Record Close Asteroid Flyby Only Weeks Away
On February 15th, 2012, an asteroid named "2012 - DA14", about half the size of a football field, will fly within 17,200 miles of Earth - that's closer than many man-made satellites. Astronomers have never seen an object this large come so close to our planet, however NASA has stated that it poses no problem..
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For thousands of years we have wrestled with the great questions of existence. Who are we? What is the world made of? How did we get here? The quest to answer these is the story of science.
Medical journalist Michael Mosley traces the often unpredictable path we have taken. From recreating a famous alchemist’s experiment, to following in Galileo’s footsteps, and putting himself in the hands of a hypnotist, Michael unpicks how science has changed the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our world.
It is a tale of courage and of fear, of hope and disaster, of persistence and success. It interweaves great forces of history – revolutions, voyages of discovery and artistic movements – with practical, ingenious inventions and the dogged determination of experimenters and scientists.
This is the story of how history made science and how science made history, and how the ideas which emerged made the modern world.
Part 1 of 6
1. What Is Out There? How we came to understand our planet was not at the center of everything in the cosmos.
2. What Is The World Made Of? How atomic theories and concepts of quantum physics underpin modern technology.
3. How Did We Get Here? Michael Mosley tells how scientists came to explain the diversity of life on earth.
4. Can We Have Unlimited Power? The story of how power has been harnessed from wind, steam and from inside the atom.
5. What is the Secret of Life? Michael Moseley tells the story of how the secret of life has been unraveled through the prism of the most complex organism known – the human body.
6. Who Are We? The twin sciences of brain anatomy and psychology have offered different visions of who we are. Now these sciences are coming together and in the process have revealed some surprising and uncomfortable truths about what really shapes our thoughts, feelings and desires.
Hypatia [ca. AD 350–370] was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, who was a teacher of mathematics with the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt. A center of Greek intellectual and cultural life, the Museum included many independent schools and the great library of Alexandria.
Hypatia studied with her father, and with many others including Plutarch the Younger. She herself taught at the Neoplatonist school of philosophy. She became the salaried director of this school in 400. She probably wrote on mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, including about the motions of the planets, about number theory and about conic sections.
Hypatia corresponded with and hosted scholars from others cities. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, was one of her correspondents and he visited her frequently. Hypatia was a popular lecturer, drawing students from many parts of the empire.
From the little historical information about Hypatia that survives, it appears that she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope, with Synesius of Greece, who was her student and later colleague.
Hypatia dressed in the clothing of a scholar or teacher, rather than in women's clothing. She moved about freely, driving her own chariot, contrary to the norm for women's public behavior. She exerted considerable political influence in the city.
Orestes, the governor of Alexandria, like Hypatia, was a pagan (non-Christian). Orestes was an adversary of the new Christian bishop, Cyril, a future saint. Orestes, according to the contemporary accounts, objected to Cyril expelling the Jews from the city, and was murdered by Christian monks for his opposition.
Cyril probably objected to Hypatia on a number of counts: She represented heretical teachings, including experimental science and pagan religion. She was an associate of Orestes. And she was a woman who didn't know her place. Cyril's preaching against Hypatia is said to have been what incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks in 415 to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. They dragged her from her chariot and, according to accounts from that time, stripped her, killed her, stripped her flesh from her bones, scattered her body parts through the streets, and burned some remaining parts of her body in the library of Caesareum.
Hypatia's students fled to Athens, where the study of mathematics flourished after that. The Neoplatonic school she headed continued in Alexandria until the Arabs invaded in 642.
When the library of Alexandria was burned by the Arab conquerors, used as fuel for baths, the works of Hypatia were destroyed. We know her writings today through the works of others who quoted her -- even if unfavorably -- and a few letters written to her by contemporaries.
Hypatia and Alexandria 1/5
Hypatia and Alexandria 2/5
Hypatia and Alexandria 3/5
Hypatia and Alexandria 4/5
Hypatia and Alexandria 5/5
Yet another intriguing scientific mystery from the BBC's 'Horizon' series.
Tut's gem
"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it was older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.
But the glass was itself a scientific enigma. How did it get there and who or what made it? "
BBC Horizon Tutankhamun's Fireball
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Is it time to take a break from the bullshit of the current political conventions [both sides] and exercise your brain?
"The Singularity Summit is the premiere futurist conference (it's happening in New York City on October 15 and 16).
Among the speakers is Current TV's Jason Silva, the director of the forthcoming documentary, Turning into Gods. Taking a page from Timothy Leary, the folks behind the Whole Earth Catalog, Ray Kurzweil, and other visionaries, Silva's work looks at the ways in technological progress is allowing humans to direct their own evolution. And the ways in which prohibitionists of all stripes push back on new ways of being human.
"People have always sort of been scared of new technologies," says Silva. "But in the end we assimilate them and they improve the quality of our lives."
Jason Silva on Awe
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Jason Silva on "Turning Into Gods"
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RADICAL OPENNESS with Jason Silva for TEDGlobal
Last Blue Moon Until 2015 Appears Friday
"Your last chance to see a blue moon until 2015 will come around this Friday (Aug. 31), but don't expect an azure hue in the sky.
In fact, "blue moon" refers not to color, but to rarity. Blue moons are defined as either the fourth full moon in a season, or, more recently, as the second full moon in a month. It's the second definition that covers August's blue moon; the month's first full moon was on Aug. 1.
Blue moons happen because our calendar months don't precisely sync with the moon's orbit. It takes the moon 29.5 days to wax and wane from full to new to full again. With the exception of February, months are longer than that, meaning that once in a while the timing works out so there are two full moons in one month."
Alien Log, a novel by Dr. Robert Farrell
At only 264 pages 'Alien Log' [available in paperback or Kindle editions] is a fast, well constructed, science based SF novel. Though I kept asking myself if it were really just a novel, or perhaps actual fact cloaked as fiction.
"Meticulously scientific, well researched novel of the case for Intelligent Life in the Universe, and particularly covering UFOs and "Aliens" and their probable origin and purpose in communicating, interacting and dealing with humankind. It is a delightful read for anyone interested at all in these compelling subjects. It also has an extensive bibliography, to help you extend your own research into these subjects. The fiction is very well handled and dialog between characters helps to enrich the novel with the science behind it." [Barbara L. Lindquist]
Coast to Coast AM with Dr. Robert Farrell
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Team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity Mars rover's final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars .
It may be described as reasoned - even genius - engineering. But even the engineers who designed it agree it looks crazy. Six vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, 500,000 lines of code, zero margin for error. What exactly will it take to land NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, on the surface of Mars on Aug. 5? The latest video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory breaks down all "7 minutes of terror."
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My early adolescence was made special by an inordinate love of reading, and few authors were more special to me than Ray Bradbury. The first of his many books that I purchased was The Martian Chronicles in 1951.
Ray Bradbury, Dead at 91, Taught Generations of Readers How to Dream
"The fantasy writer Ray Bradbury scorned the label of “science-fiction writer” and taught generations of readers the benefits of letting their imaginations run wild. . . "
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. . . and a more lyrical view of the same concept by that poet/astronomer Carl Sagan:
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