2009 is International Year of Astronomy: Local Notes

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, so here's two Seattle-related bits of cosmic news to start off the month of Galileo's birthday:

• Mt. Rainier made an appearance in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday


• On February 15th, the Museum of Flight will unveil two new large-sized prints of multi-wavelength images of the spiral galaxy Messier.

Astronomy Picture of the Day is an unadorned site of gorgeous photos accompanied by explanations in plain English. The photo above is of lenticular clouds near Mt. Rainier, taken in December 2008. Browse the APOD archive for more amazing pics. I particularly like this one: The Milky Way Over Mauna Kea. Wow.

The two new prints at the Museum of Flight combine images from NASA's Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory. The prints are provided by NASA as part of NASA's participation in International Year of Astronomy. One print displays the combined Hubble-Spitzer-Chandra images. A second print is a triptych that displays the three high-resolution images from Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra side by side and with description captions below. The Museum of Flight is one of 100 organizations across the country to recieve two new prints from NASA. More info on the Museum of Flight's Happy Birthday Galileo! and print unveiling event to be held on February 16th.

Art of Mathematics

This rainbow cauliflower image is a visual representation of a mathematical theory known as dynamical systems.


the University of Liverpool has an exhibit of images based on dynamical systems expressions and formulas. Check out additional images and learn more about dynamical systems at the BBC website, which offers a 90-second slide show with narrative.

The dynamical system formula which produced the cauliflower is the deceptively simple x squared plus one quarter.

These are pretty interesting, yet similar to fractals we've seen around for quite a while.

The History Hacker: Catch the TV pilot Friday

Former Seattlite Bre Pettis, now of MAKE and Etsy fame, is the host of a new TV show on the History Channel. The History Hacker is essentially a mashup of history, science, MAKE, and TLC's Mythbusters.

"The pilot is all about Nikola Tesla and the war of the currents between Tesla and Edison. In the show I learn how to blow a neon tube, explore wireless electricity and build an AC generator from a bike. I also go to Boston to visit an MIT space lab to see how the principles that Tesla pioneered are being applied to space propulsion," Bre says. [more]

The pilot airs this Friday September 26th at 8pm (and again at midnight) on the History Channel. Set your Tivo or DVR or whatever and check it out.

DIY to the core.

Science: First Test of World's Largest Particle Accelerator Scheduled Sept 10th

Particle accelerators are a curious paradox: Build large to study small. Big bang, dark matter. Poetic science, I love you.

The first attempt to circulate a beam in the newly built Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on September 10th. The LHC is the largest particle accelerator in the world (17 miles / 27 km) and is located 100 m below ground surface in Switzerland and France.

Check the CERN site for a countdown clock to the test and learn more about what they hope to discover using the LHC.

Or you can just watch this rap video from some crazy physics kids:


If this only leaves you wanting more, here's two books on physics written for folks like you and me:

Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson
A compilation of essays written by the director of the Hayden Planetarium and published in Natural History Magazine. Very approachable writing style, using pop culture references to tie fictional concepts to science facts and plausible theories.

The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
This one takes the science and math to a more challenging level, but it is still understandable and not nearly as difficult a read as Brief History of Time by Hawking. (Has anyone EVER finished that book? I call bullshit. You physicists don't count.)

Photo credit: Installation of the world's largest silicon tracking detector. (Michael Hoch, © CERN)

Pimp Your Power Tool for Drag Racing

There's still time to get your MAKE on and create a vehicle for the Power Tool Drag Races. Races will be held Saturday June 28 in Georgetown. The races are part of Artopia, an annual event for innovative art and emerging talent.

Although speedy locomotion is a primary factor to winning a typical race, local-whiz-goes-to-NY-to-MAKE-it Bre Pettis reminds us that "an important part of power tool racing is style: making your power tool look cool."

Learn How to Make a Power Tool Drag Racer


(The chicken assisted starting device at 3:40 is f*cking brilliant.)

Word on the street is that Mr. DIY himself will be present with entrant in hand. You didn't hear it from me.

The Power Tool Drag Races races are organized by Hazard Factory. Motto: Don't run with scissors, commute.

fly me to the moon

While not nearly exciting as the discovery of water on Mars (go little Phoenix!), you can send your name to the moon on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The LRO plans to "hunt for treasure." (Every geek secretly wishes to be Indiana Jones.)

Landing on Mars today: follow along via Twitter

Space fans, sci fi geeks, and tech heads can stay up-to-date on the scheduled landing on Mars today of the Phoenix scout mission to the red planet.

the Phoenix has a Twitter account and is posting messages and status updates frequently. What this means: you can get updates sent directly to your mobile device. And the engineers are answering questions from people, too.

How awesome is that?

Here's a sample of recent messages from MarsPhoenix:

A small dust storm blew over the landing site today, but now the weather looks clear for landing. 25 hours and 1 million miles til landing. (20 hrs ago)

I'm closing in on Mars! Who is going to sleep tonight? Not the team, too excited/scared/anxious seeing 5 years of work come to this last day. (16 hours ago)
I've entered the gravity well of Mars. My speed, relative to the planet, will go from 6,000 mph to 12,600 mph by time I hit the atmosphere. (4 hours ago)

The last 7 minutes are nail biters. See vid at http://tinyurl.com/6ktlu6. Scariest moments: parachute opening, then radar lock on ground. (3 hours ago)

Of course there's also the mission website to find out how it's going. (Old school.)

(thanks @leelefever for the tip!)

Morph: a future geek must-have

OMG. The Nokia Morph animation illustrates the gasp-inducing capabilities of nanotechnology. The Morph concept is the result of a collaboration between Nokia Research Center and Cambridge Nanoscience Center. You can't buy this property-changing device today, but the science behind it is definitely here today.

Nanotechnology possibilities are simultaneously amazing, thrilling, and scary. It's the stuff of sci-fi, made real.



Besides the gee whiz factor, I like this video because it takes complex science and brings it to a real-life level. It is all visual and is consumer-focused: no voice overs, no tooting their own horn (look how smart we engineers are!), and only a couple of sci facts explained in a non-engineer way. I imagine there were likely several meeting room brawls over the lack of sci-talk: the sci guys wanting lots of facts, and the design guys wanting no facts. ("Guys" is used here in the all-gender-encompassing sense.)

Also interesting to me is that the character in this video is female. Clearly an effort to make fresh technology more appealing to women and to grow the male-dominated early adopter crowd. Fashionistas, did you notice the ability to match the pattern of Morph to your outfit?

Weird science: biopunk / cyberpunk

Never lose your cell phone again. But why stop there?
I can imagine all kinds of possibilities for this technology.
(Nevermind the toxic potential.)

Electronic tattoo display runs on blood

Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin. [read more...]

from PhysOrg.com