Megabytes of astronomical data are collected every second by automated probes and telescopes around the world, but finding something meaningful and new in that torrent is quite laborious. One effort enlisting the power of distributed intelligence (i.e. you & me, and our computers) a team of astrophysicists are trying to extract traces of new extrasolar
(More)…
If Neptune was a bit cooler then it would have a deep ocean full of dissolved hydrogen, instead of what’s probably a super-critical atmosphere of dense “vapour”. According to modelling, by Sloane Wiktorowicz and Andrew Ingersoll, Voyager’s gravity data for Neptune rules out an ocean, which would be denser at a shallower depth than an
(More)…
Wormholes are general relativistic short-cuts through space-time, currently unobserved, but made famous (or infamous) by Star Trek, Stargate and Sliders, and little understood. Originally described by Einstein and others – famously the Einstein-Rosen bridge mentioned briefly in SF ever since – but shown to be dynamically unstable to any infalling light or mass. That is
(More)…
Event Time (seconds) Mass (tons) Acceleration (m/s2) Light up 0 54026.2 0.14 First Tank drop 2.1570E+07 38205.9 0.197 Second Tank drop 4.3140E+07 22355.5 0.337 Third Tank depletion 6.4700E+07 6795.2 1.109 Second stage 6.4700E+07 5098.2 0.13 First Tank drop 9.2450E+07 3014.8 0.22 Second Tank drop 1.2030E+08 981.6 0.676 Manoeuvre begins 0.0000E+00 931.5 0.712 Manoeuvre ends 5.5500E+05
(More)…
This is so weird. Got to get used to the time stamps and figure out how to change the timezone the prog is working from. Anyway how are we all out there in the Blogoverse? I’ve got an old blog in a different domain which you might like to glance at. I’m thinking of haulling
(More)…