Pretty neat solar system visualization here. On a side note, holy man its been a long time since I've posted.....


http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf

Imagination: The Rocket Fuel of Science

/agrees. This is why I dropped out of Geology. Loved the Science, hated the hoops.

NASA Diagnoses Problem With Voyager 2

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/05/06/nasa-diagnoses-problem-with-voyager-2/

Anyone else wonder how the heck a transmission can be sent 8.6 BILLION miles in 13 hours!!?? This is just incredible to me...

And to think, the satellite may leave the solar system within 5 years...

Speaking of Black Holes!

Awesome! Thanks for the link Zach!

Black Hole Drive Could Power Future Starships

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/19/black-hole-drive-could-power-future-starships/

Such a black hole drive could easily accelerate to near the speed of light, opening up the cosmos to human travelers, but that's just the beginning. The micro-black hole could also be used as a power generator capable of transforming any matter directly into energy. This energy could be used to create new black holes and new power generators. Obviously, creating and harnessing black holes is not an easy undertaking, but Crane and Westmoreland point out that the black hole drive has a significant advantage over more speculative technologies like warp drives and wormholes: it is physically possible. And, they believe, worth pursuing "because it allows a completely different and vastly wider destiny for the human race. We should not underestimate the ingenuity of the engineers of the future."

I love it! Looks like the Cern Supercollider may be turned on this weekend as well...

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/11/19/large-hadron-collider-could-re-start-this-weekend/

Civilian Supercomputer Shatters Competition

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/civilian-supercomputer-shatters-nuke-simulators-speed-record/

The retooled Jaguar supercomputer blew away the competition on the latest list of the 500 fastest computers in the world, clocking an incredible 1.759 petaflops — 1,759 trillion calculations per second.

“From the early 80s it may be close to a million fold improvement in computational performance,” Hack said.

Imagine in 30 years, when computational performance may be close to a trillion fold improvement over our current technology...

Arctic Sediments Show That 20th Century Warming Is Unlike Natural Variation

Very interesting article here. Can't say I didn't see this coming.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091023163513.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2009) — The possibility that climate change might simply be a natural variation like others that have occurred throughout geologic time is dimming, according to evidence in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper published October 19.

Most Complicated Eyes: Mantis Shrimp

And I thought my eyes were bad before reading this article!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/mantis-shrimp-eyes/

Brain Scanning

Interesting article here about pulling images from your brain.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/brain-scans-reveal-what-youve-seen/

Immortal... Jellyfish!?

Yep, who would have known... These little buggers use "transdifferentiation" to basically remake their cells, just as a salamander can regrow its tail. Only they can remake EVERY cell in their body. Over. And over. Thus, feasibly they can live forever.

What an interesting bugger. Though in the photo below it sort of looks like we're seeing a blurry photo inside its body, or is that just me? I mean, I half expect to see Cris Angel walk up to it and go "ARE YOU READY!!!!!"

Check out the original link:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/01/29/the-curious-case-of-the-immortal-jellyfish/

Green Fridge Invention

http://www.homedesignfind.com/appliances/green-fridge-invention-uses-almost-no-electricity/

Wow. I want one.

A clever Australian inventor, Tom Chalko has converted a deep freeze into an incredibly efficient refrigerator that only has to run for a minute or two every hour to maintain normal fridge temperatures, using only about 100 watts of power a day.

His home-made fridge uses as much energy in 24 hours as a 100W light bulb gets through in just an hour.

Not only is it energy efficient; but it’s absolutely silent too. The thing is only running for a minute or two every hour. At all other times it is perfectly quiet and consumes no power whatsoever.

NOVA- The Elegant Universe

A while back I wrote a review on Brian Greene's book called "The Elegant Universe" I was a bit harsh on it because it failed to really capture my interest while reading it. But today I found a series of videos that really portray String Theory in an entertaining way. The video's are cropped down into 7-10 minute chapters and can be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html

There are 3 hours worth, and each hour is broken into several chapters if you're interested in taking them in piecemeal. Wish I could embed directly into the blog, but the videos are protected, so the link above will have to suffice.

I do have to admit, Brian hasn't completely pushed aside his characteristic cheesiness, but the videos are entertaining nonetheless! Much faster than reading the book that's for sure. Read my review of the Elegant Universe here.

Imagining the 10th Dimension

Okay it took a few viewings to really understand the concepts at work here, but this is super intriguing.

I'm also not sure that this is the 'recognized' standard for what the 10 dimensions are like. Also, in string theory they mention 11 dimensions. Or that is 10 dimensions plus one dimension for time. In this representation he includes time for a total of 10 dimensions not 11. A few perplexities there.

So yeah, still interesting to watch.

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

One way ticket to Mars

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/04/a-one-way-one-person-mission-to-mars/

Interesting proposal. It's really too bad that money doesn't grow on trees.

99% of Earth's Topology Mapped

How sweet is that. Elevation data is now available and covers 99% of the Earth's surface. You can even download the TIF file.

Check it out:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/nasa-satellite-maps-99-of-earths-topography/

Sand and a Possible 5th State of Matter

This is sooo interesting!

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/sandgrains/

In the formation of droplets in a stream of falling sand, scientists have witnessed a dynamic that points beyond the boundaries of traditional physics, and may represent one aspect of a fifth state of matter.

“Here we have a material right underneath our noses, that everybody grows up playing with in a sandbox, yet it’s full of surprises for scientists,” physicist said Heinrich Jaeger of the University of Chicago.

The droplets formed because of instabilities in the subtle atomic forces that attract sand grains to each other. Something similar happens to water falling from a faucet, but the forces acting on those molecules are 100,000 times stronger.

Ariel Atom

EEeesh!

T-Rex!

Saweet! This thing is the bomb!

I think I'd rather have it with the body kit.

Space Tornados power the Aurora Borealis

Very interesting article here.

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/23/new-finding-shows-super-huge-space-tornados-power-the-auroras/

A new finding by a cluster of five space probes – the THEMIS, or Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms show that electrical funnels which span a volume as large as Earth produce electrical currents exceeding 100,000 amperes. THEMIS recorded the extent and power of these electrical funnels as the probes passed through them during their orbit of Earth. Ground measurements showed that the space tornadoes channel the electrical current into the ionosphere to spark bright and colorful auroras on Earth.

Space tornadoes are rotating plasmas of hot, ionized gas flowing at speeds of more than a million miles per hour, far faster than the 200 m.p.h. winds of terrestrial tornadoes, according to Andreas Keiling, a research space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

...

The THEMIS spacecraft observed these tornadoes, or “flow vortices,” at a distance of about 40,000 miles from Earth. Simultaneous measurements by THEMIS ground observatories confirmed the tornadoes’ connection to the ionosphere.

Earth-sized planet found

They even say it is the first good "water world" candidate.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_sc/eu_britain_new_planet

"This discovery is absolutely extraordinary," Marcy told The Associated Press by e-mail, calling the discoveries a significant step in the search for Earth-like planets.

While Gliese 581 e is too hot for life "it shows that nature makes such small planets, probably in large numbers," Marcy commented. "Surely the galaxy contains tens of billions of planets like the small, Earth-mass one announced here."

Nearly 350 planets have been found outside our solar system, but so far nearly every one of them was found to be extremely unlikely to harbor life.

Most were too close or too far from their sun, making them too hot or too cold for life. Others were too big and likely to be uninhabitable gas giants like Jupiter. Those that are too small are highly difficult to detect in the first place.

It's only a matter of time before we find a planet like ours. I'd wager we'll find one in the next two years.