Comet Lovejoy approaches and leaves the Sun's orbit (image from NASA) On December 15-16, 2011 Comet Lovejoy (whose officially name is C/2011 W3) came within 87,000 miles of the sun’s surface at speed of 400 miles per second. Nobody thought it would be able to survive its orbit around the sun because it would be exposed to temperatures […]
China’s Environment Friendly “Sky City”: Soon To Be the World’s Tallest Building
May 31, 2013 by
The Proposed Sky City skyscraper (via WikiCommons) The next "tallest building in the world" will be built in China and it is a pre-fab, environmentally friendly building that will be built much faster than any skyscraper ever. Below are some key things to know about the building. Key Facts It will be 2,749 feet tall […]
Satellite Pictures of the Moore, Oklahoma Tornado Path on Google Maps
May 23, 2013 by
The path of the tornado left a wide lane of destruction. The Purple mark is the locaiton of Briarwood Elementary School Google Maps has done their usual crisis work and detailed the path of the tornado. The colors indicate level of damage where purple is the most damanged area, red less, yellow less… If you […]
Pictures: A Huge Explosion When a Meteor Hits the Moon
May 18, 2013 by
The bright dot is the explosion when a meteor the size of a small boulder hit the moon. There has been a NASA program in place for the last 8 years that has been in place to monitor for any meteors that may hit the Moon. This is what NASA report after last night's event: They've […]
“Gravity Tractors” Could Save Us From Comets and Asteroids
February 19, 2013 by
There's all kind of talk out there right now about how there's little would could do if we found an asteroid or comet coming at Earth that was going to do alot of damage. But I came across this the idea of a "Gravity Tractor" fascinating. Here's the basic idea from Wikipedia: A gravity tractor (GT) […]
Nova’s “Earth From Space” Coming to PBS in February
January 15, 2013 by
Nova has an interesting looking documentary coming in February called "Earth From Space". Here's the description from the site: "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling […]
The “Black Blizzards” of the 1930’s Dust Bowl
November 28, 2012 by
A Texas dust storm in 1935 I was watching Ken Burns' PBS special "The Dust Bowl" and saw some pictures of these amazing storms rolling acorss the plains. The documentary was a bit dry, but full of interesting, and scary, stories about who the Dust Bowl came to be and how devastating it was. […]
Great Views of Earth From the International Space Station
October 24, 2012 by
Some great views of the Earth from the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center. The Internation Space Station has been continuously manned since November 2, 2000 by over 200 different people and has traveled over 1.5 billion statute miles. Wikipedia outlines the purpose of the station: According to the original Memorandum of […]
Stephen Hawking (and MIT) Had a Party For Time Travelers
September 23, 2012 by
The DailyMail outlines what Hawking's party was about: It is the ultimate test for time travellers – hold a party for them, but don't post the invites until after the event. But sadly, when Stephen Hawking tried this, he was left to his own devices – for across all of time and space, his invite […]
Some Lessons to Learn from Albert Einstein
March 20, 2012 by
DumbLittleMan has a nice post on some life lessons we can learn from Albert Einstein. Here's the first 2: Follow Your Curiosity “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” What piques your curiosity? I am curious as to what causes one person to succeed while another person fails; this is […]