A repost, apropos of this weekend’s supermoon and the fact that people are going bugnut over it… yet again… and Taslima seemed lonely in being the only other FtBer covering this one. My original post is here, published March 17, 2011. Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a …
Category Archive: Space
Mar 22 2012
On this day in space history
On March 22, 2001, an outer main belt asteroid provisionally named 2001FB10 was discovered by David Healy, founder of the Junk Bond Observatory. Its official name is 153289 Rebeccawatson. That’s right, it was named after the woman probably most famous for making a whole lot of very insecure men very angry about having their sense …
Mar 19 2012
Supernova in M-95
Awesome. In an extremely close galaxy, one we’ve studied quite a bit previously, we’ve apparently just spotted a supernova and have started grabbing as much scientific data as we can manage. Of course, this is millions of light years away (estimated 38 million in fact), so unless you subscribe to the idea that everything “happens” …
Feb 06 2012
16 year old girl Hacks the Tube almost into space to get into MIT
Via Boing Boing, this is absolutely awesome. As part of their Early Action Admits, MIT challenges prospective students to hack the tube the enrollment letter came in into something cool. So one 16-year-old girl put a camera, a GPS, and two Ham radio transmitters, strapped it to an 800 gram helium balloon, and sent it …
Feb 04 2012
Real genuine proof the moon landing (simulation) was a hoax!
What do you get when you stitch together footage from NASA’s moon landing simulations prior to the Apollo project, with footage from the actual moon landing, with an audio track meant to make you pee with laughter? Well, you get a Youtube comments thread so full of facepalmingly poor logic and conspiracy theory that you …
Feb 04 2012
NASA engineer humours the 2012 doomsayer crowd
No Nibiru/Planet X, no planetary alignments, no predicted magnetic pole reversals (and even if they happened they wouldn’t harm us), no solar flares, and the Mayans only predicted a calendar roll-over, so big whoop. “Folks have to be very careful when they get information on the web.” Yeah, if you have not a scrap of …
Feb 03 2012
The Birth of the Moon
An intriguing documentary has caught my eye with its slick teaser trailer. We like the moon. Because it is close to us. I can’t wait to see this doc when it’s out. I’ve had a long-standing love affair with the moon and its effects on our planet. I’ve posted quite a bit about it in …
Jan 31 2012
The Aurora over Norway
Here, have some beautiful high-res time lapse photography by Bjørnar Eilertsen in Kristiansund, Norway, on January 24th, following the recent coronal mass ejection event. That’s “solar flare” to non-geeks. There’s even more pretty pictures and videos at The Atlantic.
Jan 28 2012
Newt’s new windmill: a moon base by 2020
That’s right, Newt Gingrich wants a permanent American-controlled moon base by the end of his second term in office. Don’t worry Republicans, he’s not suggesting, you know, actual funding by the government or anything — just that private enterprise will, somehow, for some inexplicable reason, become motivated to find ways to do it. Speaking in …
Jan 27 2012
RCimT: Spacey particle physicsey sciencey catch-up Friday
Some random science bits and bobs to clear out a bunch of tabs. Scientists have discovered the speed limit for quantum interactions, and it is much, much slower than the speed of light. It is a little faster than twice the speed of sound in the medium in question, in fact. Yes, apparently also for …
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I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though.
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Contact me via these services:
I reserve the right to publish any contact, especially if it's hateful or ridiculous.
Not detailed enough to allow for proper stalking? Please read my Hello Freethought Blogs post. I promise* it will include my favorite style of underwear.
* Not a real promise
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