(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).
Check out this hilarious clip explaining for everyone out there who failed chemistry, precisely why noble gases do not bond, and certain elements have explosive reactions:
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Fantastic Contraption where you are challenged to build a vehicle out of a few parts to move an object from one point to another. Created by Colin Northway with music and art by James Mark and Sarah Collins, respectively, the challenges start our easy but get difficult and interesting pretty fast. One avid workplace engineer reports that this is the most addictive online game he’s ever played.
This is flash freeware, but users have the opportunity to support the game’s designers and try user-created levels. Give it a shot and let us know what vehicles you create!
Curious about all the fuss people are making about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider? Fear that it will rip the fabric of space, where time becomes a loop? Just love to jam? Either way, science has never been cooler.
Amazing are the photo galleries from The Molecular Expressions Team at Florida State University. This group analyzes various substances under powerful microscopes and then they post the gorgeous screenshots online. They detail all sorts of substances, but one cool gallery contains various types of alcohols and cocktails we drink on a weekly basis. Check these photos out and be sure to play with the interactive software microscope:
There is a great misconception that complex society breeds violence and that simpler societies live harmoniously.
Like Ewoks.
Next time you have to listen to some crunchy hippie going on about making with world a better place by living in a tee-pee, beat them over the head with this one:
Steven Pinker’s talk on “The Myth of Violence” (TED Talks, 2007):
Earlier this month, researcher/historian David Giovannoni (at First Sounds) discovered the earliest recording of a human voice, from the archives of the French Academy of Sciences. According to records, this sound recording was made by inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville on April 9, 1860 - 17 years before Thomas Edison. The recording was made on Scott de Martinville’s “phonautograph” which records sound onto a carbon (smoke)-blackened paper. Though his machine successfully recorded a human voice, Scott de Martinville had no means to play back the recording. This recording was scanned, processed, and converted into an audible clip at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
HERE IS THE AUDIO CLIP of Scott de Martinville’s recording - it is a 10 second passage from the French song “Au Clair de la Lune” (I also added a modern recording of the song for comparison).
In what is almost comical enough to be an article from The Onion, The New York Times breaks down a study by none other than “Dr. Grim,” a Czech scientist who correlates beer drinking and a lack of success among scientists in publishing academic papers. What is particularly interesting is that Dr. Grim correlates not just the fact that a scientist drinks beer with his or her success as a publishing author, but finds that the more a scientist drinks, the less success he or she has in publishing. Choice quotes from the article include:
Matthew Symonds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne who has also studied factors affecting scientific productivity, called the results remarkable.
“It’s rather devastating to be told we should drink less beer in order to increase our scientific performance,” Dr. Symonds said.
and
In spite of his study, Dr. Grim, who said he would on occasion enjoy more than 12 beers in a night, is not on a campaign to decrease beer drinking among scientists. Why not? His answer: “I like it.”
The quality of writing at the New York Times has clearly never been higher.
Spectacular Hi-Def video of the Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon. Recently taken by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (NAXA) lunar probe “SELENE/Kaguya”, launched September 14, 2007 and currently in orbit around the Moon.
‘Woodlice’ [a.k.a. - 'Pill Bugs,' 'Sow Bugs,' 'Potato Bugs,' 'Roly-Polies'] are a common sight in piles of moist rotting wood, and are perhaps the most well known examples of an Isopod [an order of Crustaceans, they're related to crabs, lobsters, and shrimp].
If you’d like to see Bathynomus giganteus in person, you won’t need a submarine: the James R. Record Aquarium [Fort Worth, Texas] has live Bathynomus giganteus on exhibit.
I’m pretty sure they switch Mountain Dew with luciferin (the stuff in the small glass vial in glowsticks). The peroxide oxidizes the luciferin (making it glow) and the baking soda catalyzes the reaction (making it happen at a slower rate). If you doubt this de-bunking, consider this:
•Why do they suggest only a small amount of Mountain Dew (instead of the whole bottle)?
*Because it’s the right color and volume for the small amount of luciferin that comes in a glowstick
•Notice when they zoom in to the teaspoon with baking soda, notice the bottle of Mountain Dew before and after the zoom:
*The label has been turned around, perhaps this is when they made the switch.
I tried this at home - what the hell am I going to do with the rest of the F@#$ing 6-pack of Mountain Dew?
December 8: Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day. If you’re stumped, the Web site offers many helpful suggestions about how to carry this off:
Walk up to random people and say “WHAT YEAR IS THIS?” and when they tell you, get quiet and then say “Then there’s still time!” and run off.
If you go the “prisoner who’s escaped the future” try shaving your head [Contributor's note: This one would work really well for fellow Blogadiller timbotron] and putting a barcode on the back of your neck. Then stagger around and stare at the sky, as if you’ve never seen it before.
Take some trinket with you (it can be anything really), hand it to some stranger, along with a phone number and say “In thirty years dial this number. You’ll know what to do after that.” Then slip away.
I can hardly wait to see who actually observes these…holidays.
Now, Jeff Lieberman has taken this concept a step further with electromagnets, allowing his wirelessly-powered lightbulb to basically levitate. It’s a piece of art, no doubt, but it’s functional too. And as Lieberman points out, the irony of this setup is that with both the levitation and power on, this lightbulb consumes less than half the energy a traditional wired lightbulb consumes!
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 ›
