Some of you may love snow and some of you may hate it. Me? I'm the former, so I love this video on the chemistry of snowflakes. I can't wait until the next winter storm so I can sit and watch the snow fall, imagining the crystal shapes filling the sky.
And now for more science:
- Where to run and hide when the Sun turns into a red giant.
- Should you need to go farther afield, here are nine potentially habitable exoplanets.
- Check out this earliest use of what later became known as Venn diagrams in 1712.
- In space no one can hear you scream, but that doesn't mean it's quiet aboard the International Space Station.
- Bored with your font choices? Cosmic Sans is out of this world.
- We astronomers call 'em like we see 'em. Meet the ELT: the extremely large telescope.
- A incredible selection of space images celebrating 50 years of space photography.
- Lastly, in case you still don't think we are living in the future, here's a list of the most futuristic predictions that came true last year.
Stayed tuned for more geek in 2013... @Summer_Ash
Leave a Comment:
One billion years ago there were only single celled organisms, and only 85 million years ago there were not even early primate brains able to support the most rudimentary forms of consciousness.
So what happens in 2+ billion years will be a task for a level of consciousness far beyond our imagination. Our task is to simply not destroy ourselves or the planet in the meantime.
True.
We are different from our parents by 70 genes on average each generation. Evolution never stopped when we abandoned the forrest. We are taller, on average, than people living 2,000 years ago. Most people that lack certain genes perished during the dark ages plage pandemic and the World War I flu pandemic.
The Flynn Effect predicts that we will become more intelligent as improved sanitation reduces disease in the future.
The "goldylocks zone" will slowly move outward from the earth as the sun heats up and expands. Europa and Ganymede are both covered by water, which will liquify and produce a thin oxygenated atmosphere as the goldylocks zone moves beyond the asteroid belt.
Shade and solar energy produced by solar cells covering significant areas of the surface will also become increasingly efficient as solar output increases. This provides the possibility that modified cities can produce a more hospitable environment that may prolong survival on earth well beyond the predictions.
Would be amusing to run predictions based on these trends.
There is a method of enlarging our orbit by changing the trajectory of large asteroids so that they swing near earth and give it a gravity assisted pull. The tug is slight but over long periods, the orbit can be gradually increased with each pass. Over the period of a few hundred thousand years, Earth's orbit could be increased to any radius we desired. The same could be done for all the other rocky planets and moons of our system- settling them into orbits more conducive for life.
We could even cause our planet to be swung by Jupiter out into interstellar space prior to our Sun becoming unstable. As noted in the article, we might want to avoid having our oceans boiled off, or being engulfed prior to red dwarf stage when the sun blows away 38% of its mass. We might prefer the relative safety of intersteller space much earlier in order to avoid a planetary killer collisions, or as a means of long duration exploration.
It is hard to believe that within a century that we will have not mastered fusion. With our own inexhaustible source of energy, within a few centuries the solar system might begin to appear to be more trouble than it is worth- with all the uncharted planet killing clutter.
Using orbital bodies is a far more plausible and easy solution to global warming than using congressional bodies it seems.
John Messerly, #1,
Are you trying to tell the flat-earth people that the earth is over 6000 years old?
I recently read an interesting sci fi book, well written, called The Age Of Miracles, by Karen Thompson Walker. It is about a family in CA's reaction to the slowing of the earth. Geeks would probably like it. I did.
One day they woke up to a news broadcast that they had gained about 17 minutes....it was no longer a 24 hr. day. It gets worse....
In college I once lost almost an entire day after I went to the library for something and found an old book of black-and-white, meticulously photographed individual snowflakes.
I'm a thinking about putting together a coffe table book of mug-shots/tattoos/tattoo-fails. I think those DOC images are public domain.
Mech Trek, #2
Snowflakes are the most beautiful thing in the world. I, too, love to look at them.
Impossible to believe that no two are alike. On the other hand, there are billions of humans on the planet, all with pretty much the same physical equipment for sound, yet none sound exactly the same. (Unless identical twins do). I have always been amazed by that.
Captain Kirk (William Shatner) called up the International Space Station. (ISS) using advanced technology-Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield/status/286948264236945408
Hooray! Chemistry makes an appearance in the Week in Geek! (finally!)
Ah, the ultimate contradiction - a woman named Summer who loves Winter!
Since everything is weightless in space, when you hit your thumb with a hammer you,, smile?
lolz, Luz, what could you be doing with a weightless hammer?
Just because things 'lose' weight in space, they do not lose mass... or density...
Force - Mass times Acceleration... Weight is a measurement of the force created by your mass affected by the acceleration of gravity generated by your mass's proximity to the mass of the Earth...
If you were able to survive at the center of the earth, you would be weightless... Not because the mass of the Earth would not be affecting you, but because that mass would be equal in all directions... The lines of force would all counter-balance each other...
Whenever anyone asks me the rhetorical question, "What's up?", I always answer, "The direction of the vector oppositional to that of the vector of the acceleration of gravity"...
A vector is the mathematical expression of movement, consisting of two components, speed and direction... The acceleration of gravity is the expression of force (F = m * (direction * speed)²) created by the proximity of two masses by interaction of the gravity wells those masses create between each other... The direction of that vector is the scientific definition of "down"... The direction 180° (oppositional) to "down" is "up"... Thus, I answered their question...
I may be a geek, but I'm an honest geek...
So you can still hammer in space? Well then, my apologies to Luz and to all geeks everywhere.
NMC...
Yes, you can hammer in space... The only effect weightlessness would have is, if you dropped it, it wouldn't hit you in the foot...
The movement is supplied by your arm, not gravity... The force comew from your muscles...
Lovely physics yes, Chemistry not so much.
Bonus: The heat energy released by all the precipitation on the Earth is nearly equal to the heat energy that Earth must dissipate to remain at the same temperature.
My favorite telescope acronym is OWL, E-ELT's more ambitious 100m predecessor design. It's whimsical in the acronym and in what it stands for: Overwhelmingly Large Telescope. SALT comes in second. Southern African Large Telescope is boring though.