Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Brian Cox was host of Wonders Of The Solar System on the BBC earlier this year. As I wrote in a previous post, the series was the first I have seen that surpassed Carl Sagan’s COSMOS.

TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) invited Cox to make a talk on exploration. I do not even have to watch it to know that I should post it here.

I cannot imagine that I’ll disagree with it.

OK, so now I have watched it.

Thought you might like to see the original presentation of Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. I have the audio. The pictures are from NASA. I might be pushing fair use but it’s only a small clip of audio from an hour long program, and I think Carl Sagan (If he were alive today, and witnessing for himself the war on science underway in America) would approve.

Oh and this- Look who just got an OBE (Order of the British Empire)! (Read down aways)

A HUGE bow to Dr. Michael Tobis of Only In It For The Gold. He found this video and posted it.
I am posting it too and EVERY person who blogs about science should post it as well. (Maybe I can start something here!)

I have several heroes (Everyone should have heroes). Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman and Neil DeGrasse Tyson are all near the top. Sagan and Feynman are no longer with us, but Tyson is thank goodness. He has stepped into Sagan’s shoes as the nations scientist. He fills them well.

Very well.

In case you do not know who Tyson is (which means your scientific literacy is lacking but perhaps not horribly so) then go here.

A link on the CNN website lead me to a couple of must see videos. Both are by vbs.tv. The first is on the most polluted city on Earth. Linfen, China.

You may not know it but about 1% of all air pollution in the United States is estimated to originate in China. It takes a lot of coal to make the electricity to run the factories that make all that stuff you see in Wal Mart and Best Buy and Ikea. The Asian Brown Cloud is HUGE.

The next video is also by VBS. It’s about the great garbage dump in the Pacific Gyre. The gyre is where ocean currents in the Pacific spiral together. It forms because of a semi permanent high pressure area that sits over the North Pacific. The clockwise flow of winds around this high blow across the water and induce the currents. Just like in the air, the moving water gets turned to the right (left) in the Northern (Southern) Hemisphere by the Coriolis affect.

Other gyres exist in the Atlantic as well.

This video is over an hour long, but well worth watching. (Warning for strong language)

Something to think about the next time the person at the supermarket says: “Paper or plastic?”

Dan

Satellite images do not see the oil slick in the Gulf very well. IF the sun angle is just right you can see some of it, and it’s huge. The CBS tonight showed a different view. The oily water is slightly cooler than the regular Gulf water. The oil slick shows up well in the Infrared spectrum.

Tim Minchin is going to be at TAM (The Amazing Meeting) in London in the autumn and Stephen Fry himself is on the bill. Would dearly love to go to that but 400 quid a ticket plus transatlantic airfare is more than an ouch.

In the been there done that category…

Warning for very strong language and not suitable for under 13, but well worth watching…