Starship Asterisk*

I came across this opinion piece the other day. To Replace The Shuttle: A Mission To Mars The author is pushing for human exploration of Mars. Fine. A few of the arguments used by the author are very typical of folks defending human space exploration. 'Human spirit,' global focus on a goal to keep s...

What about "honorary father?" My wife and I are expecting our first! :

Anyone else have this problem?

Happily, that's not going to happen. Many of the images shown here are not even collected in visual light bands to begin with. How should they be displayed- as a black box linked to some other visual version? Do you suppose this goes back to the tendency people have to think of the visible part of ...

It says it used a "computerized navigation system." I wonder how that worked? With size and weight restrictions, there is a limit to how many instruments could be on board for the computer control system to use. I assume it used GPS? That way it could get not just navigation information bu...

Celine, Here is another possibility Radio transmission is much too slow for interstellar communications so they have developed a method to communicate instantaneously accross vast distances and so do not listen for nor communicate via radio frequencies. We are alone in the silence because we do not...

I've always really liked astrophotography images that include elements of the horizon - trees, edges of mountains, ect, even though they often show us what we can't see with our eyes. Of course, what you can see with your eyes - in dark, remote areas away from light pollution - is an incredible expe...

Interesting list, Céline. Here are some thoughts on a few of them: Few, if any, other civilizations currently exist Probably true, and assuming they are roughly spread out evenly through the universe, there is a lot of 4D universe between them. No other civilizations have arisen: Rare Earth hypothes...

Ann, speaking of The Simpsons : the only rational, intelligent characters in that show are female - Marge and Lisa. Many Shakespeare plays end with both females and males dying; they are rarely about triumph (there are exceptions, the most obvious is perhaps Henry V). They usually focus on human fla...

We had a thunder storm the other evening. I saw a few flashes; it was just cloud-to-cloud.

In general the weather around here has greatly improved! We had some really nice days last week and more are on the way - partly cloudy and in the low 70's.

We know globular clusters are very old, so the process of evaporation must take a while. Have astronomers speculated on possible variables that might affect the length of time it takes for a cluster to evaporate? Overall mass? Relative velocities of stars within the cluster?

Globular clusters always fascinated me as a kid; there are so many beautiful images of them. What really got me thinking lately was the structure of globular clusters. You'd think that a close proximity of a large group of stars ought to collapse inward given enough time. Why would you think this? ...

Why do we "shine" a flashlight but "shoot" or "fire" a laser?

Oh wait, I know.


LASERS GO PEW PEW

Hey folks, I have been thinking about globular clusters lately. Here's M13, the famous globular cluster in the constellation Hercules: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1005/M13_mtm900.jpg They are fascinating objects. Spherical, swarming collections of thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions o...

Orin, do you fertilize your vegetables? I have heard several wide-ranging opinions on this.

Are you using cable? I had trouble with cable all the time. :x Since I've been using fiber the last few years I've been outage-free - to say nothing of the big boost in bandwidth I got when I made the switch, though I guess some folks on cable have access to a healthy pipe. EDIT: There was one outag...

On my FoxcastFox tool bar: 50 and rain. Later 62 and rain. Tonight 45 and rain. Tomorrow 64 and rain. Thursday 61 and rain. BUT... Friday 71 and partly sunny? COULD IT BE? Actually we did have a break in the clouds yesterday. It was cool but at least we got some sun. They keep saying "oh, we ha...

We had a couple of really nice days; I sat out on my patio reading. Finally it felt like spring was here and summer was not far away. Then the weather turned on a dime - as it often does this time of year - and the now the extended forecast says, "Now: 50, rain. Tonight: 44, rain. Thurs 59, rai...

"On November 8, asteroid 2005 YU55 will fly past Earth and at its closest approach point will be about 325,000 kilometers [201,700 miles] away," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This asteroid is...

Finally planted my tomatoes. We also bought a cucumber, zucchini, red and green bell peppers. I am enjoying this more than I thought I would, I am looking forward to see what kind of crop we get! It was a longer day than you imagine, my wife and I did a ton of weeding. I've been recovering from knee...

That reminded me of an early Treehouse of Horror episode:

Very cool picture, Beyond! As I say, hopefully one day I will see one of those guys (or a few, I guess they like to travel in flocks) in my own back yard! As for the change in avatar, well, you gotta mix it up sometimes, right? My new one is an artist's impression of the Pheonix mission to the polar...

Well, considering that our entire history as a sentient species is just a snapshot in time relative to the age of the solar system, I imagine it is entirely possible that Venus at one point or another has had a captured moon or two. The orbits of captured satellites are often tenuous. Triton is an e...

My neighborhood animal adventure last night was the Raccoon Repel: standing on the porch with a broom sweeping a raccoon off the porch and keeping him from coming back. The feral cat, who fortunately knows better than to go after a raccoon, likes to brush against my legs, and nearly tripped me seve...

Didn't it seem that the cat was awfully rough with the barn owl?


Owlice - I've always hoped to see a Cedar Waxwing. We supposedly have them in this part of the country but I have yet to see any.