The Bad Astronomy Blog gives a top ten list of astronomy images for 2006. There are some really wonderful choices there, and Phil Plait gives a good deal of discussion of each one. The winner is this fantastic back-lit (by the sun, not some giant NASA flashgun) image of Saturn taken -of course- by the Cassini mission:
Now there’s another wonderful feature of this photo that makes it such a clear winner. […] Click to continue reading this post
This is a diagram of the layout of the equipment on the Corot (COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits) space telescope, launched recently from a site in Kazakhstan:
It’s a European Space Agency (ESA) mission, primarily run by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES – the French Space Agency, if you will) and it’s going to be looking closely at about 120,000 stars for signs of planetary bodies in orbit around them, in addition to studying the stars themselves. There’s a BBC story here, with video, more figured and images, and links to other sites, such as this condensed mission guide. The Proteus platform in the diagram refers to that fact that this is but one of a series of craft in the “Proteus†series, the platform itself being the design of the core containing the instrumentation and control systems of the device. Learn more about that here.
By going over to ESA’s site, you can learn a lot more about the scientific objectives and […] Click to continue reading this post
No, probably not, but we are probably in for a battle. The FDA is said to be about to announce the approval of using cloned animals for food. The announcement will be on Thursday, but there are several news reports about it already. Here is a link to an AP article written by Libby Quaid. (I also borrowed from that article the picture -left, by Chris Gardner- of cloned dairy cows Cyagra1 and Genesis.)
What will the battle be about? Well, Let’s get the fear-mongering (that opponents of this announcement will use to their advantage) out of the way first. If these were indeed clones in the purest sense of the word, produced in unquestionable circumstances, in an industry that did not already have several unsettling and dysfunctional features to it (see for example here) then there would be no issue. The bottom line is that we should be no more scared of clones than we should be of twins.
But it is not that simple. According to the article to which I pointed, here are claims -backed up with documentation- (I have not read the research, so am merely reporting that it exists) that the cloned animals are not produced in a manner that would be acceptable for the production of animals by other means -there are still many deaths and deformities in the process, and these birth defects are still not fully understood.
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of food policy at the Consumer Federation of America, said the FDA is ignoring research that shows cloning results in more deaths and deformed animals than other reproductive technologies.
The consumer federation will ask food companies and supermarkets to refuse to sell food from clones, she said.
“Meat and milk from cloned animals have no benefit for consumers, and consumers don’t want them in their foods,” Foreman said.
That alone might not be so terrible, you’re thinking, but the big thing […] Click to continue reading this post
Good News Everyone!
On Tuesday a box arrived in the post. What did it contain? New tyres (or is it tires?) for the Brompton!
I ordered them as a well-earned present for the bike, for all the hard work put in almost daily, getting me to and from work and about on various errands (including dashing around campus from meeting to meeting) …. and because the back wheel was virtually worn away. What’s the big deal about this? Well, they’re reinforced […] Click to continue reading this post
One sees them a lot around here, given the town I’m in, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
There’s a Spitzer telescope press release about the possible discovery of the most early stars detected to date. These would be the very first stars to have formed in the universe. Remembering that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, pause for a moment to be impressed by the claim of Kashlinsky, Arendt, Mather and Moseley that these stars appeared less than a billion years after the big bang. You should also read some discussion in John Baez’ recent post. [Update: See remarks from Ned Wright at the end of this post.]
The new milestone on the timeline of the universe’s history, if this is correct, would look roughly as in this image (from the press release):
Extraordinary claims (like this one) require extraordinary evidence, and so there’ll no […] Click to continue reading this post
Oh, man! Right now I’m seriously jammin’ along to NPR’s Fresh Air. Why? It is a retrospective on James Brown (you’ve heard the news, I imagine). Terry Gross (the show’s presenter) has lined up a 2005 interview with him, and also has cut in interviews with Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, etc. It’s all about his music’s history – the influences, the influenced, the ideas, the groove, the politics, the movement, the Movement, and so much more.
If you’ve not listened to James Brown’s music before, this is a good chance to learn what it’s all about. (Image right from concertshots.com.) […] Click to continue reading this post
Read about the long lost history of Thermodynamics over at Lounge of the Lab Lemming. There you’ll find out about the 19th Century Boy Band Heat Engine, whose original membership was: Rudolf Clausius: bass Emile Clapeyron: percussion Sadi Carnot: vocals Hermann Helmholtz: calorimeter … and much much more. In this … Click to continue reading this post
Young1 Bee does it again, this time with an excellent post entitled “Anomalous Alignments in the Cosmic Microwave Background”. You’ve heard a huge amount about the success of modern precision cosmology, driven so muchn in recent times by the extraordinary data from the Cosmic Microwave Background measured by experiments such … Click to continue reading this post
Some Winter gifts from the garden:
Well, I hope that you’re having an excellent (and, especially, peaceful) Holiday season. Here are the two top images that have been produced so far by readers in the LaTeX Holiday Challenge, using the recently installed LaTeX/mimeTeX machine (feel free to keep them coming): The first, a stylized Christmas tree, … Click to continue reading this post
…say it isn’t so… Sad news this Christmas Day. James Brown died this morning. I’ve seen two obituaries up so far, an Associated Press one, and one at the BBC. (Image left from Getty images.) No doubt there’ll be a lot more news and obituaries through the day. He goes … Click to continue reading this post
No, the title is not part of an alternative version of that Christmas song that cumulatively lists things (whatever it is called). It is really that I spotted the display of the entries in something that looked like the aftermath of a gingerbread house bake-off. This was at the Kitchen Academy, the chef’s school next door to the Arclight.
Here are some more pictures, including the top three places, and then I have a question for you: […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, sort of.
I could not resist:
These are the kittens of Copy Cat, the cat that was cloned back in 2001/2 at Texas A&M. They’re lovely. They were produced the old-fashioned way with a father who was […] Click to continue reading this post
To add to the seasonal mood, I thought I’d point out that there’s a virgin birth about to happen any day now. Maybe even Monday. Fingers crossed. And tail, if you have one. What am I talking about?
Here’s Flora, a proud-looking mum if I’ve ever seen one:
She’s a Komodo Dragon. She lives in Chester Zoo in England. In May, she laid several […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, there was something I could not tell you about before that I now can. There’s a new TV show called “Wired Science” about to launch. It is made by the PBS affiliate KCET, and will air on your local PBS station (on Wednesday, January 03, 2007, 8:00-9:00 pm ET). It looks like it is going to be informative and fun!
Here’s some of their blurb from the press release:
WIRED SCIENCE is a one-hour program that translates Wired magazine’s award-winning journalism into a fast-paced television show. WIRED SCIENCE brings Wired magazine’s cutting-edge vision, stylish design and irreverent attitude to the screen with breakout ideas, recent discoveries and the latest innovations. The pilot episode takes the viewer into the world of meteorite hunters, where space, commerce and art intersect; travels to Yellowstone National Park to harvest viruses that may hold the key to a technology revolution; and dives underwater to explore NEEMO, NASA’s extreme astronaut training program. Viewers will meet rocket-belt inventors, stem cell explorers and the developer of an electric car that goes from zero-to-60 in under four seconds. As a series, WIRED SCIENCE hopes to span the globe to uncover novel developments in biomedicine, space exploration, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, robotics and military technology.
And you can go to the site to see stills from some of the location work they did in making the show, and some of the studio work too. You can go to this Wired blog post to see the rather nice title sequence of the show, and the teaser trailer. To the right, there’s a screen shot I made just now (click for larger).
I don’t think that they have the go ahead to make a full series yet. This is a pilot. I imagine that whether they get the full series go ahead depends upon whether it is well liked and supported by you, the viewer. I’d say support it. the people behind it really care about getting good science programming out to you.
So what’s the big deal? Why did I not tell you about it if I’ve known about it for so long? Well, nobody told me not to tell you, but it seemed the right thing to do. You see, I have a little secret. How do I put this? I’m going to get so beaten up in the playground for this. […] Click to continue reading this post
