Mar
28
Texas science battle fought to a draw
Filed Under Astronomy and Space, Evolution, Science Education | Leave a Comment
Well, it’s over. I managed to listen to yesterday’s entire meeting of the Texas State Board of Education without throwing anything at my computer, which was definitely a personal victory. I commented over on the TFN blog that there is no way I would have been able to keep quiet if I had gone down [...]
Mar
22
Rare Earth?
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In a happy synchronicity, the same week that I attended a lecture by Rare Earth co-author Don Brownlee, two posts on the same topic showed up on a couple of blogs I read. First was Kepler and the Rare Earth hypothesis from Chris Rowan’s Highly Allochthonous, followed by A Habitable Zone by any other name… [...]
Mar
19
Astronomy from the sidewalks of New York
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Spotted via Bad Astronomy, this New York Times article:
While Times Square is not known for star gazing — the celestial kind, that is — and few people would normally venture onto a pitch-black ball field in Inwood to see the constellations, two unrelated, if not unlikely, projects hope to turn the city’s night eyes skyward.
Jason [...]
Dec
4
The Face of Copernicus
Filed Under Astronomy and Space, People in Science and Skepticism | Leave a Comment
[This was the post I was working on when the blog went belly-up!]
I love it when astronomy, archaeology, forensics and history come together!
From The BBC:
Researchers in Poland say they have solved a centuries-old mystery and identified the remains of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
A comparison of DNA from a skeleton in Poland and strands of the astronomer’s [...]
Jul
22
Kip!
Filed Under Astronomy and Space, People in Science and Skepticism, Physics | Leave a Comment
I meant to write about this shortly after the talk so I wouldn’t forget stuff, but of course here I am over two months later trying to remember all the mind-bending (and space-time bending) things he discussed.
Kip gave a lecture at UT back when I was a student (c. 1993?), so that was the last [...]
Jun
13
Okay, maybe I’m finally ready to get this show on the road
Filed Under Astronomy and Space | Leave a Comment
It’s not for a lack of things to write about, that’s for sure! As silly as it is, one of the things that kept me from writing is that I was still trying to come up with a design that I liked. The first one I was using was cool, but I wanted something with [...]
Nov
1
Archive Post: Comet Holmes!
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I have been meaning to post something about this very interesting comet for a week now… better late than never, I guess.
The comet, which usually hangs out in an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, had already made its closest pass by the sun (which wasn’t all that close) and was heading back out, orbiting happily [...]
Oct
4
I was going to say a few things about the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, but it looks like Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy already wrote a lot of stuff along the lines I was thinking!
Here’s a NASA page (where I took the picture from) about the spacecraft and a Science@NASA page where [...]
Aug
7
I didn’t get a chance to take a lot of photos when I was out in West Texas last month, but I did post the few that I did take over on my Flickr page. If you click the photo above, it will take you to the West Texas photo set, which also includes photos [...]
May
12
We go from gigantic stars blowing up to finding the one of the oldest stars in the Galaxy! This time it is Anna Frebel, the William J. McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow and her metal poor star HE 1523-0901. Yeah, it isn’t the sexiest name for a star, but that’s not what’s important about it. Since Phil [...]