Mike's Blog

SETI@home

I hadn't installed SETI@home on this laptop. I've put it on others and it's exactly as they say, no issues, no impact. Follow the links and install it.

SETI@home needs you!

   

Posted on February 8th, 2008 at 9:32 AM in Astronomy, Cool stuff, Science

I am way behind on this, but it’s been a busy month. SETI is the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It’s a project by a phenomenally dedicated and brilliant group of scientists and engineers to search the sky for radio signals from other civilizations. I won’t go into the basis for this here (you can read their FAQ for all that), but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

One of their biggest problems is the sheer volume of data they generate. They probe the sky looking at a huge number of radio channels for a signal — imagine your car radio able to tune in to not 20 or 30 stations, but millions. Billions. That’s what they face.

Some very smart folks at Berkeley realized that home computers could be utilized to process some of that data, so they created SETI@Home. When you are not using your PC or Mac, the processor can be utilized to crunch through the SETI data, looking for that needle in a million haystacks: an intelligent signal (good luck finding one on your AM dial!).  (link Bad Astronomy)

A little break from teh internets

It's Saturday morning, I'm laying in bed with my laptop catching up on the internet. I need a little break from all the "news".

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2008 February 7

NGC 4013 and the Tidal Stream
Image Credit & Copyright: R Jay Gabany (Blackbird Observatory) - collaboration; D.Martínez-Delgado(IAC, MPIA),
M.Pohlen (Cardiff), S.Majewski (U.Virginia), J.Peñarrubia (U.Victoria), C.Palma (Penn State)

Explanation: Nearly 50 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major, NGC 4013 was long considered an isolated island universe. Seen edge-on, the gorgeous spiral galaxy was known for its flattened disk and central bulge of stars, cut by silhouetted dust lanes. But this deep color image of the region reveals a previously unknown feature associated with NGC 4013, an enormous, faint looping structure extending (above and toward the left) over 80 thousand light-years from the galaxy's center. A detailed exploration of the remarkable structure reveals it to be a stream of stars originally belonging to another galaxy, likely a smaller galaxy torn apart by gravitational tides as it merged with the larger spiral. Astronomers argue that the newly discovered tidal stream also explains a warped distribution of neutral hydrogen gas seen in radio images of NGC 4013 and offers parallels to the formation of our own Milky Way galaxy.

I was so deluded, there is absolute scientific evidence for God!

via The View from Number 80

   

        »         PROOF #1
       
        Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence,           which can be scientifically verified.         She indexes over 9.5 billion WebPages, which is more than any other search engine         on the web today. Not only is Google the closest known entity to being         Omniscient, but She also sorts         through this vast amount of knowledge using Her patented PageRank technology,         organizing said         data and making it easily accessible to us mere mortals.
       
        » PROOF #2

Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent). Google is virtually everywhere on earth at the same time. Billions of indexed WebPages     hosted from every corner of the earth. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi networks, one will eventually be able to access Google from anywhere on earth, truly making Her an omnipresent entity....
(link to all 9 proofs!)

                                

What is a year?

How long is a year? I really liked being able to instantly remember about how many seconds are in a year.

   

Yay! Tonight at midnight it’s New Year!

But what does that mean, exactly?

The year, of course, is the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the Sun, right? Well, not exactly. It depends on what you mean by "year", and how you measure it. This takes a wee bit of explaining, so put down the champagne, take the lampshade off your head, and hang on.

...

...
Let’s say we used a stopwatch to measure the elapsed time. We’ll see that it took the Earth 31,558,149 seconds (some people like to approximate that as pi x 10 million (31,415,926) seconds, which is an easy way to be pretty close). But how many days is that?
(link Bad Astronomy)

"why basic science education is important"

I saw this a few days ago on BoingBoing and thought, jeeesh. But then what really made me think about it was a comment on onegoodmove.com "why is teaching basic science important". When I travel I have 20-40 pounds of camera gear with lots of wires, cables, batteries etc. plus my laptop, spare battery, assortment of usb devices. I have NEVER been stopped and asked to have my bag inspected. Laptop batteries DO blow up. They can be made to blow up if they are intentionally shorted. Wires, cables, batteries, flash units, high voltage capacitors.

Come on guys, I'm pretty sure that MacGyver could make the stuff I usually carry on into an effective bomb. But if he had 5 minutes (or a year) to think about it and plan on using 50 pounds or so of electronics as a bomb, I'm pretty sure it could do more than cause the oxygen masks to drop down. Of course if you were really going to try to carry on a bomb you wouldn't make it look so obvious; but then again, I've never been searched so maybe cameras will now need to have a volume of less than 3oz and be safely sealed inside of a plastic 1 quart Ziplock bag.

An empty plastic battery holder with a USB port glued onto it looks like an IED? How stupid are these people?! Silly question.

Several years ago I was stopped because I had a screwdriver for my eyeglasses and couldn't bring it on the airplane because it was a "tool". At least the TSA management said to themselves, yes, we'll make this rule and require them enforce it. It's often going to be applied in a silly manner but no telling what could happen if we let the individual security people think. Now I understand the wisdom of the rule that a screwdriver is a "tool" even if the blade is 1/16" across.

TSA and electronics

A tale about homemade electronics, specifically an iPod charger and TSA, Damon writes -

I tell him it is a battery charger for my iPod. He asks if I made it myself, to which I reply that I purchased a kit over the internet. He says that he can't let me on the plane with it. I explain to him that I have flown with it 4-6 times a month for a year now and nobody has questioned it. He says, "Not on my watch and not with my people."

He swabs the device and runs it through the calorimeter. Again, no residue.

I ask why it can't be taken on the plane and he said, "Because it looks like an IED." Now, I agree it looks suspicious, but the machine found no traces of explosives, and the device wasn't big enough to do any damage.

...He tells me to sit down and he checks my feet. I was about to make a joke about him giving me more attention than my wife when Donna comes over and sits down next to me. She asks what the thing is, I tell her it's a battery charger. She asks why I have it, and I begin to explain that the iPod only has about 2 hours of video time, but with the MintyBoost! I can get about 20 hours of video time. I explain that the airport commute and the airplane flight take a few hours...

She interrupts me and says she doesn't like the look of it. She starts in with the typical, "In these times..." excuse for the concern.

My Encounter with the TSA - Link.

I fly with a lot of electronics and so far nothing like this has happened, but I think it's worth reading the entire story (he eventually did get on the plane with his gear). (link)

Most Republicans and 40% of Democrats incapable of rational thinking according to a Gallup poll

Once I start thinking about this my opinions of people start going way way way down.  I'm constantly amazed at the people who for all intents and purposes seem quite reasonable and sane but who believe things with zero evidence and with no thought. Evolution is not a matter of "believing" anything. It's about considering the very slightest shred of evidence for evolution and comparing it to ZERO evidence for their preferred alternative.

...

Republicans Most Likely to Reject Evolution

As noted previously, belief in evolution has been injected into the political debate already this year, with much attention given to the fact three Republican presidential candidates answered a debate question by saying that they did not believe in evolution.

It appears that these candidates are, in some ways, "preaching to the choir" in terms of addressing their own party's constituents -- the group that matters when it comes to the GOP primaries. Republicans are much more likely to be religious and attend church than independents or Democrats in general. Therefore, it comes as no great surprise to find that Republicans are also significantly more likely not to believe in evolution than are independents and Democrats. 

(link The Gallup Poll via onegoodmove)

...

Paperclips on a rubber band ...

Very good explanations for 4 common misconceptions about the universe.

...
1) The Big Bang was an explosion
This seems to be a really big one. I’ve been told that I contradict myself because I point out that the Big Bang wasn’t an explosion so I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about. The term “Big Bang” was originally given to the theory (originally called “primeval atom”) by Fred Hoyle on a radio program in which he was mocking the theory. However, the misnomer stuck and has been causing confusion ever since.
...
The frequent picture people seem to have is matter flying outwards from a single point (like an explosion). However, the matter is all actually standing still while space itself expands dragging the matter with it.

The general analogy for this is having a series of paperclips on a rubber band. As the rubber band is stretched, the paperclips appear to move away from one another even though they are in fact holding still with regard to the rubber band. Similarly, galaxies hold still more or less (there are small movements due to gravitational interactions) while they are carried by the expanding universe.

So again, there was no “explosion” but instead, an expansion which is carrying all the rest of the universe away from us. ...(link Angry Astronomer)

"Did The Earth Move For You?"

As he notes it's kind of silly but it is a way to get people thinking about all of the motions going on in the universe at one time.

60 minutes in San Francisco = 661,060,000 miles

... Lessee: it spins at 1000 mph at the Equator (don’t forget to compensate for latitude), it orbits the Sun at 18 miles per second, the Sun orbits the Galactic center at about 200 mps, and the Galaxy is moving toward th Andromeda Galaxy while simultaneously falling into a massive cluster of galaxies called The Great Attractor. Oh — the Universe is expanding, with the visible edge receding from us (or equally, we are receding from it) at the speed of light.

So if you take some given amount of time, you can calculate how far you moved during that time.

Still, that’s a bit dry. How to make this exciting to the average person?

Why, create a website that calculates how far you traveled during sex, of course!

So he did: Behold EarthMove.info, where you can enter your city and the length of time it took you to, ah, well, trip the sheets fantastic. It will spit back at you the distance traveled during that time ... (via BadAstronomy Blog)

Al Gore joins the creationists

He put's the date at 200,000 years rather than 6,000 but includes the caption "Adam & Eve". He's either  sucking up to the religious right or he is also among the ranks of the  seriously delusional. He seems to  have been science, science, science, science - well except for the fairies.

...
The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to the "rise of humans."

Cool beans. So he believes that Homo sapiens evolved from other hominid ancestors, right? Nope. In the very same breath, he then continued to explain that according to his religious beliefs, this "rise of humans" was God's creation of mankind - apparently 200,000 years ago. His graph then changed to include the caption "Adam & Eve" above this starting point.
... (link antidelusionist)

Pale Blue Dot - Earth, as seen by Voyager 1 at a distance of 4 billion miles

Voyager I was launched in 1977. Science didn't learn anything from this picture but maybe human beings can.  As Voyager I was about 4 billion miles from earth in 1990 they turned it around at Carl Sagan's suggestion for a picture of our receding planet. It's still traveling and is  now in interstellar space traveling at 37,790 mph. Voyager I and II both carry the famous gold record.

The first Earth Day was April 22, 1970.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."
--Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994