Charlie McDonnell is an adorable young man who has an amazingly popular video series he does on YouTube. His latest is a quick primer on stars, and why they’re awesome:

I have to say, that’s pretty good! Accurate, fast, fun, and adorable. Did I already say "adorable"? Well, he is.

He has other videos in his Fun Science, like ones on sound, light, and the Moon. I can easily see these being shown in classrooms; kids will like ‘em, and if they like something, they’re more likely to let it sink in.

And that’s the point.

Tip o’ the lens cap to Ali Marie via Fraser Cain.

I almost missed this, but an email from astrophotographer Anthony Ayiomamitis (whose photo I feature below) reminded me: tonight’s full Moon occurs at apogee, the point in the Moon’s orbit where it is most distant from Earth. I actually wrote quite a bit about this last year, so I’ll repost the article below. Full Moon occurs officially tonight at 02:06 UTC (10:06 p.m. Eastern US time), so in a couple of hours as I write this. Apogee occurs about 9 hours later (October 12 at 11:44 UTC), when the Moon will be 406,176 km (252,286 miles) from the Earth. It was at perigee on September 28, when it was a mere 357,555 km (222,174 miles) from us… but make sure you read the footnote below!

And I’ll note: the difference in size between the Moon at closest and farthest approach isn’t something you’d probably never notice it by eye, especially since you can’t compare the two at the same time. The change is gradual, and the Moon is actually pretty small in the sky. But it’s still neat when you take a picture and compare them…

I’ve been posting a lot of extreme close-ups of the Moon, but sometimes you can learn something by taking a step back.

For example, I imagine if I went out in the street and asked people what shape the Moon’s orbit was, they’d say it was a circle (or, given recent poll results, they’d say it was Muslim). In fact, however, the Moon’s orbit is decidedly elliptical. When it’s closest to Earth — the point called perigee — it’s roughly 360,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away^*, and when it’s at its farthest point — apogee — it’s at a distance of about 405,000 km (251,000 miles).

That’s a difference of about 10% — not enough to tell by eye, but certainly enough to see in a picture… like this one, by the Greek amateur astronomer Anthony Ayiomamitis:

[Click to emperigeenate.]

Amazing, isn’t it? The Moon is noticeably different! He took those images at full Moon, but seven months apart, when the Moon was at perigee (last January) and apogee (just a few days ago as I write this). It’s part of a project he does every year, and it’s pretty cool. He was able to get these images within a few moments of the exact times of apogee and perigee.

You might wonder how the Moon can be at apogee when it’s full one time, and perigee at another time it’s full. That’s a good question, and it’s because the phase of the Moon doesn’t depend on the shape of its orbit, it depends on the angle between the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth.

If the Sun is behind the Moon from our viewpoint, we see only the dark side, and the Moon is new. If the Sun is behind us, and shining straight down on the Moon, we see it as full. The crescent and gibbous phases happen in between those times. So while the Moon’s phase depends on where it is in its orbit relative to the Sun and Earth, the orbit shape — the fact that it’s a bit of an ellipse and not a circle — isn’t all that important.

Not only that, the time it takes to go from full Moon to full Moon (called the synodic month) is not the same amount of time it takes to go from perigee, around the Earth, and back to perigee (called the anomalistic month). The first is about 29.5 days, the second about 27.6 days. That difference means that every time the Moon gets to perigee, it takes an extra 2.2 days or so for the phase to catch up.

Or, a better way to think about it is like this: say at some date the Moon is both full and at perigee. 29.5 days later, it’s full again, but it’s had an extra 2.2 days around the Earth. It’s a little bit past perigee when it’s full (or you could say it hit perigee before it was full again). Wait until the next full Moon and now it’s 4.4 days past perigee (or, it was at perigee again 4.4 days before it was full a third time). Keep doing that; after about 6 cycles of its phases, that extra time will add up to about half of the anomalistic cycle.

In other words, full Moon will happen at apogee!

It’s not an exact match, so you don’t really get a perfect full Moon at perigee and another at apogee in one year. But as Anthony showed, you can get pretty close.

And if you’re wondering why you’ve never noticed the 10% difference in Moon size, it’s because when you look at it, you’re not comparing it side-by-side with itself like in the picture. You don’t have a good gauge of exactly how big it is from month to month, so you never notice. You need to photograph it, or observe it very carefully through a telescope.

I’ll note that the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is also an ellipse, so the Sun appears bigger and smaller throughout the year; the change isn’t as big as for the Moon, but you can see for yourself because Anthony has images of that as well.

And if you’re curious about on what dates the Moon reaches perigee and apogee, head over to Fourmilab’s Perigee and Apogee calculator.

Amazing, isn’t it, that something that seems this obvious can be hidden in plain view. It makes you wonder what else you’re missing, doesn’t it?

Fresh shark fins drying on sidewalk in Hong Kong. Credit: cloneofsnake / flickr

On Friday, California governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill outlawing the trade in shark fins, making it illegal for them to be imported, possessed, or distributed in the state. Chinese chefs were angered by the decision, since the fins are the prime ingredient in shark fin soup, a prized and expensive delicacy (although most Chinese voters in California support the ban… and so does retired NBA player Yao Ming). Other parts of shark meat are not highly valued, though, so most sharks caught are “finned” and thrown back into the ocean, where they slowly bleed to death. As many as 73 million sharks are killed each year, most for this purpose, and shark populations around the world are in serious decline—perhaps 30 percent of shark species are endangered.

The importation of shark fins to the U.S. is against the law, but illegal importation continues and consumption remains popular amongst Chinese immigrates and other groups. The soup is available in at least 23 states, for example, and In New York City alone there are 54 restaurants serve shark-fin soup, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. The California bill is a victory for conservations, who estimate as much as 85% of the shark fins consumed in the U.S. are imported into California. The state becomes the fourth to ban the trade, after Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. Shark-finning nevertheless remains a major threat to the survival of sharks around the world, and shark fin soup is still a coveted dish in East Asia and elsewhere.

Why women apologize more than men: gender differences in thresholds for perceiving offensive behavior.

“Introduction: “Despite wide acceptance of the stereotype that women apologize more readily than men, there is little systematic evidence to support this stereotype or its supposed bases (e.g., men’s fragile egos). We designed two studies to examine whether gender differences in apology behavior exist and, if so, why. In Study 1, participants reported in daily diaries all offenses they committed or experienced and whether an apology had been offered. Women reported offering more apologies than men, but they also reported committing more offenses. There was no gender difference in the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies. This finding suggests that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior. In Study 2, we tested this threshold hypothesis by asking participants to evaluate both imaginary and recalled offenses. As predicted, men rated the offenses as less severe than women did. These different ratings of severity predicted both judgments of whether an apology was deserved and actual apology behavior.”

Photo: flickr/Half Chinese

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: This just in: women like to be flattered!
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Smiling faces rated more feminine than serious faces in Japan.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: An evolutionary analysis of tattooed ladies.

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

I somehow missed it when it came out, but the folks at IRrelevant Astronomy have a great video about how stars die, and it has Sean Astin (Samwise!) and Sandeep Parikh (Zaboo!).

IRrelevant Astronomy is a very funny web series about infrared astronomy put together by folks at Spitzer Space Telescope, and they’re all pretty good. This one is a followup for great video about galaxies featuring Felicia Day. They also have a couple with a guy named Wil Wheaton. Never heard of him myself, but he has promise as an actor, I think.

If you have the time, you should watch ‘em all. They’re funny, and well done, and you just might learn something.

Tip o’ the beryllium mirror to Jennifer Ouellette on Google+.

My post from last week, Relative angels and absolute demons, got a lot of circulation. Interestingly I received several emails from self-described lurkers who asked me for recommendations on world history, with a particular thought to rectify deficiencies in non-European history. These were people who were not looking for exceedingly abstruse monographs. Below are some suggestions….

China: A History. The author is a journalist, so this should be a starting off point, as there are major shortcomings in the narrative. But if you don’t have much background I’d recommend this.

India: A History. Same author as above, same strengths and weaknesses.

China: A New History, Enlarged Edition. A classic survey. Nothing to shout home about, but useful (if sometimes thin and dated).

Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. The author is hated by many Hindu nationalists, but the period is old enough that much of the controversy is not relevant to this work.

When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. A narrative history of the dynasty which crystallized much of Islam as we understand it.

Empires of the Silk Road. This is more a magnum opus, but it’s not a dry one. It can help “connect” the histories of the peripheral zones of the Eurasian ecumene.

A History of Iran. Iran is a small country, but its location is such that an understanding of it’s history can illuminate a great deal.

Power and Plenty. An economic history of the past 1,000 years.

After Tamerlane. The past 600 years. Becomes progressively more Eurocentric, as it should.

The Early Chinese Empires. This is not a long book, and it gives you a sense of what China was like before foreign influences (e.g., Buddhism).

The Classical World. Most people know very little of Western antiquity.

God’s War. This history of the Crusades ranges from the Baltic to Egypt. It has a wide enough spatial and temporal coverage to be a world history.

The Peacock Throne. To some extent this treatment of Mughal India almost seems out of Bollywood in terms of its dramatic nature. But then again the Timurids provide great raw material.

Africa. The title is short, but the yield is long.

1491. Many people know everything in this book, but too few still.

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 – 323 BC. This is an understudied subject. You need this to see long term patterns which began only with the Classical Greeks.

The Rise of Western Christendom. You can’t understand the core of antiquity and the roots of the Middle Ages without this book.

The Human Web. A world history co-authored by one of the masters, William H. McNeill.

That’s all for now. I haven’t updated it in a while, but you might want to check out Razib on books.

I recently noted that the SDA Archive has an American Community Survey interface. The ACS has huge sample sizes because the US government can afford to do extensive surveys. And naturally you find some really interesting facts. For example, there’s a variable which tells you about the presence of grandchildren in the household. In some nations this wouldn’t be a big deal, but in the USA it is not too common. You can also look at this by state, which is what I did. Then I compared the total proportion to those limited with college degrees or higher. No surprise, those with college degrees tended to be less likely to have grandchildren living at home…. But can you guess which state has the highest proportion of grandchildren living at home? And which states deviate from the trendline? Surprises to me….

Humans seem to have a strong bias toward narratives. We like stories. This is obvious when you read sports columns. Most of the time there’s really no substantive value-add. If you want substance, just check box scores. But we want a story. So sports columnists give us a story. Usually something mildly counter-intuitive, general platitudes and conventional wisdom with just a twist. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrong, no one cares. How many people remember Bill Walton talking about how Shawn Bradley was a better basketball player than Shaquille O’Neil?

Much the same applies to political punditry. There was no point in speculating whether Rick Perry would, or wouldn’t, do well as an aspirant nominee of the Republican party for the presidency. We’d know sooner or later. I really got tired of Texas pundits like Eric Greider going on about how we shouldn’t underestimate him. Aside from the fact that he was smart enough to be an air force officer, everything else implies that he’s not too sharp, validated especially by his recent debate performances. But we wanted a story, so there was a demand for pundits from Texas talking Perry’s prospects up. Now we have pundits like Ross Douthat echoing the line that Mitt Romney is inevitable as the nominee. Great. But remember when Ross and Matt Yglesias simply couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Hillary Clinton wasn’t the nominee in December of 2007? I do.

So we love stories. That’s a human universal. As human beings we have particular cognitive orientations which are general across our species. Our facility for language for example. An appreciation of art and other cultural productions which don’t seem to have immediate utility. But there is also variation. Our tastes differ. But sometimes we forget that. I thought of that when reading this piece in Slate, For the Love of Science Fiction. The author begins “…I disdained science fiction for many years, considering it too short on humanity and too long on pointless technical specs.“ There is definitely going to be a mention of Ursula K. Le Guin. The author concludes:

Perhaps the most important guidance Atwood offers on reading and loving science fiction is to respect the craft’s ability to explore unintended consequences but not to overstate its predictive qualities: “I carefully say a future rather than the future because the future is an unknown: from the moment now, an infinite number of roads lead away to ‘the future,’ each heading in a different direction,” she writes. I will cling to those words the next time I read a terrifying depiction of a technologically rich but morally bankrupt society in the years to come. Like the author who’s next up in my science fiction education: Neal Stephenson.

The first thing that came to mind is that the author has a background in liberal arts if they could throw out a line about “pointless technical specs.” Some people actually enjoy understanding technical specs! I mention Ursula K. Le Guin because in one of her essays she discusses her attitude toward science fiction and admitted her lack of interest in a lot of natural science, and her fascination with social science. Le Guin varies the parameters of sociology to generate her stories. In contrast, writers such as Greg Egan vary the laws of physics. Whether the former or letter is to your taste depends on your background and predispositions. In any case, the author of the above piece majored in “English with minors in business, media studies, and Latin.” If she had majored in engineering or physics I suspect that the technical sidebars and exposition which much of science fiction is larded with would seem less pointless, and much more illuminating. So this a matter of taste, not objective truth in terms of what is, and isn’t, good science fiction.

Somehow great literature is measured by psychological complexity rather than material complexity. “World building” is seen as a bonus, instead of essential context. But whether you see it as essential context or not is probably a matter of your own psychological orientation. And this exists on a continuum. Some readers of hard science fiction can not brook the fudges which are necessary in even this genre when it comes concepts such as faster-than-light travel. L. Sprague de Camp famously focused more on fantasy than hard science fiction because his background in engineering made it impossible for him to suspend disbelief even for the purpose of writing a story.

As I grow older I seem to be turning away from hard science fiction (when I have time to read fiction, which is not often). Does this mean that I am developing more refined taste? Perhaps. But I suspect that my brain is aging and changing, and so my preferences are as well. I’ve lived enough of a life that I have a requisite stock of social intelligence with which I can appreciate the subtly in more psychologically oriented fiction, where characters have more texture and grayness. Additionally, my own technical interests in science have narrowed to the point where I get a lot less out of science fiction which is predicated on some knowledge of disciplines where my comprehension is thin. This is a case where the child is not the father of the man. Just as I have changed over time, so humans a a species have different aesthetic preferences, rather than superior and inferior ones. I wish that people would be a bit more self-aware about this.

If you haven’t heard about the experiment that apparently showed that subatomic particles called neutrinos might move faster than light (what we in the know call FTL, to make us look cooler), then I assume this is your first time on the internet. If that’s the case, then you can read my writeup on what happened.

Basically, neutrinos move very very fast, almost at the speed of light. Some scientists created neutrinos at CERN in Geneva, and then measured how long it took them to reach a detector called OPERA, located in Italy. When they did the math, it looked like the neutrinos actually got there by traveling a hair faster than the speed of light! 60 nanoseconds faster, to be accurate.

Was relativity doomed?

Nope. In fact, relativity may very well be what saves the day here.

First, most scientists were skeptical. Even the people running the experiment were skeptical, and were basically asking everyone else for help. They figured they might have made a mistake as well, and couldn’t figure out what had happened. Relativity is an extremely well-tested theory, and doesn’t (easily) allow for FTL. Despite some headlines screaming that Einstein might be wrong, most everyone figured the problem lay elsewhere.

Most everyone zeroed in on the timing of the experiment, which has to be extremely accurate. The entire flight time of a neutrino from Switzerland to Italy is only about 2.4 milliseconds, and the measurement accuracy needs to be to only a few nanoseconds — mind you, a nanosecond is a billionth of a second!

The scientists used a very sophisticated GPS setup to determine the timing, so that has been the focus of a lot of scrutiny as well. And a new paper just posted on the Physics Preprint Archive may have the answer… and it uses relativity.

Basically, what Einstein found is that the speed of light is the same for all observers. If I’m moving at 0.9 times the speed of light toward you and turn on my flashlight, I see those photons moving away from me at the speed of light. The thing is, you see those photons moving toward you at the speed of light! This goes against common sense, which tells us that velocities add together; if I throw a baseball out car window, the velocity of the ball add to that of the car.

But light doesn’t behave that way. And this changes a lot of things, including how two objects moving relative to each other measure distance, and even how they measure time. I might measure a meter stick in my hand as being (duh) one meter long, but an observer moving past me at a significant fraction of the speed of light would see it being shorter. It’s just a consequence of the Universe making sure we all see the same speed of light.

And that’s where neutrinos come in. In this new paper, author Ronald A.J. van Elburg lays out his case. The timing was measured using a GPS satellite orbiting the Earth, and moving relative to CERN and OPERA. That means the distance traveled by the neutrinos would be less as measured by the GPS sat as it would be from the ground, and therefore wouldn’t take as long to cover it. Doing the detailed math, van Elburg calculates how much faster the neutrinos would be expected to arrive accounting for the satellite’s motion, and he gets… 64 nanoseconds. That’s almost exactly the discrepancy measured by the original experimenters.

Case closed!

Well, maybe. As I recall from the foofooraw that unfolded after the initial announcement, the original experimenters said they accounted for all relativistic effects. The paper they published, however, didn’t include the details of how they did this, so it’s not clear what they included and what they might have left out. It’s possible van Elburg might be right, but I expect we haven’t seen the end of this. After all, not long after the announcement, a physicist asked if they had accounted for gravitational time dilation — like relative velocity, gravity can also affect the flow of time, throwing off the measurement — and the experimenters said they had.

I had thought of something like this as well. CERN and OPERA are at different latitudes, and since the Earth rotates, they are moving around the Earth’s axis at different speeds. Could that be it? I did the math, and the answer is no. Too bad; it would’ve been fun to be the person to have figured this out!

The bottom line here is that this experiment is still very interesting. I don’t think we know exactly what’s going on here yet — my bet is still on the statistics, since they didn’t measure the speeds of individual neutrinos, but clouds of them, making the exact timing much harder — but it’s hard to say. Like most other scientists, I think somewhere down the line here a mistake was made, and the neutrinos, like everything else we know of made of matter, travel slower than light. But if we’re wrong, then we get new physics, which is great! And if we’re right and figure out how, it means that future experiments will benefit from this. Win/win.

Either way, my bet is that we’re not done here. This new result is interesting and may very well be right, and be the dampening field that bursts the neutrino FTL warp bubble. But I’ll wait for the reaction from the original experimenters to see what they say. If we’ve learned one thing from all this, it’s that it’s best not to jump to conclusions.

UPDATE:  Solved by Andy at 12:04 CDT

Can you believe it’s already Saturday again?  It’s been hectic around here, and I’m just happy to be here with another riddle for you.

Speaking of which, today’s riddle is ready for your delectation.  A bit different, today’s riddle can be viewed as science fiction, or as science fact.  Ready?

I've always liked this image

There’s been a lot of speculation given to this over the years.

As an event, this may have already happened.

As a science fiction plot device, you won’t get very far, very fast (so to speak), if it hasn’t happened somewhere along your story line.

NASA - one of the archive images... Apollo 11, and that's Buzz Aldrin

Generally considered to be benign, there are very reputable scientists who argue strongly against further experiments or attempts to facilitate this.

We’ve had many discussions on the blog about whether or not this is possible.

This riddle answer has a very strong presence in science fiction…

H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" original cover - I still think those brains with their blank eyes are creepy

… in fact, we really wouldn’t have much in the genre without is.

Done and done.  There’s a nice little riddle to distract you from your regular Saturday round.  Oh!  Before I forget; if you want to solve the riddle, but already have several “wins” on this riddle cycle and so want to leave the riddle open for someone else to solve, you are welcome to email your guess to me.  If you solve it, I’ll let everybody know, and the riddle will remain open.

Another rerun, but this image tickles me (and it's all about ME, right?)

Top picks

An incredible story about how Steinman developed unique treatment for his cancer and united a disparate field.

Massive congrats to Penny Sarchet and Tess Shellard for winning the first ever Wellcome/Guardian Science Writing Prize. Expect great things. And a write-up of the award ceremony. Here’s Tess’s piece.

“Science isn’t either settled or not settled. This is a false and misleading dichotomy.” From RealClimate

“Not all fields are unknown in ways where non-professionals readily step up to make contributions” – Alex Wild on entomology

A paralysed man high-fives his girlfriend using robotic arm controlled by thought alone

Too Good to Be True: Sea Mammals, Plastic Pollution, and a Modern Chimera – great account of a quest to track down a dodgy statistic

Cancer is a still a bad metaphor

Virginia Hughes takes a skeptical look at some of the “mind-reading” brain-scanner stories.

Alice Bell with a lovely piece on science communication as public advocacy for natural objects. Who speaks for the trees?

“Australians have a hard time imagining the future will be different than the present.” The Economist on why this is a bad thing in the light of climate change.

This is wonderful. What happens after a whale dies, animated with paper cutouts and lovely music.

The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense. Brian Switek dissects the claims about a Triassic kraken. Meanwhile, Kevin Zelnio encourages Brian not to “go out there on the internet and ruin it for the rest of us with your *facts*”

Methane seeps as shark nurseries? Are young sharks running on fossil fuels?

Kimberley Gerson on what not to do if a bear (or shark or any other wild animal) eats her

An incredible WSJ investigation of surgeons who make and sell their own spinal implants

Michael Eisen on the “myth of the scientific martyr” and why Daniel Shechtman is not Felisa Wolfe-Simon.

Amy Harmon tells David Dobbs the story behind her terrific New York Times story on an autistic man entering adulthood

Fountain of life at the bottom of the Dead Sea. Wonderful story by Jennifer Frazer.

“I never exactly heard the thunder; I felt it” A parachutist is sucked into a cumulonimbus anvil cloud.

Haters don’t always gotta hate. Ben Franklin knew that. How to turn the hater to fan

An amazing letter from self-declared psychopath (in the clinical sense) to Jon Ronson.

A magical post by Mo Costandi on whether magicians can teach neuroscientists a few tricks?

The greatest abstract ever. It could be used for virtually any newspaper story where the headline is a question

News/writing/science

Carl Zimmer heralds Megavirus, the world’s largest virus. Soon it will duel Giant Octopus.

Meerkats recognise each other’s voices. And they really *really* hate the Russian one. ”

A mysterious radiation source in Tokyo, and it’s not Fukushima

Nice visualization on the huge changes in Arctic ice

A stunningly intact dinosaur fossil found in Germany, with dinofuzz and skin.

It’s now clear that every geoblogger has their eye on a secret volcano lair. Here are Dana Hunter’s and Erik Klemetti’s picks.

The smell of bumpy nipples guides babies to milk

How to clean an oil-slicked penguin

The first three paragraphs in this story about the naked mole rat genome are wonderful. But generally, I find they’ve-sequenced-the-genome-of-X stories to be insanely boring. They always take this form: Here’s an animal. Here’s what it does that’s cool. Its genes might explain how it does that. Something about practical applications. And so on.

Chimpanzees Should Not Be Used in TV or Movies

Kate Fox argues that the effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural norms, not by actions of ethanol. Interesting thesis, but hang on a minute, do you think there might be a conflict of interest?

Bee was, now is. A solitary bee, thought extinct in the UK for 65 years, has turned up in Sussex:

Interesting post about the myths of RCTs in a public policy context.

Careful clinical interview is still the best Alzheimer’s predictor, not expensive biomarker tests

“Before time alchemized its wings, the creature was mostly yellow-green”

“It’s like getting continuous tweets from the cells rather than an occasional postcard.” An ePetri Dish

The more feminine you look, the more children you want? No. Kate Clancy and SciCurious tag-team a paper.

Tali Sharot talks about why most of us are overly optimistic

Great Beeb piece on the people who are donating their brains to science.

Researchers aim to build dust library

The weird sex life of orchids, by Michael Pollan. Nominative determinism FTW.

Forensic DNA could make criminal justice less fair if the “disproportionately target poor and dark-skinned wrongdoers

How do you autopsy a whale? With four ton meathooks, whaling knives and bone saws

Feel free to panic: superbug antibiotic resistance factor NDM-1 is in 100 million Indians. A “public health catastrophe.”

“There’s a long American tradition of mixing economic populism with cephalopods.” And pictures to prove it

Breathing life into an extinct ethnicity

There are only 430 whooping cranes left in the wild. Most have been raised and reintroduced. Seven were shot last year.

Six Myths About Sex And Gender, Busted with Science.

A living stromatolite has been found in Ireland ”

Will asking a question get your paper cited more often? Well? Will it?

“Do a little dance, make a little love, drive down heritable genetic variation.” Tom Houslay on the dance of the peacock spider.

The Drive To Be Different: A hipster’s lament

Giant armour-clad amoebas the size of a mouse. Yes.

Artificial muscles made with “yarns” of carbon nanotubes ”

Heh/wow/huh

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

I’ve never been more disappointed by a comma in a headline.

Oh, THAT’S what the faster-than-light neutrinos are about.

A study shows that sexism increases gender inequality. I know. Astonishing, right?

The prank potential of this is endless: a Japanese company produces realistic replicas of your face

Boston Globe tailors print edition to target 3 remaining subscribers

Bad Lip Reading

RGB wallpaper looks like a psychedelic mess, but reveals different patterns under R,G and B light

How to make a spider look silly…

Shit That Siri Says

The Very Large Array is looking for a better name.

Death to word clouds

“Gunshot wounds to the scrotum: a large single-institutional 20-year experience”

Internet/journalism/society

A crime blogger uses search analytics to ID murder victim cops would not name

Tuesday saw the publication of one of the stupidest science articles I’ve read in a while. It’s the latest entry in the ongoing debate about whether science journalists should check their copy with their sources (note: copy, not facts). It is such a blisteringly naive view of journalism, science, peer review and people. Seth Mnookin sums up the debate to date and then slaps the “exercise in idiocy“. Emily Willingham also has a great takedown.

Would you leave your Internet passwords in your will? Yes, along with a list of everyone I’ve always wanted to slap…

What the Wall Street Journal have done is the paper equivalent of sitting at your desk and hitting F5 on your blog.

Daily Mail to launch Page 2 corrections column. Would it not be simpler to devote the page to a list of correct facts?

This is what feminist bloggers have to put up with. We live in a world with people like this.

Upcoming Photoshop feature de-blurs shaky-cam photos

Three Quarks Daily is an amazing site that is asking for, and deserves, a small donation to keep going.

The Guardian opens up its newslist. A very interesting move.

How actual infographics are made. She makes it look so easy.

The uselessness of the idea that Twitter is dominated by 0.05% of users

Twitter is dying—and it’s all your fault. Yes, yours. No, not YOURS. You in the back. Yours.

“The key to social media interactions is that it leaves knowledge behind for others to find and reuse”

If you don’t like the way NASA and astronomers name their missions, then now’s your chance.

NASA is asking students to help them name the twin GRAIL satellites, currently on their way to the Moon. They want input from K-12 students, and they’re hoping this helps motivate kids to be interested in space. They don’t have suggestions, but I might urge you to think of either famous twins, of course, or maybe two people who helped explore the Moon, partners in some way (married couples, or two people who worked closely together). I don’t think they’ll allow the names of people still alive (so Neil and Buzz are out, unfortunately), but I’m guessing someone will come up with something good.

The deadline for that is November 11.

Not only that, but astronomers want to rename the Very Large Array, a collection of 27 separate 25-meter radio telescopes observing the skies from New Mexico. The array has been operational for decades, but has undergone recent extensive renovations, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory thinks it’s appropriate to rename the array in honor of this.

If you’ve seen the movie "Contact" then you’ve seen the VLA; it’s where The Signal is first heard, the scene where Ellie is listening in using headphones. So I went to the Name The Array webpage and, deciding to keep the same initials, entered "Vega Loves Arroway". You may feel free to submit something better.

The deadline for renaming the VLA is midnight Eastern (US) time December 1.

Anaglyph image of the mountain/central complex in the south polar region. Click for larger. Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA

This is a great image of Vesta’s south pole region!! You’ll need 3D glasses to really appreciate it though. The full sized image is available at the link below.

From the Dawn website:

This anaglyph image shows the topography of the mountain/ central complex in Vesta’s south polar region. When viewed correctly this image shows a 3D view of Vesta’s surface. This effect was achieved by superimposing two differently colored images with an offset to create depth. To view this image in 3D use red-green, or red-blue, glasses (left eye: red; right eye: green/ blue). The depth effect/ topography differences in this image were calculated from the shape model of Vesta. This image is centered on the south polar mountain/ central complex, which is a roughly circular topographic mound that is approximately 200km in diameter and has approximately 20km of relief from its base. Surrounding the mountain/ central complex is the south polar depression; the relationship between these structures, two of the most prominent Vestan features, is key to understanding the evolution of Vesta as a whole. Also well defined in this image is a large scarp roughly in the center of mountain/ central complex.

The framing camera (FC) instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained the images used to make this anaglyph on 17th and 20th August 2011. The distance from Dawn to the surface of Vesta was 2740km at this time. This image has a resolution of about 260 meters per pixel.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington D.C.. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

ALMA looks at the Antennae Galaxies. Click for larger. Image: ESOGrat

The Antennae galaxies are a great choice for a first light picture.  I’ve been patiently waiting on this one and it looks like it was worth the wait.

Here’s the ESO press release (get larger versions of the image here too):

ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array), the most complex ground based telescope in existence, is officially open to astronomers and has produced its first image. This comes after more than a decade of design and construction involving technological and scientific expertise from countries across four continents, including the UK. The project is technologically state-of-the-art, with numerous individual components from all over the globe having been brought together to make ‘first science’ possible. The scale of this achievement is demonstrated by the fact that the number of observing proposals on ALMA has outweighed availability nine times over already setting a record for a telescope. In return for the UK’s investment in the project, UK scientists have access to ALMA through STFC’s subscription to the European Southern Observatory and the project has seen the UK’s technical capabilities and expertise strengthen both within academia and industry.

ALMA is a huge high-frequency observatory that will eventually comprise 66 individual telescopes that are combined electronically to simulate a telescope diameter of up to ’6km more than a thousand times the diameter of a single individual telescope within the array. It reveals a view of the Universe that cannot be seen at all by visible-light and infrared telescopes. It observes OElight’ emitted in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength range, roughly one thousand times longer than visible-light wavelengths. Using these longer wavelengths allows astronomers to study extremely cold and visibly opaque objects in space — such as the dense clouds of cosmic dust and gas from which stars and planets form — as well as very distant objects from the early Universe.

“Even in this very early phase ALMA already outperforms all other submillimetre arrays. Reaching this milestone is a tribute to the impressive efforts of the many scientists and engineers in the ALMA partner regions around the world who made it possible,” said Tim de Zeeuw, Director General of ESO, the European partner in ALMA.

“I am not at all surprised to see the huge number of proposals to use ALMA which have been written by astronomers in the UK and throughout the world astronomical community. ALMA brings a completely new of the Universe and will revolutionise our understanding of our celestial origins. The excitement begins now!” said John Richer, UK Project Scientist for ALMA, based at the University of Cambridge.

UK involvement in ALMA includes STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and UK Astronomy Technology Centre, the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, the University of Manchester and the University of Kent, all of whom played key roles in the design and construction of ALMA.

Science Minister David Willetts said, “The ALMA telescope is an incredibly impressive feat of science and engineering, and it’s fantastic that the UK has played such a significant role in its design and construction. Our involvement has ensured our leading researchers have access to the most state-of-the-art observation technology, keeping us at the cutting edge of astronomy research.”

John Richer said: “ALMA is an awe-inspiring piece of engineering: every aspect of it is state-of-the-art. For example, the antennas use innovative carbon fibre designs to keep their shapes precise to only a few microns, less than the width or a human hair, even in hostile weather conditions. The superconducting receivers have to amplify very high-frequency radio signals without adding too much noise. The central correlation computer has to process vast volumes of digital data from the receivers, a data rate that exceeds total internet traffic of the UK. And finally this all has to be done on a very remote site, deprived of oxygen due to its very ’7,000-feet altitude.”

Brian Ellison, UK Project Manager for ALMA said: “First science is a fantastic achievement for the project and also for UK scientists and technologists. The benefit to the UK is highly significant with the UK making major contributions to key ALMA infrastructure through the provision of services, hardware and software. What’s more, the technological expertise gained from ALMA construction is already proving hugely valuable in other areas of application such as Earth observation and imaging”.

The ALMA team has been busy testing the observatory’s systems over the past few months, in preparation for the first round of scientific observations, known as Early Science. One outcome is the first image published from ALMA, albeit from what is still very much a growing telescope. Most of the observations used to create this image of the Antennae Galaxies were made using only twelve antennas < far fewer than will be used for the first science observations < and with the antennas much closer together. Both of these factors make the new image just a taste of what is to come. As the observatory grows, the sharpness, speed, and quality of its observations will increase dramatically as more antennas become available and the array grows in size.

Gary Fuller, Principal Investigator at the UK ALMA Regional Centre Node, based at The University of Manchester added: “Projects like ALMA require an enormous amount of patience – many of us have been working on this for more than a decade. There have been many obstacles to be overcome, but I’ve no doubt that it will all be worth it – it’s great to see the first scientific observations beginning for astronomers from the UK and around the world.”

ALMA could accept only about a hundred or so projects for this first nine-month phase of Early Science. Nevertheless, over the last few months, keen astronomers from around the world have submitted over 900 proposals for observations. The successful projects were selected by international peer review involving 50 of the world’s leading astronomers.

A couple of readers sent me links to a couple of different videos in past few days.  I’ll take them in order, one today and I think I’ll save the other until Sunday.

This one shows shows what a team of people including astrophysicist Dr. Joshua Peek can make a Sony Ericsson Xperia phone do when working in a collaborative way.  It’s just a a phone and to think not so long ago I had to actually DIAL a number and not only that if I had to DIAL a number on the same exchange I could just dial the last four digits.  How things have changed,  check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner from Kitt Peak. Image via NASA.

Wanted to give everybody a heads up about the Draconid meteor shower set to peak on October 8, 2011.

Every 6.6 years the inner solar system is visited by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and it looks like this year we could pass though the dust it leaves behind.

It looks like viewers in Europe are going to be best position as the best outbursts should be between 1900 and 2100 UTC (3:00 to 5:00 pm EDT) and the counts could be as high as 750 meteors per hour!!

Now while North America isn’t position extrodinarly well for the show, I would expect to see at least some activity in the dark hours before and after the peak predicted hours.  I will be outside watching under clear skies (YAY!) at around 04:00 and after 00:00 EDT.  I’ll let you know via an update to this post one way or another.

Click this NASA link for mroe details.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Carter Emmart gives us a demo of a 3D atlas of the Universe. He has been coordinating the 3D visualization of our known universe for the past 12 years.

Source

Guess who’s hiring for the next round of astronauts?  NASA, that’s who.  Take a look at this:

NASA To Seek Applicants For Next Astronaut Candidate Class

HOUSTON — In early November, NASA will seek applicants for its next class of astronaut candidates who will support long-duration missions to the International Space Station and future deep space exploration activities.

“For scientists, engineers and other professionals who have always dreamed of experiencing spaceflight, this is an exciting time to join the astronaut corps,” said Janet Kavandi, director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “This next class will support missions to the station and will arrive via transportation systems now in development. They also will have the opportunity to participate in NASA’s continuing exploration programs that will include missions beyond low Earth orbit.”

Is that cool, or what?  Interested?

For more information, visit:

http://astronauts.nasa.gov/

A bachelor’s degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience are required in order to be considered. Typically, successful applicants have significant qualifications in engineering or science, or extensive experience flying high-performance jet-aircraft.

After applicant interviews and evaluations, NASA expects to announce the final selections in 2013, and training to begin that August.

Additional information about the Astronaut Candidate Program is available by calling the Astronaut Selection Office at 281-483-5907.

Haven’t you always wanted to be an astronaut?

NASA - Astronaut Bruce McCandless 02/28/84, during STS 41B

I have my answer (“yes, but not by finding meaning `out there’ in the world”), which I hope to write about more soon. In the meantime, listen to a great conversation between philosophers Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg from Philosophy TV. “What there is, and all there is, are bosons and fermions.”

Both discussants have written really good books. Rosenberg recently came out with The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions, while I very much enjoyed Flanagan’s earlier book The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Natural World.

Empirically, of course, naturalists often lead very enjoying and fulfilled lives. Here’s a great profile of newly minted Laureate Brian Schmidt, in his capacity as a cook and winemaker as well as an astronomer. And here’s Bob Kirshner, writing to the NYT from Friendship, Maine, about the meaning of dark energy.

Yesterday, I wrote about an embarrassingly bad OpEd piece published in the Wall Street Journal, the purpose of which was to try to sow doubt and confusion over the reality of climate change. One of the writer’s main points was that if we can doubt Einstein (due to the recent much-argued-over faster-than-light neutrino experiment) we can doubt global warming.

Needless to say, this analogy was such a howler that many, many people besides just me took fingers to keyboard to lambaste Robert Bryce, the author of that OpEd. I think my favorite is by cartoonist Maki Naro, the first panel of which is here (click it to see the rest, which is great). Andrew Revkin, from the somewhat more trustworthy Gotham paper The New York Times, also weighed in, making several fair points about the piece.

This nonsense also started a wonderful Twitter hashtag, #WSJscience, which I am quite enjoying perusing. So much so that I even submitted my own:

If serious scientists can question relativity, then a fatally flawed WSJ OpEd implies the written word doesn’t exist. #WSJscience

See? False equivalancies are fun!

Tip o’ the retreating glacier to JenLucPiquant.