March 2011
1 post
MESSENGER enters orbit around Mercury →
Terrific news out of NASA on Thursday night - MESSENGER successfully entered orbit around Mercury after six and a half years in transit. Great stuff - can’t wait to see what images and science come out of the mission over the next few years!
For a while I was tracking MESSENGER’s status and the early images that have come back from the flybys its done so far have been stunning. For...
August 2010
1 post
July 2010
1 post
Slashdot Struggles to Remain Relevant in The... →
Sad to read about the decline of Slashdot.org in recent years. I admit that after being a heavy user 2 years ago I rarely go on the site anymore. Just as the research shows, I now go to news.yc and my feeds on Google Reader for my daily news. The king is dead. Long live the king!
June 2010
1 post
May 2010
2 posts
April 2010
5 posts
Mission to Jupiter's Moons: Drilling for Ice →
We need more missions like this:
Jupiter’s moon Europa is thought to harbor a liquid ocean beneath its icy crust, and many scientists believe that life could inhabit this watery environment. In February, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that they will be collaborating on a new mission to Jupiter and its four largest moons.
1 tag
March 2010
4 posts
“Someone Great” by LCD Soundsystem off...
The Multiplying Mystery of Moonwater →
Apparently the Moon contains an enormous amount of water — funny considering we thought that it contained none…
Moonwater. Look it up. You won’t find it. It’s not in the dictionary.
That’s because we thought, until recently, that the Moon was just about the driest place in the solar system. Then reports of...
February 2010
4 posts
Spirit's Journey to the Center of Mars →
Spirit, one of the two Mars rovers that landed way back in January 2004, is now permanently stuck in the dirt. Had to happen sometime. But, it’s still able to do good science while stationary. Spirit will now help scientists at the JPL learn more about Mars’ core by measuring small variations in its precession about its axis. From the article:
Mars is...
Analysts on the iPad: It's a Winner →
Thanks to ReadWriteWeb.
The Economist: Davos Overview →
The Economist summarizes the World Economic Forum at Davos quite succinctly. My favorite point:
Capitalist of the week: Stephen Schwarzman, a private-equity tycoon and boss of Blackstone Group. He made little effort to contain his glee at the profit opportunities he has found during the economic crisis, and his hope that Barack Obama will press ahead with his latest banking reforms—which should...
January 2010
9 posts
Horizontal Evolution →
Some interesting developments in research on Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolution. Courtesy of Slashdot.
Very Nerdy Interviews on Hardware/Software Setups →
Thanks to Simplebits for pointing this out. These are great interviews where leading web designers and techies discuss what setups they use - great stuff!
2010 Techcrunch Crunchies Winners →
5 Great Blogs For Funding Advice →
Courtesy of ReadWriteWeb.
The 50 Most-Blogged Albums of 2009, Streaming... →
Courtesy of ReadWriteWeb.
The Dark Side of the Late 2009 M&A Surge →
Off of Techcrunch.
Money Can't Buy Happiness →
From the Psy-Fi blog, courtesy of Abnormal Returns.
2010: My Fifth Annual List Of The Tech Products I... →
Courtesy of Techcrunch.
The Complete National Geographic →
All of National Geographic’s issues since 1888 on a single 160GB hard drive. Very cool. Thanks for pointing this out, Techmeme.
July 2009
1 post
Planck Telescope is the coldest object in space →
Now that the Planck Telescope has reached its operating temperature of 273.05C, it’s the coldest object in space - colder even than the cosmic radio background.
April 2009
2 posts
WatchDivinations - by Mastodon off of Crack The Skye
These guys are putting out the best metal these days, hands down. Loved them in the intro the Aqua Teen movie, too.
February 2009
1 post
NASA Announces New Mission to Jupiter and its Four... →
This is definitely a mission worth waiting for. NASA announced today that they’re planning a new mission to Jupiter, set to depart in 2020 and arrive in 2026, in conjunction with the ESA. The mission would also visit Jupiter’s four moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. From the article:
Europa has a surface of ice, and scientists theorize it has an ocean of water beneath that...
January 2009
5 posts
Strange Asteroid Stalks the Earth →
The Universe Today gives word that a 10m diameter asteroid has been discovered following the earth in a nearly identical orbit. It never strays by more than 0.1au, although it poses no danger to us (closest approach will be 644,000 km from the Earth - outside of the Moon’s orbit). For the moment, at least, the earth has a mini-Moon!
Teleporting a Quantum State to Distant Matter →
This month’s issue of Science carries news that physicists have succeeded in ‘teleporting’ matter over the distance of 1 meter through quantum entanglement. Although researchers were able to entangle photons successfully about 10 years ago, no one had succeeded in entangling full atoms before. In this experiment, two ytterbium ions were entangled such that the exact quantum...
Mars Rovers Roll On To Five Years →
As of today, the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity are entering the sixth year of their 3 month mission. It’s amazing what good engineering can do.
Peak Lithium →
In all the hubbub over Peak Oil, other potential shortages are being ignored. An interesting one that the Next 100 blog covers is Peak Lithium. Lithium is the critical ingredient in our best battery technologies, and society is becoming more and more reliant on its availability. Seeing as batteries are the major limiting factor in many of the newest, coolest technologies this poses a real...
December 2008
3 posts
Nothing Weighs Something →
More exciting research into Dark Energy, as found in BBC News.
“Putting all of this data together gives us the strongest evidence yet that dark energy is the cosmological constant, or in other words, that ‘nothing weighs something’,” said Alexey Vikhlinin, who led the research from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, US.
Nothing weighs something...
Global Temperature for November Fourth Warmest on... →
The NOAA just released the climate report for the month of November - doesn’t look so good…
For November alone, the month is fourth warmest all-time globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature. The early assessment is based on records dating back to 1880.
Also…
Arctic sea ice extent in 2008 reached its second lowest melt season extent on record in ...
November 2008
6 posts
NASA Prepares for New Juno Mission to Jupiter →
We’ll have to wait 8 years, but this is bound to be a pretty cool mission. I think it could be improved by a couple of flybys of Jupiter’s moons, but I guess you can’t have everything.
‘I Choose’ by The Offspring off of Ixnay on the...
August 2008
6 posts
Going on Sabbatical
So, in two days I begin my fall term of classes at Tuck. It still remains to be seen how busy I’ll be, but my strong suspicion is that I won’t have much time for posting new music up here. I hope to return to it as soon as possible.
I’m pretty sure that Beck’s new album Modern Guilt is going to be the one to see me through the term. Although it clocks it at only a...
I was going to put up another song from my...
‘Eulogy’ by Tool off of Ænima
Simply...