August 4, 2006
Super Planemo Brothers
A press release from the European Southern Observatory reports that a pair of planetary mass objects (’Planemos’) have been discovered.
Both objects have masses similar to those of extra-solar giant planets, but they are not in orbit around a star - instead they appear to circle each other. The existence of such a double system puts strong constraints on formation theories of free-floating planetary mass objects. The ‘Planemo’ Twins
One of the scientists involved in the discovery, Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, says (my text in brackets):
[The pair of twins] mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery.
Besides the fact that this is an interesting story in and of itself, it’s Jayawardhana’s quote that struck a chord in me. When many people talk about science, they tend to paraphrase Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. “Hamlet”, Act 1 scene 5
What actually makes science so strong is the fact that science itself (generally, apart from a few scientists) knows this to be the case, and goes out of it’s way to discover these things!
March 15, 2005
Destroying The Earth
It’s not easy to annihilate our world, at least according to Sam Hughes’ How To Destroy The Earth anyway. I won’t spoil it by giving anything away, but I like Mike Trainor’s wonderfully devious method best!
Please let me know if you have any success with these or any other tactics by posting a comment - don’t use my main site contact form as I’m likely to be a little busy…!
via Bruce Schneier
September 30, 2004
Quick, Getafix, Toutatis is Here
Yesterday saw the approach of the asteroid Toutatis, the closest approach of any extraterrestrial body of comparable size this century.
Despite not venturing any closer to us than 4x the distance between the Earth and the Moon, I think it might be time that more people on the planet showed a little extra concern at potential impacts from this type of object - did you see anything on the news about this particular encounter? Take a look at the Torino Scale and recognise that a category red collision is due, possibly sooner rather than later…
And by the way, the title of this entry refers to the rather wonderful Asterix cartoons - Toutatis is the Gaulish god of the village!
August 6, 2004
Alone Again Or…
A number of reports are suggesting that, rather than the likelihood of our Solar System being relatively typical, it’s formation may in fact be quite rare. As Randall Parker points out, current techniques lean toward looking for larger, massive objects, but the Keplar mission (set for possible launch in June 2007) should begin to help in the search for more terrestrial planets.
September 10, 2003
Gaugin The Bass Again *
Scientists at the Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the deepest musical note ever heard. The single note (it’s a B-flat, 57 octaves below middle C) has apparently been sounding for 2.5 billion years.
As Bomb The Bass once said: “Beat, Beat, B-B-Beat Dis!!“
Discovered via Slashdot
* a delicate little track from Bass Inc. - don’t you just love Coldcut!?!
