http://www.gestopholus.com Astronomical Musings Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:21:26 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My friend told me today about a researcher in her department who is publishing an article on the physics of frisbees. A frisbee works because of the difference in air velocities below and above the frisbee, similar to an airplane wing. Give it forward and angular momentum and it can ... http://www.gestopholus.com/physics-any-time-all-the-time/ I'm sure everyone has heard it before, but this is so cool that I can't really mention this often enough. Humans, animals and pretty much our entire planet, hell most of our solar system is made up of stuff that came out of stars which have gone supernova, exploded, kaboom. When the ... http://www.gestopholus.com/little-specks-of-star/ Today as I was doing cosmology homework, I found myself wondering, as I often do, how people did anything before the internet. (And yes I know in theory there are libraries and phone books.) How cool is it that when I type Silk Damping into Google I get several papers and ... http://www.gestopholus.com/an-ode-to-mathworld-and-simbad/ Today a neighbor brought by her grandson, who is in middle school and was signed up for some science olympiad. For this he had to learn some 'basic' astronomy, such as the difference between Population I and Population II stars. That made me realize how difficult it was for me ... http://www.gestopholus.com/basic-astronomy/ Today, Spitzer Space Telescope announced the first direct detection of a planetary object. Go infrared astronomy :-)! http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2005-09/release.shtml Here is an "image" of the planets: This is cool for a couple of reasons (although not the huge breakthrough news media are making it out to be). Until now extrasolar planets have been primarily ... http://www.gestopholus.com/first-direct-detection-of-a-planet/