gregladen | March 29, 2011This is the picture of Vesta, which is an object in our solar system:
That's the picture that Wikipedia uses as of this writing, and it was taken by the Hubble. The key thing to note is that Vesta, which lies in the asteroid belt and has been thought of as a big asteroid, is very globular like a planet. This is unusual for an asteroid.
This is a picture of Vesta as conceptualized by NASA scientists. It is a model, not a photograph.
Model of Vesta This image shows a model of the protoplanet Vesta, using scientists' best guess to date of what the surface of the protoplanet might look…
gregladen | March 29, 2011Some years ago, I was asked by a friend to accompany him on a visit to a site in Saratoga Springs, New York, where we were to witness the activities of a gen-u-wine geomancer. I had never heard of a geomancer before. If you don't know what one is, be happy. If you do, you have my sympathies. The thing is, this geomancer wanted to geomance (I just verbed his noun) with these rocks in or near a place called Lester Park. Now, if you've heard of Lester Park you may be thinking you know which rocks this guy wanted to commune with, but you are probably wrong. Lester park has some of the most…
gregladen | March 28, 2011The most interesting and important current news, interesting if confirmed, is that plutonium has been discovered in soil near Fukushima. With all this talk about radiation, it is easy to forget that some of these elements are extremely poisonous in their own right. Plutonium is a very nasty poison. I've not seen the news reports or any details yet ... as of this writing, this is just reasonably reliable rumor. I'm off the intertubes for the rest of the day, but I'll update tomorrow on this topic.
The cooling systems are still not operational and a huge amount of radioactive water has been…
gregladen | March 27, 2011Sea water has now been replaced with fresh water for cooling reactors, and, apparently, spent fuel storage pools. Work continues on restoring power and repairing cooling systems, but the cooling systems remain unrepaired. An interesting development overnight (overday in Japan): A very high radiation reading in Reactor 2 showed what apparently was high enough radiation to cause workers to immediately evacuate, as well as a high enough rate of short-lived radioactive isotope to make it a certainty that fission was happening, if not currently, within the previous few hours, and that…
gregladen | March 26, 2011A crack in the containment vessel of Fukashima Reactor 3 has been mentioned by MSNBC and ABC news, citing the New York Times. The New York Times has an article in which the crack is mentioned in a side bar, attributed to an anonymous person. An anonymous source is not particularly impressive, but the New York Time is. So I suppose this is somewhat impressive.
Various news sources are reporting an actual quote from the anonymous source and say a little more about him. This is what is being reported:
A senior nuclear executive who insisted on anonymity but has broad contacts in Japan…
gregladen | March 26, 2011Ferraro was from Newburgh, New York and served in the US House. She was a progressive Democrat. She ran for Vice President with Walter Mondale. She was the first woman, and the first Italian American (which in those days meant more than it does today) to do so.
The fact that she was a woman was used against the Democratic ticket by a fairly conservative press (never quite forgave Ted Koppel for being a dick about it all) and, of course, by the Repulbicans.
In those days (and still to some extent, today) powerful men attach themselves to women who will not give them too much trouble by…
gregladen | March 26, 2011This is a particularly important update. An anonymous source in Japan has told reporters connected to the New York Times that there is a visible crack in the Fukushima Reactor 3. This is the reactor that showed isotopic evidence of a leak of some kind. Arguments had been made that a hole in the reactor vessel was an impossibility. The increasingly convincing evidence of a leak led people to admit, or realize, that the reactor vessel already has holes in it ... those designed to allow pipes and such in and out of the large thick-walled metal object. It was then presumed that this is where…
gregladen | March 25, 2011This just in from NASA:
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Stardust spacecraft sent its last transmission to Earth at 4:33 .m. PDT (7:33 p.m. EDT) Thursday, March 24, shortly after depleting fuel and ceasing operations. During a 12-year period, the venerable spacecraft collected and returned comet material to Earth and was reused after the end of its prime mission in 2006 to observe and study another comet during
February 2011.
The Stardust team performed the burn to depletion because the comet hunter was literally running on fumes. The depletion maneuver command was sent from the Stardust-NExT…
gregladen | March 25, 2011The water within Reactor Number 3 (where three workers were exposed to high levels of radiation yesterday) is 10,000 times more radioactive than the average water inside a nuclear reactor and contains radioactive iodine that is generated during fission and has a half-life of 8 days. Japanese engineers are pretty sure that this means that fuel rods within the reactor have contributed to fission reactions.
Here's an important bit: The physical container that holds the fuel rods inside the reactor is very robust and is probably not leaking. However, as you might guess, the reactor container…
gregladen | March 25, 2011Ana's Feed starting at about 2PM Thursday 24 March:
Finally found some info on that simulation mentioned earlier: "...the model showed that areas where cumulative exposure over 12 days reached 100 millisieverts--the government's maximum for infants--extended beyond the evacuation zone. A map based on data from the center showed areas that received a cumulative 100 millisieverts extended as far as about 40 kilometers northeast and south from the plant."
Radiation 10,000 times normal level in water where nuke plant workers irradiated -kyodo news
1.3 million Bq of iodine 131. (NHK)
Workers…
gregladen | March 24, 2011Ana's Feed starting just after midnight 24 March:
"...estimates that 57,000 pounds of salt have accumulated in Reactor No. 1 and 99,000 pounds apiece in Reactors No. 2 and 3, which are larger." (Editor's note: This is what I had independently calculated, so it looks right to me)
Ban Ki-moon and IAEA and various governments are going to talk about ways to keep nuclear power safe. (NHK broadcast)
NHK is quoting the recent US poll that shows a decline in public opinion about nuclear power, adding "this means the American people are seriously responding to this situation in Japan." (NHK)
Work at…
gregladen | March 23, 2011You know that movie that came out a few years ago about the horse that lived during the depression and everybody was happy when it won the triple crown? Well that horse, or a horse just like it (fast, famous, dead) was stuffed and on display in a racing museum I visited when I was a kid, and nearby, was the horse's jockey, also stuffed.
However, because the jockey was a person and wore clothing (and, in the case of jockeys, they were special colorful outfits that distinguished them from other jockeys) the actual jockey himself was spared the indignity and inconvenience of having his viscera…
gregladen | March 23, 2011What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.
gregladen | March 23, 2011Following an online petition and a wave of complaints, Apple has removed a so-called "gay cure" app from its App Store.
Launched last month by Exodus International, a ministry that encourages gay people to seek "cures" for their homosexuality, the app triggered a huge outcry from Two Wins Out, a nonprofit group with the stated goal of fighting anti-gay religious extremism.
Read the rest here
gregladen | March 23, 2011
Please do not send money (as is requested) unless this is verified. What do you know about this?
gregladen | March 23, 2011Zoos are open to the public about half of the hours on a given day (or more) and for about half the time there are easily enough people in a zoo to be observing about half the animals. (If you don't like these estimates substitute your own!)
This means that an animal on display at a zoo is under public observation about 25% of the time. Since all of them eventually die, and there are lots of zoos, there should be an animal passing to the great beyond before the eyes of visitors at least a few times a year, yet we never hear of that happening.
I can think of three reasons for this, two…
gregladen | March 23, 2011She was a major film (and stage) actress of my parent's generation. She was the ultimate "leading lady" and as such often played across her sometimes husband, classic "leading man" Richard Burton. She is famous for having been married and divorced more times than anyone else ever (an exaggeration), but more importantly she's famous for having starred in a number of classic and defining roles.
Che was a child star (Lassie Come Home, Jayne Eyre, National Velvet, etc.) and played a diversity of roles as an adult. Her classic performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won her an academy…
gregladen | March 23, 2011Imma let you hear all about how Hawks at a Distance: Identification of Migrant Raptors is a remarkable and important field guide, but first I want to mention that one of the most interesting parts of that guide is the forward by Pete Dunne, who himself has written a bird book or two. Dunne reviews the history of bird identification guides, going back to the time before they actually included illustrations (yup, just words!) and follows the evolution of bird guides through the 20th century, with special reference to how raptors have been handled. Or, more exactly, mishandled.
It make sense…
gregladen | March 22, 2011Julia always lets me be Indy. But I have a feeling she's not going to let me be Jack.