UPDATE:  SOLVED!  At 4:08 CDT.

There you are; back for another riddle?  This one is easy… you should get it in a few minutes.  I’ve been timing you guys, and last week it took an hour and 25 minutes for Patricia to solve the riddle.  How are you going to do this week?

I know you know this one; it’s probably one of the first “things” of its class you looked at… and I know that when you saw it, you were impressed.

Okay, you know the rules!  I’ve been getting some great subjects about which to post from the people who are solving the riddles, and I am really looking forward to this week’s chosen topic.  Ready?  This object is…

Known for its beauty.

Can be seen with the naked eye.

We are watching the death of this object.

Seen in the Northern Hemisphere in the autumn and early winter.

Thought of as one of the most luminous objects in the galaxy.

This is a single object.

It would take about 4.5 billion suns to equal it (yes, that’s a “b” for “billion”).

It is the prototype for its class.

When it is gone, its gift to us will be a thing of great mystery.

Do you know the answer?  I’m hanging out in the comment section, so give it a shot!

The August 2009 discovery image of GJ758 B and C, taken with Subaru HiCIAO in the near infrared wavelength. Without angular differential imaging, the star's speckle halo (burst-like feature in the center) would overwhelm the signals from the planet candidates. Images and captions: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

A research team using a brand new planet-hunting instrument on the Subaru Telescope called the High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru next generation Adaptive Optics, (let’s just call it HiCIAO), has found and imaged not one but two possible exoplanets.

The star named GJ 758, a sun much like our own was found to have at least one and possibly two other constituents that are very possibly exoplanets – maybe.  The other amazing thing is how close the two objects are to the parent star, at about the same distance as Uranus and Neptune is to ours.  Sure that is a ways, but to be able to see them in the glare of the parent sun and at 50 light-years is astounding.

Maybe?  Why maybe?  The first object called GJ 758 B has a mass of 10 to 40 times Jupiter, and the general feeling is it is either a giant planet or a lightweight brown dwarf.  The temperature of this object is about 600 K ( 620^oF / 327^oC), you might be thinking it has to be a brown dwarf at that temperature, but the temperature could be explained by compression heating due to gravity.

The object designated GJ 758 C has a similar mass to the first, but the researchers are being pretty careful saying its presence is “suggested” and are not saying it is really there.  Better to err on the side of caution.

We will know more in about a week when the results are published and I can’t wait!

Size comparison between representatives of our Solar System (Sun, Jupiter, and Earth) and the GJ 758 system. GJ 758 B’s temperature of about 600 K makes it glow cherry-red. You will note the depiction of GJ 758 B is about the same diameter or a little smaller than Jupiter and I mentioned the mass of GJ 758 B is 10 to 40 times as massive. The size I was referring to is the mass, how much stuff is packed into the package.

Hubble sees NGC 4710. Click for a larger version. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Goudfrooij (STScI)

This past January the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble took this image of the galaxy NGC 4710.  The galaxy is about 60 million light-years away in the direction of Coma Berenices.

The galaxy is pretty much edge on and one of the striking things about it is the “X” pattern around the bulge.  According to the press release the “X” is caused by the vertical motions of the stars around the core.  Another interesting thing about galaxy is the apparent lack of globular clusters around the bulge and that is being attributing to a slow assembly, I would have thought the other way.  Do check out the press release below too, it contains a lot of information packed into a concise read.

I wanted to make this into a background, things didn’t work out very well.  If you haven’t clicked on the image yet, give it a try, you can spot a couple even more distant galaxies.  To see a even larger version and one that is “zoomable” have a look at the Hubble page at NASA for links.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

These observations were obtained by a team led by Paul Goudfrooij from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Click the “more” link below to read the press release:

Just as many people are surprised to find themselves packing on unexplained weight around the middle, astronomers find the evolution of bulges in the centres of spiral galaxies puzzling. A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 4710 is part of a survey that astronomers have conducted to learn more about the formation of bulges, which are a substantial component of most spiral galaxies.

When targeting spiral galaxy bulges, astronomers often seek edge-on galaxies, as their bulges are more easily distinguishable from the disc. This exceptionally detailed edge-on view of NGC 4710 taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard Hubble reveals the galaxy’s bulge in the brightly coloured centre. The luminous, elongated white plane that runs through the bulge is the galaxy disc. The disc and bulge are surrounded by eerie-looking dust lanes.

When staring directly at the centre of the galaxy, one can detect a faint, ethereal “X”-shaped structure. Such a feature, which astronomers call a “boxy” or “peanut-shaped” bulge, is due to the vertical motions of the stars in the galaxy’s bar and is only evident when the galaxy is seen edge-on. This curiously shaped puff is often observed in spiral galaxies with small bulges and open arms, but is less common in spirals with arms tightly wrapped around a more prominent bulge, such as NGC 4710.

NGC 4710 is a member of the giant Virgo Cluster of galaxies and lies in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices (the Hair of Queen Berenice). It is not one of the brightest members of the cluster, but can easily be seen as a dim elongated smudge on a dark night with a medium-sized amateur telescope. In the 1780s, William Herschel discovered the galaxy and noted it simply as a “faint nebula”. It lies about 60 million light-years from the Earth and is an example of a lenticular or S0-type galaxy – a type that seems to have some characteristics of both spiral and elliptical galaxies.

Astronomers are scrutinising these systems to determine how many globular clusters they host. Globular clusters are thought to represent an indication of the processes that can build bulges. Two quite different processes are believed to be at play regarding the formation of bulges in spiral galaxies: either they formed rather rapidly in the early Universe, before the spiral disc and arms formed; or they built up from material accumulating from the disc during a slow and long evolution. In this case of NGC 4710, researchers have spotted very few globular clusters associated with the bulge, indicating that its assembly mainly involved relatively slow processes.

During the talks a number of links (#coollink) were posted by the conference participants on the twitter stream (#dotastro). Here is a list of them:

• Around the World in 80 telescopes
  Behind the scenes of Around the World in 80 telescopes
• Sixty Symbols: Videos about the symbols of Physics and Astronomy
• This stuff is FAR!: The video to George Hrab’s theme song for the 365 Days of Astronomy
• The World Wide Telescope: an application that lets you explore some of the highest resolution imagery of the universe.
• La Repubblica features the Chromoscope
• Astrotagging explained: Astrotags are a new way to label your astronomy photos with their celestial subject and its location.
• PinpointWCS: This software simplifies retrieval of world coordinate system (WCS) data from FITS images for outreach astronomy images. Desktop planetarium packages aware of these data can intelligently position astronomical images on the digital sky
• IR Galactic Survey maps: A gorgeous composite of several infrared bands from two Spitzer Space Telescope surveys, MIPSGAL and GLIMPSE, that span along the galactic plane.
• Another Galactic Survey map: Map of the 24 micron band component of the MIPSGAL survey, which spans along the galactic plane.
• Planetario Economico: A cheap planetarium dome and projection system to build in schools. (PDF)
• LSST Science book: The Large SYnoptic Survey Telescope will observe the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science opportunities of the next decade.
• Twitter feeds: Should we display the twitter feed live on a second screen?
• #dotastro: trending on SciencePond
• Supernova Factory: Discovery made with e-VLBI (PDF)
• e-VLBI: Live data form the e-VLBI network!
• European Very Long Baseline network
• EXPReS: Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service
• the e-Astronomer: Andy Lawerence’s blog
• Galaxy Zoo Mergers
• Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers: Study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo volunteers
• Citing and Reading Behaviours in High-Energy Physics. How a Community Stopped Worrying about Journals and Learned to Love Repositories

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Every conference generates moments of clarity and wisdom. Inspiration drives people to say things that are quite profound – or just funny. Here are some of the best from this week – feel free to comment if you have heard any others.

“[In Australia] we measure population density in nanopeople per hectare” – Robert Hollow, PULSE@Parkes on the difference between where he lives and the Netherlands.

“The advantage of YouTube is that viewers can give comments. The disadvantage of YouTube is that viewers can give comments” – Amanda Bauer, University of Nottingham on posting science videos to YouTube.

“But you have no idea how many ends there are.” – Carolina Ödman, Universe Awareness when asked if she was burning the candle at both ends this week.

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This fun video was made by .Astronomy participant Markus Poessel durting our Hack Day. Take a look – it is short but sweet.

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F O R   I M M E D I A T E   R E L E A S E

P R E S S  R E L E A S E

————————————————————

Astronomers from Jodrell Bank and Cardiff University today revealed a new way for members of the public to explore the galaxy. Their online tool, Chromoscope, allows anyone to view the Milky Way and the distant Universe more easily than ever before. The site shows the sky in a range of wavelengths, from high-energy gamma rays through to the longest radio waves.

Project member Robert Simpson, from Cardiff, said “Chromoscope sheds new light on familiar objects, such as the Orion nebula, our closest stellar nursery. This view of the Universe has been familiar to professional astronomers for a long while, but Chromoscope makes it accessible to everyone.”

The Chromoscope site is being launched at the dotAstronomy conference in Leiden, Netherlands. dotAstronomy is the world’s largest annual conference dedicated to work which combines cutting-edge astronomy with the latest on the web technology.

Lead developer, Stuart Lowe, from the University of Manchester, remarked that Chromoscope is a collaborative project. “Chromoscope uses data from a range of observatories, including the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank”, he said, “this allows people to see the connections between the night sky we see with our own eyes and the sky that astronomers explore in different wavelengths, such as radio and the infrared.”

Collaborator, Chris North from Cardiff University – also a researcher on BBC’s long-running Sky at Night programme – commented “We wanted to create something that was accessible to not only the general public, but also schools. Chromoscope can be downloaded and then used without an internet connection – or placed on a USB memory stick and passed around”.

The project involves data from ROSAT (X-ray), the Digital Sky Survey (optical), IRAS (infrared), WMAP (microwave) and other all-sky astronomical surveys. There are more wavelengths lined up and ready to go in the near future. It will be available at http://www.chromoscope.net from Thursday morning.

E N D  O F  P R E S S  R E L E A S E
—————————————————————————————————

Contact:

Stuart Lowe
E-mail: slowe@jb.man.ac.uk

Robert Simpson
Tel: +44 (0)7929 508961
E-mail: robert.simpson@astro.cf.ac.uk

Chris North
Tel: +44 (0)7815 115636
E-Mail: chris.north@astro.cf.ac.uk

.Astronomy 2009 is an event of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

.Astronomy 2009 is supported by the Lorentz Center, NWO, ASTRON, the European programme RadioNet, the British Council/Platform Beta Techniek’s Partnership in Science programme and the Royal Astronomical Society.

Links:
http://www.chromoscope.net/
Twitter: @chromoscope
Blog: http://blog.chromoscope.net/

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The first day of any conference is always a busy one and .Astronomy was no exception. This morning I gave an introduction to update the participants on the various services at their disposal and the sponsors that allowed the event to take place.

The morning then proceeded with talks from Gijs Verdoes about AstroWISE and Robert Hollow about PULSE@Parkes. Gijs’ slides are already available online if you’re interested. Unfortunately these two talks were accidentally not recorded on on our UStream feed so they cannot be replayed.

After coffee we had a talk about Galaxy Zoo and the Zooniverse by Chris Lintott and Arfon Smith. They described the way that the Zoo has evolved and expanded in the past few months and how it intends to expand into the future (Moon Zoo, Crow Zoo?!). The video of this talk should appear after UStream is done processing things…

In the afternoon – after a sojourn to the outer reaches of Leiden University for lunch – we had our first Unconference sessions. The first of which involved 101 workshops in Python, WordPress and LEGO NXT. The later session had participant-generated workshops and talks about APLPy and Radio Astronomy vs. Galaxy Zoo.

Links to participants’ posts:

AstroViz

Astropixie

Astrobetter

Starstryder

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P R E S S   R E L E A S E
————————————————————-

.Astronomy 2009: Workshop on Astronomy and the New Media

Next week, from 30 November to 4 December, an unconventional workshop takes place in Leiden, The Netherlands, to discuss novel concepts of thinking and working in astronomy today. Participants of the .Astronomy conference (read: dot astronomy) will explore new ways of exploiting the data deluge that will be produced by upcoming surveys and instruments for the benefit of their science and of society as a whole. Novel ways of communicating science to a wide audience have burst onto the scene in recent years: the web 2.0, blogs, podcasts and social networking.

Google Sky and Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope have brought astronomy into the home with stunning elegance. No science is better suited to engaging the general public in real scientific research and discovery than astronomy. Examples of this are the hugely popular Galaxy Zoo project, or the increasing number of robotic telescopes made available to citizen scientists for scientific and educational purposes. Online communication and network-based technologies are changing the face of science, for professional astronomers as well as for the general public.

In 2008 the first .Astronomy conference took place in Cardiff. The second edition is taking place at the Lorentz Center of Leiden University. Some of the themes covered during the meeting are citizen science projects, new media for outreach and communication, network-based research tools and data visualisation. One day of the meeting is a dedicated ‘Astronomy Hack Day’ where the topics above will be explored in a hands-on way. Developers will brainstorm about new ideas and applications. One of the objectives of the meeting is to come up with a new citizen science project, where the general public is invited to be directly involved in producing new scientific results. The morning talks of the .Astronomy workshop will be streamed online.

E N D   O F   P R E S S   R E L E A S E
—————————————————————————————————

Contact:

Dr. Carolina Ödman
Tel: +31 (0)71 527 58 16     Mob:  +31 (0)6 41 275 298
E-mail: odman@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Dr. Sarah Kendrew
Tel: +31 (0)71 527 84 56
E-mail: kendrew@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Robert Simpson
Tel: +44 (0)7929 508961
E-mail: robert.simpson@astro.cf.ac.uk

.Astronomy 2009 is an event of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

.Astronomy 2009 is supported by the Lorentz Center, NWO, ASTRON, the European programme RadioNet, the British Council/Platform Beta Techniek’s Partnership in Science programme and the Royal Astronomical Society.

Links:
http://www.dotastronomy.com/
http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/
Twitter: @dotastronomy
Blog: http://www.dotastronomy.com/

Original press release on http://www.astronomie.nl/
—————————————————————————————————

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If you’re interested in buying a copy of the proceedings of the 2008 .Astronomy Conference in Cardiff then now’s the time! Since the 2009 event is about to kick off we’re reducing the price to £15/€17. If you’re attending the conference then postage is free because you can collect your copy next week during the conference.

If you’d like to pick up the previous conference proceedings then email Rob with the number of books you’d like to reserve and you can then collect them during the conference next week.

If you’re not going to be in Leiden you can still buy a copy. It will cost £16/€19 and you’ll need to email Rob with the number of copies you’d like and the postal address you want them sent to.

All payments need to made via PayPal or in cash at the conference if necessary.

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A week from today will be the beginning of the 2009 .Astronomy conference in Leiden. If you have any questions about the event then please email the organising committee with them ahead of time and we shall try to get back to you ASAP.

There will be various ways to engage with the conference online during the event, UStream, Flickr, Twitter and others that will be set up this week. If you are taking part and want to connect with us via these services then do it now so we can maximise the smooth running of the event itself.

Our morning talks will be streamed live where possible and this stream is available from the main page of this website under the ‘Live Feed’ tab.

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We’ve had a few emails from participants recently, asking whether or not their talk was accepted for the conference. On our programme page you’ll see that we talks some formal organised each morning (except on the Hack Day). Every afternoon we will be an unconference - where the talks, workshops and discussions are user-generated and organised organically during the week.

We have a series of breakout rooms, large- and small-meeting rooms at the Lorentz Centre. These will be used to facilitate whatever talks etc the group requires. If you’ve never been to an unconference before, don’t worry. The idea is that if you have a talk or workshop you’d like to run then you’re free to put it up on a large communal whiteboard. People will indicate preferences for talks and thus we will build up each afternoon’s sessions as the day goes along.

Alongside the unconference sessions we will also have 101 workshops running. These are beginners guides to specific subjects (e.g. Google Maps, Podcasting, Python) and are all indicated on the programme.

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Rob Seaman is open to the idea of bribery. To those of us who know him well this will not come as a surprise. All in a good cause though…

Rob has this to say:

This is a blatant attempt at bribery.

Lego in the Age of Aquarius

The VOEvent working group has been shameless from the very beginning in seeking ways to promote its agenda of world dominion. An early notion was to build a LEGO NXT robotic telescope to demonstrate this IVOA celestial transient alert protocol. The initial prototype was shown at the Hotwired I workshop in 2007. This first model was joined by a second telescope by the time of the Austin American Astronomical Society meeting in 2008.

With two telescopes it is possible to demonstrate behavioral interactions as observatories pursue the discovery and follow-up of transient phenomena. Such interactions can be arbitrarily complex, but even a simple “Simon says” interaction as demonstrated in Austin provides the opportunity for rich discussions with colleagues on diverse scientific and technical issues. Ideally the robotic behavior would be explicitly tied via either pseudo or actual interfaces to other astronomical facilities such as provided through the Virtual Observatory, World-Wide Telescope, Google Sky or SkyAlert.

Indeed a third LEGO NXT kit was purchased with the hope of elaborating on the pedagogical behavior available in 2008. Circumstances intervened (including the departure of two successive VOEvent programmers at NOAO – for unrelated reasons) and this kit remains in the box.

The LEGO NXT kit is the bribe, offered as a prize to the best interface between virtual astronomical technology (for instance as displayed on a nearby monitor and/or handheld device) and the two model robotic telescopes. This simulation must be robust enough to be suitable for low maintenance, multi-day, multi-audience demonstrations. The intent is that I will deliver this presentation for the duration of the upcoming high profile AAS meeting in Washington, DC. Glory (and explicit credit) will accrue to all involved!

VOEvent is a technology for enabling autonomous astronomical architectures for pursuing empirical investigations. How can this be conveyed to the public, or perhaps even more challenging, to astronomers?

Hack day at .Astronomy 2009 is on the Wednesday. In support of this mission, I will be giving a talk titled “LEGO in the Age of Aquarius – Presenting complex technologies to diverse audiences” during the “unconference” sessions in Leiden on Monday or Tuesday.

If you’re interested get your thinking caps on and see if you can leave the meeting with a shiny new Lego NXT kit. You’ll have (free) access to Amazon EC2 and S3 and Google’s App Engine during the meeting (within limits!), access to Arduino microcontrollers and the tools you’ll need to do something interesting with them, as well as iPhone and Android handsets and their respective SDKs. Hack day may be on Wednesday, but you can hack all week…

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Krypton and xenon make up trace amounts of the Earth’s atmosphere—about one part per million for the former, and even less for the latter. But these minor components could have a major impact in scientists’ understanding of how the atmosphere came to be. According to findings published in Science, many of the atmosphere’s gases that you’re breathing right now might have come from outer space rather than inside the Earth, as previously thought.

Researchers believed that when the Earth congealed from the gas and dust cloud that formed the solar system, some gases got trapped in the planet’s mantle. Then, over hundreds of millions of years, volcanic eruptions returned the gases to Earth’s surface, where gravity kept them from drifting off into space. The mixing of these gases–along with the oxygen and other molecules added by life–created the atmosphere we have today [ScienceNOW Daily News]. That’s been the common wisdom, anyway.

The new study by Chris Ballentine shakes up the idea. His team found a place in New Mexico where they could measure krypton and xenon that had never reached the surface, even after billions of years, and thus remained uncontaminated by our atmosphere. The prevalences and isotope ratios of the noble, or inert, gases, such as neon, argon, krypton and xenon, provide a valuable tracer of ancient processes, because they are chemically nonreactive and so do not change much over time [Scientific American]. What the team found didn’t match the established ideas about an atmosphere produced by volcanic eruptions. The red flag was in the isotopic ratio—the relative abundance of certain isotopes to others, like lighter krypton-82 versus heavier krypton-84.

If you look at krypton, the isotopic ratio in the Earth’s atmosphere is more tilted toward the heavy side than that sun’s is. According to the established model, this is true because new batches of these gases in the mantle came up to the Earth’s surface and replace some of what the atmosphere loses to outer space. But, for the math to work out, the gases coming up from the mantle have to be similar in isotopic ratio to the sun’s.

One problem: That wasn’t the case for the krypton Ballentine drew from the New Mexico mantle. It had an isotopic ratio tilted even further toward the heavy side than either the sun’s or the atmosphere’s. Actually, it matched closely to the krypton found in meteors. The upshot is this: If our atmosphere’s gases didn’t come from the interior of the planet, which is what Ballentine’s data suggest, then where did they come from? Based on their research, Ballentine and colleagues claim that our atmosphere likely formed when gas and water-rich comets bombarded Earth, shortly after its formation 4.54 billion years ago [National Geographic News]. Upon impact, the comets’ ice would have evaporated and left behind elements like krypton and xenon.

The team now must sample similar sites in other locations to see if their findings hold up—perhaps, skeptics note, there really was a reservoir solar-type krypton in the mantle, but now it’s gone. Ballentine’s team plans to take a look at the isotopic ratios in the comet material that NASA’s Stardust mission brought back to Earth. It they’re right, though, then we’re not just made of “star stuff,” as Carl Sagan was fond of saying, but also breathing comet stuff every day.

Related Content:
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Bad Astronomy: When Did Earth’s Oxygen Atmosphere Appear?

Image: NASA

• Worst science headline of the week? Switching a gene in adult mice easily transforms females into males. Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than that.

• Exposed! Martian moons Phobos and Deimos have been caught on camera together for the very first time.

• Want to track your data consumption? There’s an app for that.

• Not sure what to get that Sri Lankan farmer in your life this holiday season? Send them a package of poo… seriously.

• Australian family lives in an electric motor-powered rotating house that guarantees a different view every time they wake up.

Sometimes, news comes pouring in to Bad Astronomy HQ, and I am but a man, so I can’t keep up (writing about Saturn’s moons and giant galactic panoramas and big weird Scandinavian spinny thingies keep me pretty busy, y’know).

So here are some quick bits o’ interest.

1) Dr. Harriet Hall will inject (haha!) some medical sense into Oprah

2) You already knew this, but Rush Limbaugh is somewhat misinformed on basic matters of science and medicine^*.

3) Obama’s science advisor John Holdren reads a book by my Hive Overmind compatriots!

4) Pulsar-discoverer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell blogs.

5) My friend, the Aussie skeptic Richard Saunders appeared on national TV and handed an astrologer his head.

6) My evil twin Richard Wiseman is fun at parties. Here’s the video:

OK, good. That oughta keep y’all busy while I write up my next big astronomy post.

As 80beats reported back in March, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has been experimenting with so-called biological passports to curb cheating in sports. Biological passports are electronic records for individual athletes that provide baseline measurements of substances in their blood and urine that officials can track to catch juiced athletes, since a sudden deviation from the baseline would suggest funny business.

Now, the WADA has released a new set of guidelines to monitor athletes’ blood profiles for evidence of performance enhancing substances. The guidelines take effect immediately and provide advice to antidoping agencies on how to put programs in place to collect and store athletes’ blood samples and monitor them for any variations that could indicate doping—without an actual positive test [The New York Times]. The new guidelines are necessary to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated cheating techniques, such as hormone injections, self-blood transfusions, and potentially gene doping.

During the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in February, laboratories will be asked to take blood samples according to the new guidelines. Officials say it’s unlikely that these samples will be used to detect doping during these Winter Games, since earlier samples drawn under the same guidelines are needed for comparison. However, this could mark the beginning of a stricter, cleaner era of sports.

In the future when an athlete’s biological passport gives doctors cause for suspicion, a positive test for a banned substance won’t be necessary to take disciplinary action. The WADA said its guidelines suggest there should be an unanimous agreement by three experts that a profile shows signs of prohibited substance use before proceedings against an athlete can be launched. Three experts should also agree that the athlete’s explanation for the abnormalities don’t hold before sanctions can be considered [AP]. The new methods come after a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine indicated that testing for high levels of testosterone was ineffective, and called for tracking athletes’ biological profiles over time.

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Image: iStockphoto

What do mathematicians nosh on when they get hungry?

A Möbius bagel, of course:

At least, George Hart does, because he figured out how to do a two-twist Möbius cut into a bagel. Not bad. But I don’t think it would satisfy my hunger. You can only schmeer one side!

Gotta love mathematicians: Even when they attack a practical problem familiar to just about everybody, the results can be wonderfully impractical.

New Scientist today documents the exhaustive, decades-spanning search of two mathematicians trying to solve the pizza problem: How to cut a pizza so that everyone gets a fair slice. Seems pretty simple with the standard method, cutting through the center four times to create eight equitable slices. But if you miss the center, or want to create a different number of slices, it opens up a world of possibilities for mathematicians to try to work out.

Rick Mabry and Paul Deiermann finally proved their pizza theorem, which they crafted through years of mathematical rigor, by bringing it down to a simpler, more elegant bit of algebra. Will you find it useful the next time you and four friends sit down with a large pepperoni. Not at all, Mabry says, but he doesn’t care:

“It’s a funny thing about some mathematicians,” he says. “We often don’t care if the results have applications because the results are themselves so pretty.”

From one impractical bit of practical math to another: British automaker Vauxhaull Motors teamed up with Professor Simon Blackburn to craft an equation for perfect parallel parking. After all, Vauxhall spokespeople say, the British may drive on the opposite side of the road as Americans, but they find parallel parking just as frustrating. From The Telegraph:

The formula was released after a Vauxhall survey showed 57 per cent lacked confidence in their parking ability and 32 per cent would rather drive further from their destination or to a more expensive car park, purely to avoid manoeuvring into a small space.

The least confident parkers were those from Norwich, while the most confident were the Welsh.

Whether Britons will be able to apply math become better parkers isn’t clear. Perhaps, though, Blackburn’s math could improve those computer systems in fancy cars that do it for you, which still freaks me out.

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DISCOVER: The Pizza Lab

Image: flickr / The Punch Pizza

As the weeks wind down to 2010, we’re bombarded with ‘Year’s Best‘ lists on everything music videos to movies. Colleagues and I have recently been discussing the best science papers–not just for 2009, but the entire past decade. We’ve had many ideas as there are obviously different kinds of breakthroughs across fields that have had enormous influence.

I’m very interested to hear the rest of the science community: What do you think have been the most significant, paradigm-shifting, and fascinating articles of the 2000’s? I’ll start with a particularly notable contribution from Colosimo et al. in 2005 to get the ball rolling…

Colosimo PF, Hosemann KE, Balabhadra S, Villarreal G Jr, Dickson M, Grimwood J, Schmutz J, Myers RM, Schluter D, Schluter D, Kingsley DM. Widespread parallel evolution in sticklebacks by repeated fixation of Ectodysplasin alleles. Science 2005 Mar 25 307 (5717): 1928-33

This study had a large impact on our understanding of biology with far reaching implications that “set a new standard in the identification of adaptive variants found in nature.” Evolutionary genetics hasn’t been the same since its publication.

Now let’s hear from readers…