House of the rising Moonglum » Space and Science

Global Warming = More Snow

Moonglum — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:57:54 +0000

An interesting analysis of why global climate change could spell more snow for the USA. Lots of waffling ifs in there, but the basic idea is warmer global temp means more moisture in the air from the oceans, but 2 degrees increase in temp means that it still gets below freezing in the winter. Thus, more moisture to fall on you frozen. Pretty straightforward argument.

Spain Provides 53% Of Power With Wind

Moonglum — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:41:55 +0000

I’m a big proponent of non carbon emitting electricity generation, and a firm believer in using nuke power for base-load. One of the main reasons for that is that I don’t think that any reasonably grid could handle the ups and downs of going to a full grid of more traditional green power. Spain is working hard to change my mind. It looks like the windy weekend allowed them to provide 53% of their power from wind, pushing excess into reverse hydro and selling to their neighbors. Those numbers are impressive for a grid that wasn’t really designed for that kind of behavior. I still don’t believe in base-load wind, but this certainly makes it look like it can be a bigger chunk of the pie than I have been thinking before.

Official NASA Twitter?

Moonglum — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:53:34 +0000

I loved the LiveJournal accounts of the mars rovers, but apparently nasa is doing official Twitter feeds of the LCROSS and the LRO.

I’m actually really enjoying it, but really, did they need to give them personalities of eighth grade kids? BFF? Please.

Space Bat

Moonglum — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:14:47 +0000

The first space hitchhiker ever was a small bat. Here is a tribute to you, brave, brave space bat.

Very Small

Moonglum — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:23:36 +0000

I just looked at this humanity family tree and suddenly felt very small. All of recorded history is about two pixels wide on that chart. And what’s up with homo erectus? We can only dream about being around for that long.

Personal Nuclear Plant

Moonglum — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:01:05 +0000

Dude, these are totally awesome! Enough power for about 10,000 US homes for 7-10 years. And you just bury it, and it requires minimal monitoring and no maintenance. I wonder if it is an RTG? They don’t go too much into the details, but I bet that’s what it is. Those are totally safe and well understood. NASA has been using them for years. They cost $25M so assuming a 5 year maximally operative lifespan that’s only $500 per year which is less than I pay for electricity right now. Nice.

SpaceX In Orbit

Moonglum — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:43:52 +0000

I am completely amazed. It took the US government dozens of attempts before we got to this stage. On the fourth attempt, SpaceX, a private corporation, made it to orbit. And they did it at a fraction of the cost of other companies. Yes, even including the failures. (Well, not including the payloads, but really, why do you put a payload on a new rocket?) The best thing about it is that the entire first stage is reusable. This means that they will have rapid turn around and the more launches they do the cheaper it gets. Now if only we weren’t about to enter a massive depression and have the US government go insolvent. We could cut ALL OF NASA and it would be less than 3% of this bailout. Oh well.

Good job SpaceX, sorry about the timing.

Video-games And Science

Moonglum — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:34:28 +0000

I’m not wasting time, I’m just practicing science. Wired’s article is interesting in that it points out some neat facts about what science is and isn’t. In particular, it brings up the problem I have a lot with biblical literalists. It isn’t about knowing the rules that govern the world, it is about the process of finding out those rules. It is about evolving and refining an idea to more closely match observations in the world, and throwing away ideas when they are shown to be incorrect. It isn’t about rote memorization of facts, much though your fifth grade teacher may have told you that.

Oh yeah, and T-2 days until the end of the world. For those who are actually concerned, the chances that the trinity test back in WWII would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the world were much higher. Nothing like that chain reaction had ever happened before on earth, whereas here much higher energy astronomical particles blast through the earth all the time. The only difference is that those happen in places where the scientists aren’t looking.

Another 3/2 Angular Momentum Baryon

Moonglum — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:28:56 +0000

Cool, it looks like Fermilab managed to measure the characteristics of another Omega baryon. I used to work for a group that was trying to study isospin variants via combining accelerators rather than simply building larger ones. It was a clever idea and would have saved a fair amount of money to get similar science done, but this was the era of the super conducting super collider, so it was not to be. That was after all, the only high energy study on the horizon. And it never even got finished. Long story short, it warms my heart to see someone still working on extending the known set of isospin variants.

Also, I just recently discovered that they managed to fill out the rest of the elements in the current shell of the periodic table! I had no idea that anyone was working on that or that they had discovered so many more elements. I learned that from the excellent videos provided by the University of Nottingham.

The Laws of Probability

Moonglum — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:41:40 +0000

IANAL, IJLS: “Once again probability proves itself willing to sneak into the back alley and service Drama as would a copper piece harlot.”

I have GOT to remember that for the next time something breaks the odds in real life. Something with a 10% chance of happening is really unlikely something with a one in a million chance is a sure thing. Just awesome.