I was elected to the DPS committee this week for a three-year term beginning at the next meeting of the DPS (Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society) in October at Cornell University. I pledge to do everything in my power to lower gas prices and bring the troops home from Iraq.
Today’s launch of the space shuttle Discovery was our first attempt to view the ascent literally from our back yard. The shuttle was clearly visible for more than a minute, rising high above the horizon on a column of flame and smoke before disappearing behind a cloud shortly before solid rocket motor separation.
This is a very cool and very fun visualization tool that lets you ride along with the Cassini spacecraft as it tours the Saturn system. The path of the spacecraft as well as the pointing of the spacecraft, are taken from the actual data files describing Cassini’s activities. Check it out.
These amazing video tests of chimpanzee visual recall show to my amateur eye that chimps process and retain the visual field in a way that is different than humans. Some explanation and commentary on the significance of the results can be found in this New Scientist article. As Darth Vader said, “Impressive. Most Impressive.”
I hope that my future never depends on eyewitness testimony. Years ago I heard about this study in The Skeptical Inquirer (among many others that scientifically demonstrate just how unreliable eyewitnesses are). A recent article in the New York Times provided this link to the original video. Watching it is even more incredible than I thought it would be on reading it. Knowing what the video is, the test doesn’t work, so I won’t say anymore here. Just watch the video and try to be sure to count every successfully completed pass of a basketball between people wearing white shirts only. The experiment only works if you concentrate on successfully counting the passes by the white team.
Last week in southern California I was shopping for sunglasses and was confronted with a choice I hadn’t anticipated: polarized lenses, or pearized lenses? I played it safe and went for the polarized lenses, so if you need some of the hard-to-find and fruity pearized glasses, they might still be there at the Glendale Galleria.
Here is the manatee that paid us a visit after the shuttle launch.
