I was a bit busy last week and wasn’t able to do one of the things I really wanted to: write about space and a few extraordinary developments that have been announced or released lately. Namely, there’s been more fun with exo-planetary systems, Europa and asteroids.
F-Yeah Exo-Planetary Systems
A few months ago I wrote about the discovery of a hot “near-Earth” named GJ 1214b. The rocky planet measuring about six times the mass of the Earth was discovered at about 40 light years distance using the Radial Velocity method of exo-planetary detection (measuring red-shift of a star to determine slight wobbles caused by a star — in this case, GJ 1214 — orbiting along with exo-planet(s) around their common center of gravity).
Scientists at a conference in France announced this week the discovery of two new exciting sets of exo-planetary systems, each distinguishing in its own way. The first, which has been observed primarily using Radial Velocity is the discovery of the stellar system with the most known planets outside of our own solar system. HD 10180, a Sun-like M-Class star sitting about 128 light years away hosts a whopping seven planets.
NASA released the above animation of the planetary system around HD 10180.
Click through for more discussion and discovery.Read more…
In the world of “I Cannot Fracking Wait” debuts, AMC’s The Walking Dead, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman is pretty much atop my TV list… at least since the premiere of ABC’s V. Well AMC just debuted a four and a half minute trailer for the series and announced it’s start date: 10 PM on Halloween night, this October. Can… not… wait….
If Calvin and Hobbes is my favorite print cartoon (and it is), then its online counterpart is xkcd. The brainchild of former NASA robotics engineer Randall Munroe, it is a webcomic that mixes romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Most of all, it speaks to the sense of humor of the internet and geek culture in general. Some of it is obscure and flies over my head, but a good number of the comics just hit home and tickle the funny bone. And, in the case of my favorite all-time comic ever (Spirit, featured in this post), tugs at the heart-strings.
xkcd also features a great online store with some cool posters, pins and apparel. I rock the “Science: It Works….” t-shirt in my wardrobe (though it admittedly gets less use than it should). Munroe operates under a solid creative commons license, so I’m hosting several of my favorite comics here, though I encourage everyone to visit xkcd.com and to buy the xkcd: volume 0 book on Amazon.
Two quick and interesting lectures on psychology and neuroscience for your Tuesday lunch hour. First up is psychologist Barry Schwartz, talking about freedom of choice and its impact on the human psyche and collective culture. Filmed at TedGlobal 2005 in July 2005.
Watch a lecture about happiness, after the jump. Read more…
I’ve strayed from TED a bit in the last few ones of these. So why not bring on the queen of the JPL to bring it back into focus. Especially with the US debut of Wonders of the Solar System this past week on the Science channel, a talk about Saturn and the Cassini probe seemed to be a great idea. Carolyn Porco is the awesome head of the Imaging Team on Cassini and is a regular on the Science and History channels and the celebrity astrophysicist circuit.
At TED2007 in March 2007, she spoke about Cassini and showed off some of their cooler images.
Click on through for some more science talks.Read more…
Deoxyribonucleic acid is, quite literally, at the core of who and what each and every living thing on the planet is made up of. OK, so viri utilize ribonucleic acid (RNA) instead of DNA, and some theorize that the earliest earth life may have been based on self-replicating RNA instead of DNA, so it’s possible that more than just the common virus uses RNA still.
But that’s besides the point. All known complex life on Earth utilizes the computer-like coding of DNA to program its makeup. Instead of binary code (or, in binary: 01001001 01101110 01110011 01110100 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101) like a computer, living organisms use a combination of adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) to program.
OnlineNursingPrograms.net has put together the below infographic to reflect 17 interesting things to know about DNA. Click through to enjoy! Read more…
Yesterday I posted some of the best legitimate Neil de Grasse Tyson videos from the interwebs. Today, we’re going with pure fun, as in Colbert Report fun. Linked after the jump are the entirety of NdGT’s world record six appearances on the Colbert Report.
NdGT was the first Threepeat, Fourpeat, Fivepeat and Sixpeat guest on the Report.
Any time you get a chance to see NdGT work, you're constantly drawn to make plans to visit the Rose Center.
While most of the time I’m going to embed videos from TED lectures, sometimes I’ll go with non-TED videos that drive home a similar concept of pressing forth knowledge while providing entertainment. In the field of science and astrophysics, in particular, there’s simply no one better than Neil de Grasse Tyson.
Tyson is the revered host of PBS’s NOVA magazine show and is the director of the Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium at New York’s Museum of Natural History. He’s also one of the most engaging folks when it comes to conveying enthusiasm for the sciences. Oh yeah, there’s also the whole Pluto thing (The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet).
I’ve linked a few videos for a reason, appearing after the jump.
Daybreakers is really nothing close to The Matrix or 28 Days Later, even though it too rests on an interesting an unique idea.
Some movies just have not a whole lot going for them when I’m about to watch them. Daybreakers is one such movie. I watched it earlier in the week while (i) suffering from a crummy stomach virus which both left me miserable and unable to really appreciate popcorn and (ii) reading “The Passage” by Justin Cronin, which is a book that, quite simply, puts most vampire stories to shame. But this isn’t a review of that brilliant book (which ranks as Amazon’s top book of the first half of 2010), that review will follow shortly when I finish it (it’s “War and Peace” long… well, not really, but darn close).
Anyway, Daybreakers is a movie I should have really liked. It actually does meld a few different themes to create an interesting back story and milieu. The basic premise is that a viral outbreak of vampirism (not the neutered “Twilight” kind, but the more Stokerish Bladevariety) has led to a shift such that vampires have simply slid into and displaced humans in modern society. Humans have become farmed for their blood and those that run free are hunted, but never killed. The story somewhat expands on the idea from Blade of vampires as a back room clan with Catholic Church style resources, but no public face. This has expanded to vampires fully running the show. It’s actually a pretty interesting departure from the standard tale of viral apocalypse. Pretty much every interesting fiction about viral apocalypse (be it “The Passage”, “World War Z“, I Am Legend, 28 Days Later, or even Zombieland) involves a mindless destruction of the world as we know it. In Daybreakers, humans are really just displaced.
A while back when I was a little more gung ho about updating, I posted Michael Shermer’s last TED lecture on strange beliefs. This time, we’ve got a bit more from the editor of Skeptic Magazine as he discusses the patterns behind self deception. Filmed at TED2010 in February 2010, Long Beach, CA.
Shermer’s works irks some new atheists in that he accepts the reality of and makes an effort to understand of religious beliefs (being squarely in the skeptic/agnostic column). I’m not sure I jive with the criticisms, as I feel Shermer’s supposed ambivalence as permitting him the characteristic of empathy. He tries to not only learn, but also understand why people believe what they experience.
by Robert Kirkman is pretty much atop my TV list… at least since the premiere of 
book on Amazon.
).
is one such movie. I watched it earlier in the week while (i) suffering from a crummy stomach virus which both left me miserable and unable to really appreciate popcorn and (ii) reading 
by Justin Cronin, which is a book that, quite simply, puts most vampire stories to shame. But this isn’t a review of that brilliant book (which ranks as Amazon’s top book of the first half of 2010), that review will follow shortly when I finish it (it’s 
” long… well, not really, but darn close).
variety) has led to a shift such that vampires have simply slid into and displaced humans in modern society. Humans have become farmed for their blood and those that run free are hunted, but never killed. The story somewhat expands on the idea from Blade of vampires as a back room clan with Catholic Church style resources, but no public face. This has expanded to vampires fully running the show. It’s actually a pretty interesting departure from the standard tale of viral apocalypse. Pretty much every interesting fiction about viral apocalypse (be it “The Passage”, “
“, 
, 
, or even 
) involves a mindless destruction of the world as we know it. In Daybreakers, humans are really just displaced.