Happy Gagarin Day
April 11th, 2011
It was fifty years ago today that the manned space age started, as Yuri gagarin became the first human in orbit. Shouldn’t we have been on Alpha Centauri by now?
Categories: Science
Category: Science
Wonders of the Universe — meh
March 22nd, 2011
Professor Brian Cox (who looks too young to shave, let alone be a professor) is the BBC’s latest science superstar, having had a succesful series on The Wonders of the Solar System last year and following it up with The Wonders of the Universe this year. Engaging, charming and enthusiastic about science, astronomy and physics, he’s the ideal presenter for a programme that wants to introduce a broad range of viewers to what our universe looks like.
The only problem is that this is the umpteenth series attempting to do exactly that –other than some pretty pictures, there’s nothing new in this series that hasn’t been covered by other BBC astronomy series or that isn’t shown on any of the Discovery channels almost every day. The fact that it has to cram everything into four hour long episodes and is presented at that nice slow pace the BBC always insists on for “difficult” documentaries doesn’t help. Meanwhile a very similar documentary, Everything and Nothing, is being broadcast on BBC4, again on an introductionary level.
What I’m missing is the next step, a series of documentaries that delves deeper into these subjects, preferably a regular series ala Horizon that could built on these introductionary series and actually trust its audience to have a certain background level of knowledge, not needing to endlessly repeat the same basic facts over and over again. A series that can actually teach you something, rather than just entertain you with some pop science.
Categories: Auntie Beeb, Science
“N@C60 is quite a sexy, interesting, promising molecule”
February 1st, 2011
But in terms of holding onto quantum entanglement it’s beaten hollow by the humble Robin, according to Wired:
European robins may maintain quantum entanglement in their eyes a full 20 microseconds longer than the best laboratory systems, say physicists investigating how birds may use quantum effects to “see” Earth’s magnetic field.
Quantum entanglement is a state where electrons are spatially separated, but able to affect one another. It’s been proposed that birds’ eyes contain entanglement-based compasses.
Conclusive proof doesn’t yet exist, but multiple lines of evidence suggest it. Findings like this one underscore just how sophisticated those compasses may be.
[...]
To put this in perspective, Benjamin introduced an exotic molecule called N@C60, a geometric cage of carbon with a nitrogen atom inside. This molecule is one of the best-known laboratory systems for maintaining entanglement. “The cage acts to shield the atom, which is storing the information, from the rest of the world,” Benjamin said. “It’s considered to be quite a sexy, interesting, promising molecule.”
But at room temperature, even N@C60 only holds entanglement for 80 microseconds, or four-fifths of what birds appear to be doing.
Very interesting, but watch out for the New Scientist effect, where the desire to showcase counterintuitive, sexy research comes into conflict with doing science right.
Categories: Natural World, Science
A question of scale
January 29th, 2011
A simple question turned into a great video: what would the sky look like if the Moon was swapped for the various planets in our Solar System:
Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.
Categories: Natural World, Science, video
Challenger: it was twentyfive years ago today
January 28th, 2011
I’m not sure where I was twentyfive years ago when the Challenger space shuttle exploded slightly more than sevnety seconds into its launch, but I do remember that I felt devastated when I first heard the news. Even at age eleven I was a science fiction reader and space fan and the shuttle was supposed to be how we were going to get a proper space programme and L5 O’Neill colonies and ultimately the stars. They were not supposed to blow up! It was only much, much later that I understood how much of a kludge the shuttle was and how it was possible for Challenger to blow up. The documentary above was made by NASA in 1986, after investigations into the explosion had concluded. It tells how the shuttle exploded, but not why, what the root causes were. That would take much more time.
Living in the Future
October 29th, 2010
Emily Lakdawalla has her monthly post on the state of space exploration up once again and as always it’s an useful reminder that despite appearances, we are living in the future. One clue being sentences like ” I’m enjoying following the relatively active Twitter feed of Voyager 2, which also mentions the position of Voyager 1 once a day”. Who would’ve guessed in the dying days of the twentieth century that a decade later we would get status updates from a robot space explorer at the edge of our Solar System, through a medium usually portrayed as only being good for shallow gossip or self promotion?
It makes silly little arguments that the future died in 1998 because that’s when Disneyland embraced steampunk seem even more facile than they already were.
Categories: Pointless contrarianism, Science, science fiction
