Archive
Time-Lapse Auroras and Flyovers
Sometimes capturing things on video is the only way to truly express their beauty and magnificence.
And sometimes, its the only way to express the extent of their AWESOME!
This time-lapse video shows how circling the planet looks from the International Space Station:
The next one is a time-lapse of an aurora (my fav, as you all know) over Finland:
Aurora Borealis in Finnish Lapland 2011 from Flatlight Films on Vimeo.
The awesome is just…too much sometimes :)
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Ryan
Watch the IgNobel Prizes Tomorrow!
The 21st 1st (no typo) Annual IgNobel Prizes are tomorrow. What are the Igs, you ask?
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.
Awarded by Improbable Research, we will learn tomorrow whose real-life research is the weirdest, coolest, and funniest.
For example, last year’s physics prize went to
Lianne Parkin, Sheila Williams, and Patricia Priest of the University of Otago, New Zealand, for demonstrating that, on icy footpaths in wintertime, people slip and fall less often if they wear socks on the outside of their shoes.
Here’s the reference to prove it!
To hear about it live, you can watch the webcast or you can watch Scicurious (one of my fav science bloggers) live blog the event.
It is always entertaining and reminds us all why we love science!
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Ryan
Scientists Can Be Funny!
Apparently this is a genuine abstract from the American Geophysical Union conference in 1991:
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Ryan
Take THAT English Majors!
By tom Gauld
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Ryan
Awe Arousing Appearance of Aurora
I love aurorae. Possibly one of the most beautiful and spectacular natural phenomena to grace this planet.
Astronaut Ron Garan recently posted a fantastic photo of an aurora from Earth’s orbit on his Twitter feed:
Makes me feel like a 9 year old kid again, wishing he could be an astronaut when he grows up.
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Ryan
If Your Bandage is Glowing, That’s Bad…
A polymer and fluorescent dye work together to cause a bandage to glow in the presence of infection.
A team of researchers at the University of Sheffield has developed an interesting way of detecting bacteria in a wound (I know, gross).
The researchers found that a polymer attached to a fluorescent dye on bandage can detect when bacteria or other harmful organisms come into contact with the wound. The polymer changes shape when the bacteria are present, activating the dye and emitting ultraviolet light.
The technique was mainly developed with military applications in mind. Being able to easily and quickly identify infected wounds on the battlefield could help significantly reduce the severity of injuries.
“If you know you’ve got infection it’s going to change how you treat your soldiers, it’s going to change how you’re going to treat those patients in the home,” Sheffield researcher Sheila McNeil said. [UPI.com]
At the moment, the technique has only been applied to artificial tissues. However, it currently takes several days to confirm the presence of infection, so there is quite an interest in expanding the technique to human trials.
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Ryan
Psychic Backing Away From $1 Million Psychic Challenge
A prolific Toronto-area psychic named “Psychic Nikki” recently made headlines by saying that she would be interested in taking the ‘Psychic Challenge’ offered by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).
The JREF offers a $1 million prize to any person who can demonstrate psychic abilities. What is the catch? Well there is none, really.
You just have to demonstrate a statistically significant ability to predict future events (beyond that of chance) in a controlled scientific experiment. The terms of the experiment are agreed upon by both the “psychic” and the JREF and the experiment itself conducted by a third-party.
Easy, right?
Unfortunately, of the hundreds of people who have attempted the test, none have been able to demonstrate that they are, indeed, psychic.
Enter “Psychic Nikki”.
On August 31, 2011, the CBC reported that Psychic Nikki was considering taking the challenge,
“I would say yes, I would take [the] challenge because I have enough faith in my own abilities if I was available,” Toronto-based psychic Nikki told CBC News.
“I am the real thing so I don’t have to worry about this stuff.”
The statement came after a high-profile challenge by James Randi to famous psychics to come and prove their abilities.
Psychic Nikki was quite confident. She has, by her own claim, predicted
the Sept. 11 attacks, the Japan tsunami and the deaths of Michael Jackson, crocodile hunter Steve Irwin and Anna Nicole Smith.
Though despite predicting these events, she did not bother trying to prevent any of them. You can actually check out her Twitter feed to see some of her predictions, which include:
I’m pretty sure people riot/protest in Paris every week…
Been 10 days, nuthin’ yet on that one…
And my personal favourite,
The predictions are rather vague (excepting the Mona Lisa one), which is odd considering her website states that
She is an audient clairvoyant – the ability to see and hear and come up with specifics.
Psychics use specialized strategies to appear like they are foretelling the future. For example, they will make a large number of vague predictions (called “Shotgunning”), and then claim victory when any individual prediction comes close to the truth. Predicting an earthquake in California at some point will probably end up being true, but it is hardly convincing evidence of psychic ability.
Now, as revealed on the JREF website, Psychic Nikki has started distancing herself from the challenge.
The JREF called Nikki on Sept. 2, requesting an email address to send her information about the Million Dollar Challenge. After CBC News published a followup story on Tuesday, Sept. 6, Nikki returned the JREF’s call, leaving a message in which she promised “I will try to contact you in the next couple of days for sure.” The JREF called her back within an hour, again offering to send information about the Challenge and answer her questions.
A full week after Nikki promised to call the JREF “in the next couple of days,” she still had not responded.
She also commented on the challenge on the Dean Blundell show on September 9th. Most notably she said that
This test is controlled, that’s why I don’t want to take it
Which is basically the point. Once “psychics” find out that the test will be fairly testing their abilities, they either back away or ultimately fail the test. That is bad for business.
This is not at all surprising, but it is a bit refreshing to see it get coverage in big news outlets like the CBC. I expect that attention to this story will slowly dissipate once Psychic Nikki stops talking about it, but the point as been made.
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Ryan
Build Your Own Cloud Chamber!
Cloud chambers are nifty little tools which physicists used in the 1920s to 1950s to study ionizing radiation. They were responsible for the discovery of the positron in 1932, which garnered Carl David Anderson the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936.
After the 1950s, the Bubble chamber became the more useful tool to study radiation, but cloud chambers remain the simplest and easiest to build.
In fact, you can even build one yourself! Here’s a cool video demonstrating how they work and how you can build one:
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Ryan
Don’t Eat This Jelly…
- A battery using a polymer jelly could make for cheaper, more efficient batteries.
Researchers from the University of Leeds have developed a new type of polymer jelly which could be used to make lighter, cooler (temperature wise) and more efficient rechargable batteries. They could be used in any application which currently uses a lithium battery, such as laptops, cell phones or tablets.
Professor Ian Ward from the University of Leeds went on BBC Radio 4 recently to discuss the new polymer jelly his research group has been working on.
This jelly, he says, could replace the current liquid electrolyte in most lithium batteries. The polymer jelly is supposed to be 10-20% cheaper but will not reach the high temperatures current batteries operate at during long usage times.
It would be regarded as safer because there is no excess solvent or electrolyte. All the solvents are bound into the polymer at a molecular level.
The group set out simply to make batteries safer. But as luck would have it, the design actually makes the batteries cheaper and more efficient.
It will certainly be cheaper because…the process of making batteries at the moment is generally rather laboruious. whereas we can do it in an instant step at a rather fast rate.
The batteries will also end up being lighter for doing similar applications as current electrolyte filled batteries, which will be particularly useful for military applications, says Ward.
This is one of those scientific advances which doesn’t seem too glamourous, but could directly affect all of us. Cell phones, tablets and laptops are ubiquitous now and battery life is a major consideration when buying a new device.
Anyone in the mood for PB&J now?
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Ryan
Marty McFly’s Self Lacing Shoes Up For Auction
Nike is auctioning off 1500 pairs of Marty McFly’s futuristic shoes from Back to the Future Part II in order to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research.
Bill Hader and Christopher Llyod star in the promo video:
If you want to bid on the shoes, you can go to http://nikemag.ebay.com/
But be forewarned, the shoes are going for $3000 – $4000. But hey, it’s for research right?
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REMINDER: This blog is moving! The new location is http://www.aquantumofknowledge.com/
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Ryan
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