Is our Earth doomed by asteroid collisions?
Remember the Hollywood action flicks Deep Impact and Armageddon? Space missions were launched to try and avoid catastrophic collisions with an asteroid.
Will that be happening in real life?
Scientists say it is probable. Eventually.
When Apophis, a 270-metre wide asteroid, was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of [...]
Volcanoes are one of those parts of science that we all find fascinating; from a distance. Perhaps you are old enough, like Grandpa Richard, to remember the Mount St. Helen’s volcano erupting back in the 1980’s. A friend visited the area afterwards and brought me a jar of ash from the site. Unfortunately, I have [...]
An age old problem. How to choose a good marriage partner. One method involves mathematics.
Suppose you decide to marry, and to select your life partner you will interview at most 100 candidate spouses. The interviews are arranged in random order, and you have no information about candidates you haven’t yet spoken to. After each interview [...]
Grandpa Richard cannot resist good science stories and photos. Over at Wired.com today is a post about evidence of times when asteroids have hit our Earth. Really neat photos accompany the text.
Could it happen again? Have you seen the movies portraying such an event?
Interesting post on Slashdot explaining how the Earth’s period of habitability is coming to an end soon. Well, soon on a cosmological timescale.
As they say on Stargate, we need to start considering an alpha site we can move some of us to.
The area that I live in has experienced some wicked thunderstorms today and I have heard that there were possible tornadoes in my daughter’s part of the region.
As I watched the worst of this evening’s storm from my 11th floor apartment, I was reminded that despite all the fancy technology that mankind has invented, our [...]
The way most of us achieve the results mentioned in the title is to use a repellent containing DEET. Now comes news that DEET is not safe for humans.
As if this is surprising. We humans are great at using chemicals to solve problems and the chemicals are rarely good for us. Do you really [...]
Now here is a list that Grandpa Richard can get into. 100 Geeky Places to Bring Your Kids This Summer
Want to watch a hummingbird in super slow motion? Likewise, a bumble bee? Use a special high speed digital camera.
Here is a cool article about these new cameras, and how they are used in scientific and industrial situations. Includes a 3 minute movie of a hummingbird eating from a feeder. Click here.
There are more bacteria on or in the human body than there are cells in your body. In fact, 10 times more.
Interesting 18 minute video on TED that discusses how bacteria “talk” to each other. The goal of science is to learn how to block that talk, so that bacteria cannot cause virus based diseases.
