Microsoft Launches WorldWide Telescope
From the world of competitive astronomical websites (isn’t the Internet grand?) comes this new offering from Microsoft, WorldWide Telescope. Like others before it Microsoft’s new offering allows users to explore planets and other celestial objects. You can also view/track objects from any place on earth and in any point in time. Of course as you might expect from Microsoft there’s more going on than that. There is a lot of imagery from NASA including the Mars rovers, Hubble telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. There are also ‘tours’ set up by expert astronomers or you can even save your own ‘5 year missions’.
Like with Google’s ‘The Sky’ or the open source Stellarium users must first download the free WorldWide Telescope software from Microsoft (windows only).
WorldWide Telescope (via BBC News)
The Museum of Ancient Inventions
As part of their coursework students at the Smith College History of Science have replicated many of the coolest ancient inventions and set up a virtual museum so that you can learn all about them. The museum’s web page seems to have gone stagnant since 2001 but nonetheless there is a lot of good information and quite honestly in the realm of ancient history what’s another 7 years?
Although scientists don’t always agree on the more spectacular such as the ‘Baghdad battery’ nonetheless it’s interesting to see that not everyone was just sitting around waiting for the Industrial Age.
Nano-Smile
Paul Rothemund is an artist and computer scientist. Using a few DNA molecules, an atomic microscope and a computer, he can “draw” 50 billion smiley faces onto a space no larger than a drop of water.
Rothemund refers to his brew of art, biology and technology as “DNA origami,” because it is created from hundreds of DNA strands formed into nanoscale shapes and patterns. The microscopic creations are currently on display at MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Rothemund says DNA origami proves that microscopic material can be formed into specific objects and someday may be used to create integrated circuits that are 10 times smaller than the circuits found in today’s computer chips. This could result in computers so small they could be fitted into clothing, wristwatches and contact lenses.
Earth’s Water and Air
At left is a conceptual computer image of the total volume of water on Earth (left) and air in the Earth’s atmosphere (right) shown as spheres (blue and pink) relative to the size of the Earth. The image was created by Adam Nieman from Science Photo Library.
The spheres show how finite our water and air supplies are. The water sphere measures 1390 kilometers across and has a volume of 1.4 billion cubic kilometers. This includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers, as well as groundwater and water in the atmosphere.
The air sphere measures 1999 kilometers across and weighs 5140 trillion metric tons. As the atmosphere extends from Earth it becomes less dense, so half of the air lies within the first 5 kilometers of the atmosphere.
Bad Movie Physics
Most space movies focus on action and adventure, and treat the laws of physics like mere suggestions. In Hollywood’s version of space, you routinely hear the roar of rockets, witness fiery explosions, and have aliens conversing in English and impregnating humans.
This is understandable, of course. Who wants to watch Han Solo spend years on the journey to Alderaan, only to find that the planet has three times Earth’s gravity, and Solo can barely stand up and walk, much less swagger?
The website io9 has rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled. The site purposely omitted Star Trek because it routinely violates pretty much every law of physics.
Must Eat Donuts
Scientists have discovered that our brains are programmed to respond to donuts.
Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago learned that when hungry volunteers viewed a picture of a Krispy Kreme donut or a screwdriver, the donut sent their brain into overdrive. They needed a study for this?
One of the scientists said, “There’s a very complex system in the brain that helps to direct our attention to items in the environment that are relevant to our needs, for example, food when we are hungry but not when we are full.” The study demonstrated how the brain sifts out relevant information in a world full of stimuli. Like donuts on a kitchen counter…
