Microwave
cwilcox | April 3, 2010Stop what you're doing. You HAVE to read this. Your life will be changed forever.
You can cook a cake in a microwave. In 5 minutes.
Seriously.
Barry stumbled across this recipe for how to make a cake in a mug. In a MUG.
How did I not learn of this during all those years as an undergrad?! I suddenly feel inadequate, like I haven't truly mastered life as a poor college student. If you can bake a cake in a microwave, what other culinary arts have I yet to discover? Casserole in a toaster oven, perhaps?
I simply had to have my cake and eat it, too, to see if this recipe really works. Here's what…
esiegel | May 20, 2008Some of you who've been following astronomy for awhile might remember this report, where a group of astronomers reported finding a giant "void" in the Universe.
What is a void? Well, galaxies are distributed pretty randomly, but because of gravity, they cluster together. A small example is our local group which looks like this,
and a larger example is the Virgo cluster, which is about 1,000 times as massive as our local group, and looks like this:
Well, a void is the opposite of a cluster, where you have a large volume of space that's simply empty of galaxies and matter. This press release…
esiegel | May 14, 2008When I think of molecules, I think of Conan O'Brien doing his skit where he plays Moleculo...
the molecular man! I don't think of astronomy, and I certainly don't think of the leftover radiation from the big bang (known as the cosmic microwave background)! But somebody over at the European Southern Observatory put these two together and made an incredibly tasty science sandwich.
See, we can measure the cosmic microwave background today, because we have photons (particles of light) coming at us in all directions at all locations, with a temperature of 2.725 Kelvin. Theoretical cosmology…
esiegel | March 6, 2008The cosmic microwave background is the radiation left over from the big bang. It's very uniform, 2.725 Kelvin everywhere. We're moving with respect to it, so there's a doppler shift, and we see that as a dipole moment in the Temperature. When we subtract that out, we see variations on the order of 30 microKelvins! WMAP is a satellite (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) that measured these anisotropies, and they just released its year 5 data. First off, with the uniform and dipole parts subtracted out, and with the foreground from the galaxy also taken out, here's the map of the microwave…
grrlscientist | March 3, 2008tags: Microwave vs. Easter, streaming video
Easter has a special place in my heart because of those disgustingly wonderful confectionary creatures: PEEPS! [2:18]
zooillogix | March 22, 2007Fisherman hauled the world's largest squid ever caught out of the icy Antarctic waters last month. Since then, it has been kept on ice while scientists ponder how to prepare it for permanent display at the University of New Zealand. Larger than giant squid, colossal squid range from 40-65 feet long. This specimen weighed 1,090 lbs and was 33 feet long. Now the scientists have run into a problem: the frozen squid is so large that by the time the center of the beast defrosts, the outer flesh will have rotted.Colossal squid captured, mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni
The logical solution? Throw the…