ideas about science and the cosmos
Archive for June, 2010
Are we to venture out into space?
Jun 22nd
This bold question asked by Carl Sagan makes us ask ourselves, are we ready? when will we be?
For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness.
This excerpt is from Sagan’s book ‘Pale Blue Dot : A vision of the human future in space’.
While Cosmos is a great piece of work, I hope this clip may interest you into seeking out Carl Sagan’s other contributions, such as his books.
You can listen to the first 5 chapters of this audiobook on a YouTube playlist here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpb7j3-1REM&feature=PlayList&p=38D15D3C59501F95&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=11
Fibonacci and Nature by Numbers
Jun 15th
If you’ve watched the movie Pi, you probably remember hearing about Fibonacci’s number, related to the golden ratio. It’s a sequence of numbers that when graphed, creates a pattern, often spiral structures, found in nature at a surprising frequency. Math is often thought to be a boring and repetitive process of reciting formulas and algorithms just to produce more numbers. While that does hold true to some extent, there are some pretty amazing things that mathematics, and especially their application to geometry, reveal. As creatures with a strong innate ability to seek patterns, revealing them in often simplistic geometry of mathematic patterns can be quite intriguing.
The nautilus shell above illustrates the golden ration as found within a natural construct. If you were to graph the parts of the shell in boxes, you’d find that each part nearly perfectly is a ratio of the other greater parts.
To further illustrate this effect, the following video “Nature by Numbers” very beautifully shows just how stunning the geometry in nature is, despite our preconceptions that most of nature is random and difficult to measure.
Wonders of the Solar System
Jun 14th
BBC2′s Wonders of the Solar System is an awesome series in which Professor Brian Cox highlights how the laws of nature have created amazing wonders across our entire Solar System. I’ve been working hard to bring some excellent scientific series here, in one convenient place, and this series doesn’t fail to invoke a sense of wonder at the reality and workings of our universe. Professor Brian Cox brings the passion and inspiration of science that the world needs more of. I’m also thrilled to see BBC is keeping up their trend of producing high quality, interesting, and engaging documentaries and series to keep the public interested in science.
You can see other things the BBC has be doing in the feild of science media here http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/, but sadly their native player doesn’t work for people in the U.S. I’ve been keeping track of what BBC puts out and try to capture it on YouTube and bring it here to this sites video collection.
Wonders of the Solar System Trailer
When you’ve decided you want to watch this entire series, you can watch all 5 episodes here.
On another note, how the hell does Brian Cox look so young, he’s 42!
Wooden Spacecraft?
Jun 14th
Australian artist Peter Hennessey decided that many of our spacecraft are more or less “in our minds” and not as tangible as other technological machines like say, a car or crane. So he set about recreating many life-sized spacecraft in plywood, steel and canvas, and the results are pretty awesome.
Check out his website for more info and pictures
Facebook integration complete
Jun 10th
I’ve been trying to get wordpress to cross-post to my facebook lately and just today managed to get it working. It’ll let me share my blog with friends who are more likely to be interested in what I’m writing about, as well as allow people to ignore the application posts just for my blog in case its too spammy for them.
Thanks again to all my return readers, it helps keep me going feeling like I’m doing my little part to help others become scientifically literate, or at least inspire an interest and desire in science and discovery. The world needs more scientists and critical thinkers to help move humanity forward to the stars.
Science is the greatest of adventure stories
Jun 10th
Brian Greene, string theory evangelist, introduces his big idea to help open the Ideas Festival. Greene connects this to a need for better understanding and education of science in the American education system.
Greene illustrates so precisely just how essential science and discovery is to the human species. His ending quote sums up my main argument for the need for public interest in the universe :
The wonders of the cosmos transcend everything that divides us.
Video Updates
Jun 10th
Hasn’t been too many updates lately. I’ve been focusing heavily on the video component of the website. I’ve almost got a fully functional player designed specifically for linking together series of YouTube videos seamlessly. To see an example of the new video player, check out my recently added series “Wonders of the Universe“, and “Mars Underground“.
To keep ya interested, here’s an awesome image depicting Saturn’s aurorae.
