Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 5) starting at about 6:04 Eastern time, the planet Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun. This is a Rare Thing: the next time will be in 2117. There's been a lot of good science done using these transits in the past (like the first good estimates of the size of the solar system) and they still provide neat ( Read more... )

When we realized that our trip to see family in Los Angeles was going to line up with the (partial) solar eclipse, Kim and I made sure to bring a pair of the solar viewing glasses that Harvey Mudd sent out to alumni a few weeks ago. We were on our way to dinner when it started (after showing off the baby to a bunch of thrilled relatives all ( Read more... )

1. Months after changing from Pampers to Huggies, I have belatedly realized that every one of my daughter's diapers is covered with Pooh.
2. I've reached the conclusion that "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" is an innovative science fiction story about the social and economic impacts on modern human culture of the unexpected opening of some sort ( Read more... )

One of the things that still blows my mind about our studies of planets around other stars (beyond the simple fact that we can see them at all) is that astronomers are actually able to figure out the composition of their atmospheres. That's possible when a planet passes between us and its star: it creates a tiny shadow that dims the star's light ( Read more... )

Apparently, daddy is no comfort at all after the scary thunder wakes you up. Only mommy can help with that (and she'd better not try handing you off to daddy after that initial cuddle).

I'm not taking it too hard.

I am really excited by what I've heard about Planetary Resources, a private company that has just announced plans to mine near-earth asteroids for precious metals and other resources. Here's a write-up from the Bad Astronomy blog that goes into details: it sounds like these folks have a plausible business plan (as well as the necessary level of ( Read more... )

Lots of people seem to like this "Legend of Korra" show, and I've heard the helpful tip that it's viewable free on the Nickelodeon website. But... um... turns out I haven't managed to watch Avatar yet. How important or helpful would it be to see The Last Airbender before leaping into this newer show? Is there anyplace I can conveniently watch that ( Read more... )

Last December, the LHC experiments from CERN looking for the Higgs boson announced some pretty promising evidence that they had started to see it, and had measured its mass-energy at about 125 GeV. It wasn't clear enough to claim a true "discovery" yet, but it was promising. Today, scientists from Fermilab presented analysis of some of the last ( Read more... )

My "Physics of Video Games" talk at AlmaCon went beautifully. (The con as a whole seems to be going really well, too. Thank goodness!) Many thanks to those of you who suggested ideas: some of those confirmed the value of thoughts I'd already had and others filled exactly the gaps that I had been worried about finding good examples for. My turnout ( Read more... )

I'm looking for ideas!

I'm giving a talk on "The Physics of Gaming" at a small convention this weekend (run by our college anime/gaming club). My plan is to first talk about "good physics" (games where some aspect(s) of physics are done well and important), then about "bad physics" (games where some aspect of physics is horribly inaccurate), and ( Read more... )