Mars’s southern polar ice cap contains enough water to cover the entire planet approximately 36 feet (11 meters) deep if melted, according to a new radar study. —Mars Pole Holds Enough Ice to Flood Planet, Radar Study Shows (National Geographic News) Awesome news. I had no idea there was that much water — but apparently the…
The fantastically-colored star is our own sun as STEREO sees it in four wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light. The black disk is the Moon. — Stereo Eclipse (NASA) A movie sequence shows the sun slowly turning from left to right, while the disc of the moon approaches from the left and crosses the face of the…
The human population has swelled so much that people alive today outnumber all those who have ever lived, says a factoid whose roots stretch back to the 1970s. Some versions of this widely circulating rumor claim that 75 percent of all people ever born are currently alive. Yet, despite a quadrupling of the population in…
Politicians and other moral crusaders frequently create “folk devils,” individuals or groups defined as evil and immoral. Folk devils allow us to channel our blame and fear, offering a clear course of action to remedy what many believe to be a growing problem. Video games, those who play them, and those who create them have…
About one in seven of the Shakespearean atoms in your body originated from his excrement. —An Estimate of the Number of Shakespeare’s Atoms (Jupiter Scientific) Deep thought of the day.
E-mail is , of course, cheaper and encourages quicker thought, and it introduces a peculiar blend of the personal and professional. The AIP historians have also detected a decline in the use of lab notebooks, finding that data are often stored directly into computer files. Finally, they have noted the influence of PowerPoint, which can…
To “pluto” is “to demote or devalue someone or something,” much like what happened to the former planet last year when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto didn’t meet its definition of a planet. —‘Plutoed’ chosen as ’06 Word of the Year (Yahoo | AP (will expire))
Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching…
The Carnegie Museum of Art’s Volcanic Magma: Lava It or Leave It (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Recently the family attended the Tiffany exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. My wife went on ahead with our preschooler, while I let Peter take in the exhibit at his own pace. I had him read all the display copy…
I’ve blogged before about my eight-year-old son’s interest in science. His knowledge at this point is mostly made up of isolated facts, which he strings together in a stream of consciousness that often does not require much input. A few weeks ago, when he told his four-year-old sister that a feather and a rock would…
The more dirt he moved, the more meteorite he exposed. They lowered the backhoe scoop and strapped the rock to it. Grinding and whining, the machine pulled free the biggest meteorite Arnold had ever seen. Its shell was mottled, stippled like ground beef. That’s a pattern typical of pallasites, the rarest type of meteorite on…
Scientists say they have photographic evidence that suggests liquid water may have been on the planet as little as five years ago. —Julie Wheldon —Does water STILL flow on Mars? (Daily Mail)
—Periodic Table of the Elements (Popular Science) This is a detail from the “Oxygen” entry for this photographic periodic table of the elements. Last night for his bedtime reading, when asked to choose from a small stack of books that also included adventure and humor, for his bedtime story my eight-year-old chose “The Mystery of the…
[C]hocolate chip cookies (CCCs) have eight times the energy as the same weight of TNT. How can that be true? Why can’t we blow up a building with CCCs instead of TNT? —Physics for Future Presidents Via Metafilter. My eight-year-old son is a physics junkie. I can’t wait to show him the videotaped lectures and…
Efthimiou supposed that the first vampire arose Jan. 1, 1600, around the beginning of a century during which some of the first important modern writings on vampires appeared. The researchers estimated the global population at that time, based on historical records, as 537 million. Assuming that the vampire fed once a month and the victim…
—Wishes (Despair, inc :( )
“When I remained 366 days underground, I had the impression of only spending 219 days,” he said. —Man to live three years in cave (BBC)
The question, “what can you say when you step off something?” tells you almost everything you need to know about Armstrong: Everyone else on earth was thinking in terms of stepping on something — the surface of another world — while the pilot was thinking, and still thinks today, in terms of stepping off something…
The words “global warming” provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: “It’s a big scam.” And the name of climate researcher Kevin Trenberth elicits a sputtered “opportunist.” At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where Trenberth works, Gray’s name prompts dismay. “Bill Gray is completely unreasonable,” Trenberth says. “He…
Among the dark corners where Dr Baker’s thesis – titled Broadcast Space: TV Culture, Myth and Star Trek – shines light is the changing link between the starship Enterprise’s intergalactic adventures and the real world’s space race. Shatner’s monologues were inspired by the visionary speeches of JFK, advocating greater exploration. Thirty years on, the roles…