All posts by AndromedasWake

Science, YouTube

This will not end well…

12 Comments

…for them.

Geocentrists want my blood. See, some time ago, I posted a video calling out a particularly notorious Youtube moron on his geocentric view of the Universe. He failed to respond to my challenge entirely, but in his place, what I can only discern is some small organisation of geocentrists have posted a response. They have further proceeded to post several videos that purport to present scientific proof that the Earth is stationary at the centre of the Universe. Furthermore, they seem to conclude that the theory of evolution is a delusion.

Does it take even the slightest thought to guess their motives? Not really. You don’t have to look far through their videos to see one of them holding a bible. Several individuals have brought all this to my attention, whom I thank. I intend to respond fully to these masters of bunk, however this will mean putting off a new series I was hoping to launch this weekend.

But you don’t mind right? Everyone loves a good debunking!

Incidentally, these chaps are fellow Brits; the first to meet my sciencehammer. That honour might have gone to Marc Surtees, had fellow Leaguer JRChadwick not already done so.

Censorship, YouTube

Cowardly votebotters caught in the act again

8 Comments

Thanks go out to Thunderf00t for another eye-opening video of votebot statistics. Recently, some of the most well-subscribed channels have faced a collective 60,000+ one star votes! Those creationists are pretty damn scared alright!

Whilst we’re all trying to come up with definite solutions, I’ll keep supporting Thunderf00t’s original idea. Rate! Try rating a video every single time you watch it. Only a fraction of viewers rate, but if the numbers of ratings were similar to the numbers of views, votebotters would have to work an awful lot harder to have any effect. Remember, it doesn’t matter what you rate, and no one is encouraging you to rate 5 stars just because the censors will rate 1. You should rate as you feel appropriate. It’s the number of real human votes that will determine the effect of the votebot. We all forget to rate sometimes though, so why not put up a little annotation at the beginning of your videos reminding people?

Entertainment, Random, Science

Dr. Dino’s League of Stupid

15 Comments

Eric Hovind, infinite fail spawn of one notorious Kent Hovind, has a blog. And guess what? It’s crapola. It’s hard to read without shedding a tear for humanity. In fact, it’s actually worse than Ray Comfort’s absurdly named Atheist Central. And that’s really saying something.

His posts range from misrepresenting concepts of evolution to discussing the “missing link” and dredging up the critically flawed, and really very silly Grand Canyon argument.

Oh, and don’t expect to be able to correct him. This is, after all, a creationist blog. We all know that free speech, open criticism and scientific citations are kryptonite to the Hovind clan, and commenters are widely known to be the minions of Satan himself.

The Overlord, PZ, has already blogged about this, so for my contribution, I thought I’d give you guys a little motivator to throw around the tubes. It wasn’t hard to find inspiration, because even when he was attempting to honestly represent the scientific method with a picture of “how it’s supposed to work”, Eric’s rotting brain said no.

Eric looks rather like that Shamwow guy, no?

News, Science

Nanotechnology wins again!

10 Comments

Greeings from Denmark Leaguers! Just stopping by to post a bit of research that’s generating a buzz today. A team at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia have developed a technique for squeezing a potential 10 terabytes (!) of storage out of a DVD without compromising the size of the disc. This involves adding two additional “dimensions” to the format, namely colour and polarisation. These aren’t spatial or time-like dimensions – there is thus far no concrete evidence that our universe has any more than 4 dimensions – but rather two properties that can be exploited using nanomaterials. Firstly, these next generation discs would be able to respond to multiple wavelengths of light, as opposed to current discs which are monochromatic. This adds a range of colour values that can be manipulated within the same physical space on the disc, thus adding another dimension. Polarisation of the materials on the disc allows another possible range of information in the same space by altering the angle of the surface materials. By using materials that can adopt a range of angles, it is possible to influence them by polarising the light in the laser (setting the orientation of the electric field). I for one completely support this fresh way of thinking (as opposed to more stale attempts to increase data density, such as Blu-Ray) and I’m pleased to see that Samsung are now on board with this project. Apparently, we’ll see them being made commercially available in 5-10 years. I haven’t had a chance to read the paper yet, published in this month’s edition of Nature, but if you have access to the Journal, you can read it here. If not, you can always read the abstract!

I also would just like to say welcome to our newest bloggers, JRChadwick and SchrodingersFinch!

Science

In the shadow of Atlantis

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Atlantis transits the Sun (click for full size)

This truly spectacular image (click for full size) shows us the silhouette of STS-125 Space Shuttle Atlantis against the Sun. Taken for NASA by Thierry Legault on Tuesday, it captures Atlantis en route to its rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST-SM4). Hubble is currently in the shuttle’s cargo bay, where the crew yesterday installed the Wide Field Camera 3 (successor to the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2). On saturday, they will also install the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and repair the Advanced Camera for Surveys. They are also making several other repairs, in what will be the final Hubble servicing mission before its orbit is terminated, probably around 2014. Atlantis is just under 40 metres long, and 350 miles high in this picture!

Anyway, I thought some of you might enjoy this beautiful image too.

Random

The easiest challenge I faced today…

19 Comments

Bananaman Ray Comfort is holding a little challenge to believers in evolution:

“In 100 words or less, what was it that convinced you that evolution is a scientific fact?”

I’ve carefully cut down my response to exactly 100 words for you Ray.

Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence. Evidence.

 

News, Science

Two new European missions are go!

3 Comments

At 13:12 UTC today, two European observatories blasted off without a hitch onboard an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. Controllers in Germany confirmed readings from both spacecraft about 40 minutes after liftoff, following their half hour flight and deployment from the launch vehicle. CEO of Arianespace, Jean-Yves Le Gall, described the launch as “perfect”. Both spacecraft are now en route to their designated L2 point approximately 1.5 million kilometers away.  Now, both of these missions are actually a really big deal for astronomy…

Firstly, we have Herschel. To me, infrared astronomy is by far the best astronomy! By observing the infrared, we can really draw a lot information about the structure, and particularly the formation of stars and galaxies. Since its launch in 2003, I have been an avid follower of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (named for the great Lyman Spitzer) and it continues to make astounding discoveries and send back beautiful images to this day (though now on borrowed time – it is expected to run out of helium coolant “at any time”.)

Spitzer has peered into stellar nurseries to show us baby stars, and revealed the intricate structure of Andromeda’s inner dust lanes. Now, Herschel (named for William Herschel: discoverer of Uranus) will become the new standard in infrared astronomy. It has a massive 3.5 metre Cassegrain telescope, making it the largest space telescope ever launched, and crucially, it will bridge the gap between previous space-based infrared missions and ground-based observations, by observing a waveband of ~55-672µm. Herschel’s huge mirror and cutting edge photometric technology will allow it to observe some of the coldest and most distant objects in the known universe. We can expect a lot of amazing science to come out of this mission.

Herschel (left) and Planck

Then, there’s Planck. This spacecraft, named for the German quantum physicist, Max Planck, is the third generation Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) mapping probe. It is the successor to WMAP (2001) which itself followed COBE (1989) and its principal mission objective is to measure the polarisation and intensity of anisotropies in the primordial CMB radiation that permeates the universe as a remnant of the big bang. It will also be carrying out a number of other scientific tasks, including measurements of our own galaxy’s magnetic field. Its scanning sensors will achieve several times the resolution of WMAP, with around 10 times the sensitivity, and the findings of this mission will be extremely exciting for cosmology buffs, as they will actually help us to understand the size and shape of the whole universe.

Personally, it’s thrilling for me to see these two great missions launch together in yet another flying success for Arianespace and ESA. These spacecraft will greatly influence our understanding of cosmic origins in several years. Excited? You should be!

News, Science

Kepler begins its search for Earth-like planets

7 Comments

Yesterday, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft began its 3 and a half year mission to hunt for planets among over 100,000 stars. It has been in an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit for over 2 months since its flawless launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta II rocket, and now that it has finished commissioning and has been focussed optimally, it is ready to start… staring.

Kepler will stare continuously at a single patch of sky throughout its mission. This is known as a fixed field of view. By looking at exactly the same stars with great sensitivity, the Kepler science team hope to measure very slight periodic dips in their apparent brightness. This will signal the transit of an orbiting planet from our perspective. The Kepler mission will achieve an unprecedented level of precision, by using a collection of techniques known as differential ensemble photometry. Variations in seeing and extinction are accounted for, and shot noise is dealt with onboard the spacecraft.

So high is Kepler’s sensitivity, that it will be able to detect transits from planets comparable in size to Earth orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. Of course, the mission was designed this way from the outset and in fact, in the case of K- and M-type stars, it will be able to detect planets as small as Mercury! To begin with though, we can expect the first findings to be large gas giants, as these can be confirmed relatively quickly. NASA states that such discoveries may be announced early in 2010.

Kepler spacecraft and fixed field of view

You can keep up with the Kepler mission at NASA’s mission news page.