There are more things in heaven and earth

The star PSR B1509-58 appears to take the shape of a human hand and reach out as it dies – 17,000 year ago.  The light just now reaches our eyes.

What’s really out there

Night Sky Over Flagstaff, Arizona. April 16, 2008

From NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day.”

Flagstaff, the first “International Dark Sky City,” maintains a lighting code that limits lights from polluting the nighttime view of the sky.

Clearly Arizona is hogging all the stars.

Don’t do me any favors

As you may recall, I have a bit of an issue with the phrase “do me a solid” when used to mean “do me a favor” rather than “Sweetie, please take a dump now, for Mommy.”  (Oddly, it’s also the most popular post on this blog, hands down.)

This morning, it got worse.  Bill Simmons, a funny ESPN sportswriter and Boston fan, writes that he wants to “throw a solid to Andrew in Seattle.”  Is it me, or does this conjure up the image of those monkeys that toss their feces at each other?

(If they can can stand the smell of it.)

Stoplight

“The speed of light, as we’ve all heard, is a constant: 186,171 miles per second in a vacuum. But it is different in the real world, outside a vacuum; for instance, light not only bends but also slows ever so slightly when it passes through glass or water. Still, that’s nothing compared with what happens when [Lene Vestergaard] Hau shines a laser beam of light into a BEC [a form of matter called a Bost-Einstein condensate]: it’s like hurling a baseball into a pillow. “First, we got the speed down to that of a bicycle,” Hau says. “Now it’s at a crawl, and we can actually stop it—keep light bottled up entirely inside the BEC, look at it, play with it and then release it when we’re ready.”"

– from Smithsonian.com

Uh……wow.  I suppose stopping time isn’t far behind?

Anal crabs in Kauai

Before it falls into the sea

The California Coastal Records Project created this cool site where you can see an aerial photo of any portion of the California coast.  Here’s a favorite:

The sun will be blotted out

August 1, 2008

“Dancing 2008″ by Matt Harding

This is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen. (I would embed the video here, but you need to see it in high definition.)

There is still magic in the world. Check it out . . . “Dancing 2008″

(I’ve watched this several times and keep discovering wonderful details.  After you think you’re saturated with it, go back and watch it again, but try to ignore the location names and just focus on the places, then watch it again and focus just on the people dancing….Wow.)

“Planet Earth” on Discovery

This is an excellent series, with mind-blowing cinematography. Favorite so far has to be “Shallow Seas.” Worth the couch-time, but don’t forget to go see the real thing.