Stephen Colbert on Nuclear Explosions

~Nuclear blasts can cause horribly destructive devastation...but we Americans do like things that go boom, as the always-entertaining Mr. Colbert clearly demonstrates below during his discussion with an anti-nuke activist:



While the video is amusing, in some ways Colbert has a point about "making it ugly". Splitting the atom (and fusing it, in the case of hydrogen bombs) is a tremendous scientific achievement, tapping into the fundamental building blocks of the universe that fuel stars. Like most technology, it can be twisted to do horrible things, but that doesn't make it any less interesting.

Hopefully, we can one day enjoy a world in which nuclear weapons are gone, or at least exist in far fewer numbers. A upcoming nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia may help reduce the vast stockpiles that still exist in both nations.

Ant Megalopolis

~In this amazing investigation, liquid concrete was poured into a vast underground ant colony, which was then excavated:



The video clip is from the documentary "ANTS: Nature's Secret Power". It makes me ponder what other wonders (and horrors) may lie beneath our feet, out of sight and out of mind. It also makes me want to play SimAnt again...

(Interesting Fact of the Day: A entomologist who specializes in the study of ants is a "myrmecologist".)

Solar Dynamics Observatory

~Most of the space news I've been hearing about lately concerns the window recently installed on the International Space Station, but of more interest to me is the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was launched from Cape Canaveral last Thursday, February 11th (click here for a video of the launch).

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or "SDO" for short, will gather data on the sun. From a geosynchronous orbit over a specially-constructed communications center in New Mexico, SDO will capture detailed images of the surface of the sun and take accurate measurements of changes in the sun's magnetic field and the solar wind.

Ultimately, the data from SDO should reveal some of the mysterious inner workings of the sun. For example, it's long been known that the sun undergoes a regular eleven-year cycle of magnetic intensity, resulting in a spate of solar flares every eleven years that can damage satellites. However, the cause of this cycle is unclear. SDO should also provide us with better tools to predict solar disturbances that occur seemingly at random, and can harm astronauts and sensitive electronics in Earth orbit. The stated scientific goals of the mission are to answer, or at least gather information on, these seven questions:

1. What mechanisms drive the quasi-periodic 11-year cycle of solar activity?
2. How is active region magnetic flux synthesized, concentrated, and dispersed across the solar surface?
3. How does magnetic reconnection on small scales reorganize the large-scale field topology and current systems and how significant is it in heating the corona and accelerating the solar wind?
4. Where do the observed variations in the Sun's EUV spectral irradiance arise, and how do they relate to the magnetic activity cycles?
5. What magnetic field configurations lead to the coronal mass ejections, filament eruptions, and flares that produce energetic particles and radiation?
6. Can the structure and dynamics of the solar wind near Earth be determined from the magnetic field configuration and atmospheric structure near the solar surface?
7. When will activity occur, and is it possible to make accurate and reliable forecasts of space weather and climate?
   

SDO is also the first mission in NASA's Living With a Star program, a series of projects designed to investigate space weather and its effects on Earth. Future program missions include the Geospace missions, which will measure the radiation belts around Earth that result from the Earth's magnetic field interacting with charged solar particles, and a solar probe that will fly into the sun's corona!

You can learn much more about SDO at the mission web site, or by reading the official mission guide.

How To Report The News

~BBC reporter Chris Booker gives a special report on every boring special report that you've ever seen on the news:

All Who Stand Opposed Will Be Destroyed

~Here's a new band that's a lot of fun to listen to: Planetoid. The three members that make up the band claim to be aliens from a thousand years in the future, who have been accidentally sent back in time and are now attempting to conquer the Earth through hard rock. They combine great sound with some very clever science-fiction (?) lyrics on their first album, Shadow of the Planetoid. For example, consider the title song, Shadow of the Planetoid:

"...and as the illusion grows, stars start to disappear.

In the spot where the sun once rose, the benighted ring of the Dyson sphere.

And every Venusian knows, the end of the world draws increasingly near.
For we are harbingers of the shadow!

All who stand opposed will be destroyed...in the shadow of the Planetoid."

You can hear four songs from the album on the Planetoid web site, and the rest on Rhapsody.

Why Your Printer Never Works Properly

I think we can all relate to this:

Did you know that the cost of printer ink is approximately $8,000 per gallon?? Think about that the next time you're pumping gas at the gas station. One reason that the price is so ridiculously high is that large printer manufacturers pressure vendors to squeeze out third-party ink suppliers and refillers, and also create their printers in such a way that they will have "problems" (or simply reject) ink cartridges from other companies.

This amusing comic, titled "Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell to Make Us Miserable", points out that despite vast increases in computing power over the past decade, printers remain just as annoying and unreliable. Why, for example, do many printers refuse to print black-ink-only documents if the printer is low on color ink? Why do printer manufacturers insult consumers by selling printers for less than the cost of ink refills (making it more economical to simply buy new printers that include ink rather than buying ink refills)? Why are consumer "photo printers" so terrible at printing photos?

It seems that for some questions, the world is not ready for answers.

An Investment in Knowledge

~On Friday morning, I attended the grand opening of the new Orange County Main Library in Hillsborough:

^ It's a beautiful building adjacent to the main Orange County offices in downtown Hillsborough.

^ There was quite crowd in attendance for the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Most of the Orange County commissioners were there, along with the State Librarian of North Carolina and State Senator Ellie Kinnaird.

^ I'm not sure who this guy was, but he wrote a poem about the library and read some inspirational quotes. My favorite was from Benjamin Franklin: "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest."