It seems strange to think of a world where there was not a giant telescope orbiting and sending us fantastic photos day-in-day-out (or should that be night-in-night-out?), but the Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating the 20th anniversary of it’s launch.
http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/hubble_20/
-- Robert
Powers of Ten is a 1977 American documentary short film written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten.
Wikipedia website
Official website
Since the Age of the Internet, more of these sort of videos have appeared, often with a slider so that you, the viewer, can control the speed and location of the zoom.
Here are two I found recently and really liked:
One problem with them is the fact that they’re un-editable.
I’d like to be able to show my young nephews these, but they are so chock-a-block with items that would need explanation that the wood would be lost for the trees.
Does anyone know of a simple, or editable, Power of Ten clone?
http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2008/12/roman_numerals_and_arithmetic_1.php
But now that I've read about it - it's fascinating...
It's amazing how some things that seem so obvious and second nature are actually really very dependent on the time and culture one comes from.
No wonder it's difficult for different ethnic groups to get along :(
-- Robert
There have recently been a few studies of the ancient world which have been aided by astronomy:
Dating Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain through tides (effects of the moon)
http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2008/06/Caesar062308.html
Dating Odysseus's Return from the Trojan War through a (suspected) Solar Eclipse
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=2008-06-23_D91G27MO0&show_article=1&cat=breaking
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=homers-odyssey-may-document-eclipse
And Thale's eclipse which I blogged about before.
A lot of this stuff I get from Rogueclassicism.
-- Robert
Here's a cute summary of some superstitions held by those who seem like the most rational people possible - Astronauts and Cosmonauts.
Of course, now I must send you to a site which debunks and refutes every space related superstition.
Robert
More than 2,500 years ago, Thales, one of the first Greek philosopher-scientists, predicted an solar eclipse.
Without the Internet, with no computers, not even decent pen and paper for a scratch pad he managed to use science to predict what, till then, was deemed to be the work of a god.
The eclipse duly took place as he predicted - probably on the 28th of May 585 BC
Here are some links about Thales and his eclipse.
The Phoenix space probe has landed on Mars!
Here are a few links:
The next few weeks will be very interesting...
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