); nicknames are in quotes, and the satellites of each are depicted beneath their respective planet-thingy (click on chart to enlarge):
In recent years, our Solar System has become both smaller and bigger. I thought I would chose this subject as the “What Is It? of the Week” because it is a little confusing and I thought I’d sort it out.
Last year, the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto to the status of Dwarf Planet - the Solar System now only has 8 planets. A Dwarf Planet is defined as: 1). having an orbit around the Sun, 2). having sufficient mass to become a near-spherical shape, 3). not a satellite of another body in the Solar System (other than the Sun), 4). has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Basically, a Dwarf Planet is a small planet with crap around it.
Much of the demotion of Pluto’s status can be attributed to the discoveries of Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz. In recent years, this team has discovered several bodies in the Solar System large enough to be considered “the next planet” or to cause Pluto to be redefined as a member of an extensive community of smaller planet-like thingies orbiting around the Sun. Among the larger Pluto-like planet-thingies, the Brown team has discovered Eris, Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna. To add insult to injury to Pluto, it now appears that Eris is around 27% larger than Pluto; Pluto is not even the largest of the Dwarf Planets. Poor Pluto has gone through a lot in the last year. Eris, a rocky iceball (or icy rockball), was discovered in 2005 (by Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz) and until its official naming in Sept 2006, it was nicknamed <nerd>”Xena”</nerd> and its moon (now called “Dysnomia”) went by <nerd>”Gabrielle”</nerd>.
Thyla.com is a website dedicated to the homoerotic relationship between Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock.
No joke.
An entire site dedicated to the subject of their relationship - including the minutiae of the <nerd>Klingon</nerd> term “t’hy’la”, which refers to the “man love” that can only be shared by a captain and his Vulcan sex-machine.
This awesome site is complete with wallpapers, haiku, fan art, and stories.
Set phazers to “gay lovin’.”
A team of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers were able to generate an image of dark matter (right image) based on how the galaxy cluster ZwCl0024+1652 (nicknamed “Clumpy McDarkmatter”) gravitationally “lenses” the light from galaxies behind it (notice the rings of faint blue smudges around the galaxy cluster in the left image). Dark matter is a subject of great interest for astrophysicists - it is matter that contributes to a large percentage of the mass/gravity of the universe, yet does not interact with electromagnetic phenomena (light, etc.) (outside of gravitational lensing, etc.).
Link.
I had no idea you could send your ashes into outer space when you die. Starting at $495, your ashes can be hurled to the edge of space and then will “return” to earth hopefully not taking anyone out on the way down. You can also be launched into earth or the moon’s orbit, or just straight up chucked into deep space for around $45,000.
“Scotty” has been “beamed up” and now his “payload” has returned to earth and is somewhere in “tough terrain”, probably in Kalahari with the !Kung.
The Soviet space program kept both failures and successes a secret. It was only until the collapse of the Soviet Union that most images from their space program were accessible to the West. Though many have forgotten about them, a small number of enthusiastic collectors and conservators have made these images available on the web - modern image processing has provided clearer versions of many these images (see before/after Venera 13 image below). It is worth taking a moment to browse Ted Stryk’s amazing gallery of early and modern space images and Don Mitchell’s catalog of early (and rare) Soviet space images.
•Luna 9 - the first images of the surface of the Moon.
•Reprocessed Venera Lander images of the surface of Venus - perhaps the first clear images of the surface of Venus.
•The Phobos 2 color images of Mars and its asteroid moon Phobos.
Venera 13 (surface of Venus) before and after image processing by Stryk.
Luna 17 image of the surface of the Moon, from Mitchell’s catalog.
