On October 23, 4004 BC, God decided that there needed to be a Universe, so he made one: this one! Yay, God! Yay, Universe! Yay, Bishop Ussher for figuring this out! (Orrrrr, one could take the messy view espoused by those nasty Scienticians, who think that some kind of natural processes shaped the entire Universe over the course of 15 billion years. Stupid Scienticians!) Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
To the planet Neptune, that is — the very-distant gas giant, eighth planet from the Sun (and possibly the last planet from the Sun, depending on whether or not you abide by the pinheaded decision to demote Pluto to less-than-a-planet status), is about to complete its first orbit since it was visually discovered. In 1846. So, set your calendars for July 12, 2011 — Neptune’s New Year’s Day! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
Check out this amazing infographic depicting the highest heights and lowest lows of our planet, from the outer reaches of the atmosphere all the way to the bottom of the deepest oceanic trench in the world. It’s topical, too, including in its graphics the depth reached by the Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. Just seeing graphically how far down they had to go — and, by extension, how far down we’re going to have to routinely go if we insist on oil as our main energy source — really illustrates how non-trivial the problem in the GulfDown the rabbit hole….
…since Mount St. Helens’s massive eruption of May 18, 1980. We actually lived in Hillsboro, OR at the time of the 1980 eruptions (there were quite a few, starting earlier than that, but May 18 was the Mother of ’em all). I remember volcanic ash covering our driveway and seeing the enormous ash clouds dominating the sky, even though the mountain was sixty miles away. Here’s an infographic that explains the geology of the event (via): The most amazing factoid to me about Mt. St. Helens is that Spirit Lake, on the mountain’s northern side, was elevated to such aDown the rabbit hole….
Matthew Yglesias points out this tool that makes the scope of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill more plain than just throwing out a number of square miles or showing a segment of ocean in a map. You can superimpose the area of the spill over any location you wish (if you have the Google Earth plugin, which I went ahead and downloaded). So here’s how the spill would look if Buffalo were its epicenter: Now that’s scary. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
(image via) Yup, time to celebrate the Lord of All Irrational Numbers, the King of All Ratios and the Mostest Cool of All Formulae, “A equals pi R squared”. It’s Pi Day! Here’s Wikipedia on Pi: π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter in Euclidean space; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle’s area to the square of its radius. It is approximately equal to 3.141593 in the usual decimal notation (see the table for its representation in some other bases). The constantDown the rabbit hole….
[I am excerpting this from Chapter 13 of Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot.] It’s a sultry night in July. You’ve fallen asleep in the armchair. Abruptly, you startle awake, disoriented. The television set is on, but not the sound. You strain to understand what you’re seeing. Two ghostly white figures in coveralls and helmets are softly dancing under a pitch-black sky. They make strange little skipping motions, which propel them upward amid barely perceptible clouds of dust. But something is wrong. They take too long to come down. Encumbered as they are, they seem to be flying — aDown the rabbit hole….
What this blog needs is, quite clearly, more trains. So, first up, one of my dream vacations: riding trains through Switzerland. Trains show up in Hayao Miyazaki’s films, such as this from Spirited Away: Here’s the world’s highest railway, which runs in Tibet: For more exciting viewing, check out what happens when a train and a tornado meet each other. It doesn’t look too bad at first…until you realize that Sir Isaac Newton hasn’t had his say just yet…. Along with that, here’s Richard Feynman explaining why trains stay on their tracks: And why not a model railroad layout basedDown the rabbit hole….
Here’s a state legislator in Arizona opining on something or other: Note that when she says twice that Earth is 6000 years old, nobody says anything. Nobody gives an audible “Wait, what?!” Nobody says, “Oh my God, are you an idiot.” Everybody just sits there. Unbelievable. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
Kevin Drum is nonplussed by something he read in the WSJ: a Canadian named James Stewart who got freakishly rich by writing calculus textbooks. As Kevin says, “You can earn millions writing calculus textbooks? Seriously?” Well, this isn’t much of a stretch, is it? Here’s the guy’s website — he has written a number of texts, which seem to have each gone to multiple editions, which implies that his textbooks have been adopted by more than a few math programs around. Calculus is, I assume, one of the more frequently taken courses in colleges throughout North America. Many kids takeDown the rabbit hole….