24 July 2010
HP dv6t Select Edition Notebook Review: First Impressions
Please excuse me while I geek out about my new laptop… My work now involves some really significant number crunching, to the point that I was regularly using all the CPU and RAM of my previous laptop, and was then struggling to get anything else done while the calculations were running. And then they would crash. It also helps that I will soon need to renew the license on one …
23 July 2010
The Science of Starcraft: Creepy Slime Molds
My second article is up over at my new Science of Starcraft blog! This one is about the weird substance in the game called “creep” and its similarities to real-world slime-molds. Check it out! Even if you don’t play Starcraft, slime molds are really cool/weird. (PS – I swear I’ll be posting some real Martian Chronicles content soon instead of just pointing to articles elsewhere! But I’m trying to get …
22 July 2010
New Deep Sea Vents Discovered in the Caribbean
Here’s the second of my recent Universe Today Articles: scientists have discovered new deep sea vents in the Caribbean that will teach us more about sunless ecosystems. Good to know if we ever want to look for life in the oceans of Europa some day! Check out the article here.
WISE Maps the Sky
I have two new articles up at Universe Today! The first is about the WISE infrared survey of the entire sky, which involved approximately a bazillion images, including the lovely view of the Pleiades shown here. You should go check it out.
21 July 2010
The Science of Starcraft
In 1998 the computer game Starcraft came out, setting the bar for real-time strategy games for the next decade. I loved playing Starcraft, and spent more time that I’d like to admit doing so. Starcraft also gave me my first taste of computer programming: the game came with a “map editor” which let you construct your own maps, including simple if-then statements. IF an enemy unit enters my base THEN …
19 July 2010
New Evidence for an Ocean on Mars?
There’s a new Nature Geoscience paper that has made a big splash in the Mars community, reviving interest in the possibility of a northern ocean. This news was making the rounds a couple weeks ago, but I decided to hold off because at last week’s Mars Journal Club we discussed the paper. The idea behind the paper is deceptively simple. The authors, Gaetano DiAchille and Brian Hynek, searched all over …
15 July 2010
Hubble Confirms Comet-like Tail on Vaporizing Planet
Aren’t you glad our planet isn’t being vaporized by the heat of the sun? Me too, especially after writing this article over at Universe Today about an extrasolar planet that is suffering this fate. Go check it out!
14 July 2010
Absence of Mind on the Daily Show
I normally like the Daily Show, but I had a problem with the July 8 interview with Marilynne Robinson about her new book, Absence of Mind . I had never heard of this book before, but it appears to be a discussion of the conflict between science and religion, with the message that scientific thinking does not fully take into account the complexities of the human mind. Okay, interesting topic. …
12 July 2010
Microsoft goes to Mars
Today, NASA and Microsoft announced a very cool new addition to Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope (WWT) program: Mars images! Yep, now you can use WWT to cruise around Mars and to view the planet with a handful of datasets, including 13,000 mind-blowingly high-resolution HiRISE images, and even more almost-as-high-resolution MOC images. There is also the standard MOLA colorized topography and a low-resolution approximately true color map. It’s great to see all …
11 July 2010
Review: On the Beach
Last week I reviewed the post-apocalyptic horror novel I am Legend. As it so happens, I am Legend was a rather short book, and I finished it only partway through a rather long weekend of traveling to and from a wedding in Wyoming. I was already in a post-apocalyptic mood, so I bought a copy of the classic post-apocalypse novel On the Beach by Nevil Shute for my Kindle. On …
