You are browsing the archive for March 2015 - Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal.
28 March 2015
We Already Have Pi Day, But Why Not 60 Seconds for Euler?
Fareed Zakaria of CNN has a very good piece in the Washington Post about STEM and I must say that it makes a lot of sense, although you might not think I would from the title. Check out “Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous” and then come back here for more. Ok, so your back and I hope you agree with what he said, because I do, and …
25 March 2015
New Horizons is Approaching Pluto. Here’s How Very, Very, Far Away Pluto Is
Most folks are surprised to know that we have no idea what the surface of Pluto looks like. Even using the Hubble Telescope, we only see a bright star like image, but that is about to change this summer when the New Horizon’s spacecraft flies by it. We are sure to see some strange features on both Pluto and its moons. Would you like to help name them? I’ll tell …
23 March 2015
Neil deGrasse Tyson Rocks 60 Minutes
In case you missed it, Neil deGrasse Tyson was profiled on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday, his attention grabbing interview explaining in itself why he is America’s best science communicator. He mentions at the start something I wrote about back in 2009, the most famous photo ever taken, and the stunning impact it has had on how we see ourselves since. The interview on 60 Minutes is below, in case you missed …
20 March 2015
Everything You Thought You Knew About the First Day of Spring is Probably Wrong
The Vernal Equinox (for 2015) occurs at 2245 GMT Friday, and there’s a good chance that just about everything else you were taught about it is wrong. Don’t say it’s the first day of spring, because that’s true only in a traditional sense, and most certainly not a scientific one, and if you live in the Southern Hemisphere it’s wrong on both accounts! The quarter of the year between …
18 March 2015
NOAA: Earth Had Warmest Winter On Record
Earth just had it’s warmest winter on record, and this past February was the second warmest on record. This from NOAA/NCDC During February, the average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.48°F (0.82°C) above the 20th century average. This was the second highest for February in the 1880–2015 record. The highest temperature occurred in 1998, at 1.55°F (0.86°C) above average. During February, the globally-averaged land surface temperature was 3.02°F …
Why Dennis Mersereau at Gawker is Wrong About Fahrenheit Being A Better Temperature Scale
I enjoy Dennis Mersereau’s pieces on Gawker, and I suspect his piece (touting the superiority of the OLD Fahrenheit scale) was covertly designed to get a thousand ugly comments from those of us who live metrically, and apparently it worked. Now, I suspect that most of Fahrenheit’s dwindling number of supporters are the type who have trouble remembering if 0.04 is 4 tenth’s or 4 hundredth’s, and are of the …
17 March 2015
Severe Geomagnetic Storm May Light Up the Sky with Irish Green Tonight
Two coronal mass ejections over the weekend have arrived at Earth, and are producing a severe geomagnetic storm this evening. Besides causing long-range radio/GPS communication problems, it is already lighting up the aurora, and there is a decent chance of seeing the sky dance with a colorful display of the northern lights later tonight. A good measure of your chance to see the lights is the Kp index, and as …
This Being my Bi-Annual rant on Daylight/Summer Time
I’ve not taken the time to research it, but I suspect summer time leads to poorer short term weather forecasts, the reason being we get the evening model guidance an hour later. This means forecasters like me cannot see all the latest data before the 10/11 PM newscasts, but that said, I’ll let John Oliver at HBO make my case this year, as he does it much better than I …
15 March 2015
Harry Baker’s Love Poem For Lonely Prime Numbers
Blogs about science do not often have poetry, and when they do I suspect it’s not what most folks would call good poetry, but here is an exception, and I think you’ll agree, thanks to Harry Baker, it’s an exceptional exception. Baker is studying maths in the UK, and this Ted Talk is from an event in Exeter, a PRIME location I should mention, to explore the beautiful south and …
13 March 2015
Fall Streaks On GOES Imagery
Fall streaks are an amazing phenomena and when they happen, we meteorologists get inundated with calls from the public. We usually miss the calls because we are all out taking pics of them, and rarely conditions can be just right to see a lot of them. This happened in West Virginia/Kentucky yesterday, and they were clearly visible in the visible GOES Satellite images as well. You can see them …