Victoria
Saturday 19 March 2011
Wednesday 22 September 2010
The anti-science brigade ramps it up
Galileo Was Wrong is a detailed and comprehensive treatment of the scientific evidence supporting Geocentrism, the academic belief that the Earth is immobile in the center of the universe. Garnering scientific information from physics, astrophysics, astronomy and other sciences, Galileo Was Wrong shows that the debate between Galileo and the Catholic Church was much more than a difference of opinion about the interpretation of Scripture.
Scientific evidence available to us within the last 100 years that was not available during Galileo's confrontation shows that the Church's position on the immobility of the Earth is not only scientifically supportable, but it is the most stable model of the universe and the one which best answers all the evidence we see in the cosmos.
At this rate it won't be long before these jolly souls join the flat earthers in positioning themselves for a comeback via a membership drive.
The University of Western Australia has a survey Attitudes Towards Science currently online:
This study explores people’s beliefs about a wide range of topics, ranging from scientific propositions to claims made in the media and on the internet. In addition, the survey is interested in your attitudes towards your own life and issues confronting modern societies at the moment. The survey consists of around 40 questions and should take less than 10 minutes to complete.
Friday 3 September 2010
Bolt's lack of research exposed yet again
If the rest of the Australian mainstream media and blogosphere made as many factual errors as journalist Andrew Bolt there would barely be a handful of people left in this country who were using the Internet to read news and current affairs.
Crikey's Pure Poison outed Bolt for his latest blunder in The Herald-Sun on 31 August 2010 set out here:
An asteroid more than a mile wide is heading for earth, posing the greatest threat yet by an object approaching the planet, scientists have warned.
The asteroid – called 2002 NT7 – was spotted only three weeks ago, but could strike on 1 February 2019, the US space agency Nasa said…
Gerrit Verschuur, an astrophysicist and radio astronomer at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, said the impact would create a fireball so intense it would kill anyone who could see it, after which material thrown into the air would shower half the world with flaming debris. "It would be as if the sky itself had caught fire," he said.
The heat would set fire to forests and cities, after which dust would fill the atmosphere, obscuring the sun for a month. That in turn would kill plants and animals, so that only creatures that lived underground would have a strong chance of survival.
Same apocalyptic scenario as the global warmists' own, but missing that vital ingredient for a new mass faith - a narrative of human sin and the punishment to come.
(Thanks to reader Warwick.)
Now a sensible person would have looked at that link to Newshoggers and double checked with NASA and its Near Earth Object Program, but not Mr. Bolt - that would have spoiled his dig at climate change science.
For those who are interested in seeing how few objects pose a real risk there is NASA's Sentry Risk Table . As I write there is only one risk impact on a scale of 0 to 10 that is presently indicated as meriting "careful monitoring" and, it is not Bolt's asteroid of doom (discovered in 2002) and it is not due until sometime between 2048 and 2057.
In fact the asteroid Bolt mentions seems to have been removed from the Sentry Risk Table sometime between mid-2002 and 2004 because the risk was so low as to be negligible over the next one hundred years.
Friday 30 July 2010
NASA turns poet
Magnetic fields shake
Beware the spacequake
Vortices swirl
plasma a'twirl
Richter predicts
a magnitude six
Sunday 11 July 2010
While we are sleeping a total eclipse of the sun is occurring in the South Pacific on 11-12 July 2010
Animated map from NASA
While the NSW North Coast and the rest of Australia sleeps the Sun will be giving a spectacular light show for those lucky enough to live elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean on 11 July 2010 according to ABC News:
The next partial eclipse which we will possibly be able to see here on the east coast will be on 14 November 2010 but the next total eclipse won't be until 22 July 2028.
First, the Moon's cool shadow will sweep across the landscape, bringing a breeze of its own to compete with the sea's. Attentive observers might notice shadow bands (a well-known but mysterious corrugation of the Moon's outermost shadow) rippling across the beach as the temperature and direction of the wind shifts. The ensuing darkness will have an alien quality, not as black as genuine night, but dark enough to convince seabirds to fly to their island roosts. As their cries subside, the sounds of night creatures come to the fore, a noontime symphony of crickets and frogs.Next comes the moment that obsesses eclipse chasers: The corona pops into view. When the Moon is dead-center in front of the sun, mesmerizing tendrils of gas spread across the sky. It is the sun's outer atmosphere on full display to the human eye.
Solar eclipse over Cook Islandson 22 July 2009 from NASA files
Saturday 10 July 2010
Cultural dimension to glimpsing infinity
The space telescope was launched in May last year on a mission to survey the "cosmic microwave background" – ancient light left over from the big bang.
The bright streak across the middle of the picture is our own galaxy, the Milky Way, viewed edge-on. The intense light comes not from stars but from the radiation released by the dust and gas clouds that stretch between them. [The Guardian U.K. 4 July 2010 text and photograph]
Saturday 1 May 2010
Scientific exploration as art
Friday 23 April 2010
Tuesday 20 October 2009
Centuries old celestial dust trails to produce Orionid meteors visible in both hemispheres 21-23 October 2009 [links to sky maps]
In the International Year of Astronomy Australians will be able to see what is predicted to be a splendid celestial night show from 21 to 23 October 2009 peaking on Thursday night.
Radiating out across the sky from a point between the constellations Gemini and Orion and just below Betelgeuse (Orion's red star) will be meteors caused by ancient debris from Halley's Comet.
On average the Orionid shower produces 20 meteors every hour at its peak (less seen with the naked eye in Australia) and 2am to 4am looking east to north-east is probably the best time for viewing from the Southern Hemisphere.
NASA information page
Sydney Observatory night sky map for October 2009 This star chart shows the stars and constellations visible in the night sky for Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth for October 2009 at about 8.30 pm (summer time). For Darwin and similar locations the chart will still apply, but some stars will be lost off the southern edge while extra stars will be visible to the north. Stars down to a brightness or magnitude limit of 4.5 are shown on the star chart. To use this star chart, rotate the chart so that the direction you are facing (north, south, east or west) is shown at the bottom. The centre of the chart represents the point directly above your head, called the zenith point, and the outer circular edge represents the horizon.
Orionid Sky Map 1
Orionid Sky Map 2
Saturday 17 October 2009
Bright winding ribbon discovered at edge of solar system - it's the Universe waving Earth goodbye
Saturday 10 October 2009
Funniest line of the week.......
From The Borowitz Report:
Elsewhere, NASA bombed the moon, saying it was the one spot President Bush missed.
Monday 31 August 2009
Best political & intergalactic tweets seen recently and other stray thoughts
A Scots farmer is now officially riding on the sheep's back as he took home a record £231,000 for a stud ram, named Deveronvale Perfection.
GODWIN Grech, the Treasury official at the centre of the fake email affair, proposed a fee deal to the merchant bank running the OzCar fund whose chairman was a key backer and personal donor to Malcolm Turnbull.The effect of the deal was to enable Credit Suisse, the bank hired by Treasury to implement OzCar, to maintain its $5 million in fees, despite the fund being scaled back from $2 billion to $1.3bn. The Weekend Australian can reveal that John O'Sullivan, the chairman of investment banking for Credit Suisse, donated more than $20,000 to the Wentworth Forum, the Opposition Leader's political fighting fund. According to The Australian on 29th August 2009.
Australia spammed outerspace on 28 August 2009 with 25,800 messages from Earth to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our solar system which may support life of some sort. These messages will take 20 years to reach this planet - at which time expect an intergalactic spam filter to activate.
Best intergalactic tweet from the Hello from Earth project:
"Yidigunmardin nuruku yajingewa wuremulu jandange. Our dream, we're telling to them young kids. We're talking all this dream for the future.
Yidumduma Bill Harney
Wardaman people, near Katherine, Australia"
Monday 17 August 2009
Thoughts of the Global Financial Crisis & Climate Change not bringing you down? Then try NASA's Asteroid Watch
Feeling rather guilty because there are still some days when you wake up smiling?
The answer is a mouse click away!
The US Government space agency NASA has gone all Flash Gordon over at Asteroid Watch:
"Nuclear explosions and spacecraft impacts are two of the more relatively mature options for deflecting Earth-threatening objects and they have been studied in some detail (for example, see Ref. 1). Another option has been suggested for the small subset of asteroids that might also pass close to the Earth a few years prior to the predicted Earth impact. For these unique cases, the pre-impact close encounter affects the asteroid's motion so strongly that a relatively tiny change in its velocity prior to the close approach will be multiplied several fold during the flyby, thus allowing the asteroid to miss the Earth on the next pass. In these relatively infrequent cases, even the very modest gravitational attraction between the asteroid and a nearby "micro-thrusting" spacecraft (nicknamed a "gravity tractor") could provide enough of a change in the asteroid's velocity that an Earth collision could be avoided (see Ref. 2). Successful mitigation requires that a threatening asteroid must be discovered and physically characterized soon enough to allow the appropriate response; the current NASA Near-Earth Object Observations program is operated with this in mind. But, since the number of near-Earth asteroids increases as their sizes decrease, we are most likely to be hit by the relatively small objects that are most difficult to find ahead of time. As a result, consideration must also be given to the notification and evacuation of those regions on Earth that would be affected by the imminent collision of a small, recently-discovered impactor. However, if the object could be found far enough ahead of time and our space technology used to deflect it from the Earth threatening trajectory, it would be a tremendous demonstration of our space-faring capabilities!"
Yup! Always knew that a hot rock banging on the noggin was a
Wednesday 12 August 2009
Hello from Earth 12 August 2009: phones are now open to contact E.T.
Tuesday 11 August 2009
August 2009 is Perseid Meteor Shower Month
From 11-13 August numerous meteors will be visible travelling across the sky from 3am onwards if you live north of Brisbane and above that latitude elsewhere in Australia.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
First Dog and Ned the Bear with a few home truths about the Moon and Mars...
Sometimes when the mainstream media is in full flight commemorative flight as it was last week over the 40th anniversary of the U.S. landing on the Moon, one can sometimes feel out of sync with supposed public sentiment when thoughts and memories don't appear to coincide with mass recollection.
However, in this instance all those not in lock step were rescued by First Dog on the Moon and Ned the Bear.
Thank the gods for Australian cartoonists.
Cartoons from First Dog at Crikey and Ned the Bear
Tuesday 21 July 2009
Longest solar eclipse of the century on evening of Tuesday 21 and sunrise of Wednesday 22 July 2009 (beginning in India)
2003 total solar eclipse in Antarctica
Monday 20 July 2009
The Moon...........
Tuesday 9 December 2008
NASA features NSW night sky as December smiley face picture
Explanation: At sunset, Monday's western sky showed off stunning colors and dramatic clouds reflected in Brisbane Water on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. It also featured the remarkable conjunction of the crescent Moon, Venus, and Jupiter forming a twilight smiley face. While the gathering of the two bright planets and Moon awed skygazers around planet Earth, astronomer Mike Salway reports taking special pains to record this gorgeous view, braving mosquitos and rain squalls along a soggy shore. His southern hemisphere perspective finds brilliant Venus at the highest point in the celestial grouping. For now, a bright pairing of Venus and Jupiter continues to dominate the western horizon after sunset but the Moon has moved on and tonight is near its first quarter phase. [NASA APOD]
A News.com.au collection of readers photographs found here.