Sun ejects biggest solar flare since last year- HD video
March 8, 2012
On March 7 at just after midnight UTC, the Sun released a massive solar flare and coronal mass ejection towards earth. The CME hit us a few hours ago and from what I can tell the aurorae are ongoing from it. You can keep up with the progress at Spaceweather.com. I’m sure there will be some awesome photos from it in the coming days. This one was powerful enough to disrupt satellite communications, but nothing major has happened so far, that I know of. The main reason for this post, though, was to share this space porn HD video of the actual flare. Just wait till they show the zoomed-in shot. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. Oh, and be sure you set it to full HD!
A Few Good Shows: 3/2/12
March 2, 2012
This is some scary shit.
We have some crazy weather headed our way in middle TN (see above graphic!) so A Few Good Shows is super quick today. GO:
FRIDAY:
Vitalic Noise presents CRAVE at TAVERN in midtown: I will be DJing along with resident DJs Losici and Dali Drama. FREE, 21+ 10pm
Chancellor Warhol, Sam & Tre, Gummy Soul, and Ducko McFli @ 12th & Porter. 9pm $10
Cheap Time, Leather Nightmare, King Karl, Psychic Hotline @ The Other Basement. 8pm $???
SATURDAY:
Dr. Dog w/ Purling Hiss and PUJOL @ War Memorial Auditorium. 8pm $20
Bass Drum of Death, Cy Barkley & the Way Outsiders, Thelma & The Sleaze @The End. 9pm $10
Scale Model, A Secret Policeman’s Ball, You Blew It!, and Direct Effect @ Springwater. 10pm $5
Have a great weekend and BE SAFE TODAY! PAY ATTENTION TO MEDIA OUTLETS AND STAY ON TOP OF THE SEVERE WEATHER!!!
Remember back in the 90s and early aughts when SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) had those screensavers you could install that would process chunks of radio telescope data, looking for interesting signals? It would quietly download the data packets, process them, and send them back to SETI. That project has long since been canceled, but its successor is even cooler- SETI Live. The latest version of it just launched yesterday, and it literally allows you to visually analyze real data from the Allen Telescope Array. As I understand it, there are parts of the radio spectrum that are crowded by our own human-made signals. Even the most sophisticated computer software has a hard time distinguishing between something that’s manmade and something that’s extraterrestrial in origin, so they need human eyes to make the distinction. The project is part of Zooniverse, which has many other projects that allow the general public to take part in real scientific research and experiments. So sign yourself up and get to analyzing- you never know what you’ll find, especially now that they’re aiming the radio telescopes at stars known to have planets orbiting them!
Now sit back and enjoy this eye candy: yet another gorgeous timelapse video created from photos of earth at night taken from the International Space Station. I could literally watch stuff like this all day. There have been several of these created thus far, but this one just might be the best yet. It’s like crack for your eyes…
(Via Universe Today)
Playing guitar in space
February 23, 2012
I’m always happy when the worlds of music and science collide in cool ways, as should be quite evident by the name of this blog. In reality science IS music, just like science is everything, but this is one instance where it’s especially cool. Astronaut Chris Hadfield is scheduled to be commander of the International Space Station, and he also happens to be a musician. It turns out music is actually an integral part of maintaining the psychological health of the astronauts, and so NASA decided to put an acoustic guitar on the station. This video from Space.com shows Hadfield explaining the guitar design itself, as well as the challenges and adaptations one has to make when playing in zero gravity. Very cool.
On a side note, I’m well aware of collective facepalm the science community is doing right now since the story broke yesterday that the apparent faster-than-light neutrinos discovered last fall may actually be due to a simple bad GPS cable connection. This is still, as far as I can tell, unconfirmed, so I’m holding off on posting anything in-depth. But I will say that I almost expected it to be something so trivial… We’ll see how it pans out.
Try NASA’s new Facebook game
February 1, 2012
NASA is making strides in their publicity and education efforts with a set of new games- Space Race Blastoff and Sector 33. Space Race Blastoff is a Facebook app that lets you compete with other players in quick, 10-question science trivia rounds. The topics range from general science to NASA missions and astronauts. Of course, I signed up immediately and became addicted for about 10 games, then I started getting repeat questions. BUT, this game is still a beta version, so I’m sure the database of questions will be ever-expanding. Also, I’d like to see a feature where you can directly compete with a friend. All in good time, I’m sure.
I haven’t tried Sector 33 yet because it’s only for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. (I’m an Android user.) But you can read all about it in this post at Universe Today. Basically, it lets you try your hand at being an air traffic controller- widely considered to be one of the most stressful jobs. If you start playing Space Race Blastoff, however, lookout- my name on there is Disco Science, and I dare say I’m a force to be reckoned with.
#nergasm
The Sun is alive: auroral displays are on the rise
January 24, 2012
Credit: NASA
As I’ve mentioned before, our Sun is steadily heading toward the peak of its next 11-year sunspot cycle. The peak is expected in 2013. That means we can expect a steady increase in aurorae as well, because sunspots lead to solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and when those happen to be aimed at earth, we get dazzling displays near the north and south poles. Sometimes those displays can even be seen as far south as Tennessee. Over the weekend there was a massive solar flare and CME, one that released the same amount of energy as millions of nuclear bombs, and it headed straight for earth. The blast of particles reached earth last night/this morning and created an astonishing auroral display, which was captured by many photographers at various locations. Here are a few blog posts and other links I’ve come across today showing some of those photos as well as explaining the physics of what actually causes the upper atmosphere to glow when bombarded by these particles.
Spectacular Aurorae Erupt Over Norway (Discovery News) Absolutely breathtaking photos by Bjørn Jørgensen.
Huge Solar Flare Seen By Solar Dynamics Observatory (Space.com)
The Sun Aims a Storm Right at Earth! (Bad Astronomy) Good explanation of the science behind the aurorae.
Can Solar Flares Hurt Astronauts? (Universe Today) Good explanation of why the flare/CME poses little risk to astronauts onboard the ISS.
So there has been some excitement and confusion lately over a signal discovered by SETI researchers after they aimed one of their radio telescopes toward “objects of interest” discovered by the Kepler mission. These are possible exoplanet discoveries, but they’ve yet to be confirmed by other telescopes. (These are called Kepler Objects of Interest, or KOIs.) Until now, SETI researchers have been blindly aiming their telescopes all over they sky listening for possible alien radio signals. Now that the Kepler team has a few KOIs that might be habitable, it makes sense for SETI to narrow their search and start listening specifically in the direction of those KOIs. Well, they did just that, and they found an interesting signal! One that is clearly not just natural background noise. But, that signal is almost definitely interference from one of our own satellites, because the signal still shows up even when they aim the radio telescopes away from the exoplanets. So, don’t let anyone fool you- SETI has NOT discovered an alien radio signal.
As he always does, Dr. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy lays out the truth on this. Universe Today has an excellent post on it as well.
Kepler finds earth-sized alien planets/Some amazing volcano photos
December 21, 2011
Credit: NASA
The Kepler team at NASA announced yet another exciting discovery yesterday: the first confirmed earth-size alien planets, Kepler 20f and 20e. The mission has found other exoplanets that pretty close to earth-size, but these two are by far the closest yet. What really befuddled me about this announcement was that that in addition to those two smaller, rocky worlds, there are three bigger gas-giant or super-earths in this system as well. No only that, but all five of these exoplanets’ orbits would fit inside our own Mercury’s orbit around our sun! That’s a lot of planets crammed into a tiny area! Of course that also means that these planets are scorching hot- far too hot to be habitable. But, it’s very reassuring to confirm that Kepler can positively identify alien planets that are earth-size and even tad bit smaller (Kepler 20e is about 87% the size of earth). As usual, Dr. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has a very good explanation of the whole thing. And I’ll also point you toward this article on space.com about the likelihood of us finding a true earth-twin within the coming year.
And now I will simply tell you to go take a look at this amazing set of volcano photographs and have a a few eyegasms. You’re welcome.
Today’s ridiculous headlines
December 15, 2011
For some reason there have been several hilarious/ridiculous headlines popping up around my various internet haunts today. So I decided to just post them together here, for you clicking pleasure.
Two of them were on New Scientist:
“Mystery of the male ostrich’s erection solved.”
“Selectively bred fruit flies who can survive Titan’s harsh conditions after a diet of vodka rain.”
(Apparently they changed that last one… but that’s how it showed up in my reader initially, I promise.)
“Man Arrested After Attacking People At Toys R Us With Lightsaber”
“Wonder Woman and She-Hulk give themselves breast exams in Mozambique.”
And this one is just cute:
“Baby Seal Enters House, Sleeps on Couch”
You’re welcome.
The Higgs boson: progress made but nothing conclusive yet
December 13, 2011
You’ve no doubt already seen or heard mention of this breaking news elsewhere, but I simply must weigh-in: This morning physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced that they are making significant progress toward discovering the Higgs boson, or what many tend to call “the God Particle.” They really are on the verge of making a discovery that will change the face of physics forever, and vastly improve our understanding of the building blocks of EVERYTHING in the universe, and how the universe came into existence. The announcement does not mean that they have found the Higgs, just that they’ve seen a series of spikes in activity (the few nanoseconds right after a particle collision) within the predicted mass range for the Higgs. They’ve narrowed its mass down to a pretty small range with a fairly high degree of certainty because they’ve amassed quite a bit of data, and the chances that this is just a statistical fluke are getting lower and lower. Still though, the certainty is not high enough for physicists to claim an actual discovery. This elusive Higgs boson is the last missing “link” in the most widely accepted theory of particle physics- The Standard Model. If the Higgs is finally confirmed to exist within the range of mass predicted by the Standard Model, then this theory will essentially become rock-solid.
*Steps onto soapbox.*
But the beauty of science and the scientific method is that it will be just as exciting, if not MORE exciting, if the Higgs is proven to either exist outside the predicted range of mass or not exist at all! Science relies strictly on data, and if the data shows something not predicted then you go back to the drawing board and keep trying until you have a theory that fits the reality of the data. That method is infallible, and that is why I love science.
*Steps down from soapbox.*
For more-
the Guardian has been posting live updates to their story.
But BBC News has the best coverage I’ve seen.
steve cross loves music and science 