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“Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value.”
National Research Council president John MacDougall
This is apparently the Canadian Government's new position on publicly funded scientific research. Galileo and Einstein?  Pasteur?  Darwin?  No work of any value there. 

Arctic Sea Ice Coverage

    
  Made by: Andy Lee Robinson

A really nice data visualization of Arctic Sea Ice from 1979 - 2013.  Bonus that they used a circular layout that looks like the North Pole.  Also, the data is compelling.  That's a lot of ice gone in a very short period of time. 

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The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
Douglas Adams

Sunstone

A very determined group of researchers has found an example of the previously legendary Viking sunstone used for navigating while the sun was obscured by clouds or below the horizon.  The best and most concise article I've seen is this one at The Economist.  If there were a Nobel Prize for Archeology, this team would win it.

The Novel Coronavirus

    Peter Kohama/MCT/Landov, via NPR

There is a novel SARS-like Coronavirus stalking the Middle East.  There have been 10 identified cases since Summer 2012, five of them fatal.  So-far, there have been 5 cases in Saudi Arabia, 2 in Jordan, 2 in the UK (one of them Qatari) and 1 in Germany, also someone from Qatar.  It seems to spread from person to person, but with difficulty.  Scientists think the virus comes from bats.  There is some concern that a mutation might occur that makes the virus much more communicable.  One to keep an eye on.  You know, if you don't have something more immediate to worry about and you are tired of worrying about global warming and asteroids.

One odd thing is that the news outlet covering the outbreak most often is... The Toronto Star.  Not normally known for hard hitting science reporting.  But they have featured every new development on their (web) front page.  Way to go Star!

Explain That Science

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No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. 
Niels Bohr

Heat Wave

Its a hot summer in Australia.  So hot that government meteorologists have had to add two new colours to the heat maps.  Previously, the scale stopped at 50 degrees.  Now it goes to 54 degrees.  The world is getting hotter.

Article is here.

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Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. 
Niels Bohr

PIX

The International Space Station floats serenely above a hazy Earth.

Note:  Its floating serenely at a speed of 27.7 km/sec

Pix

This improbable creature is a jewel caterpillar.

Meme Watch

PIX

This man, and his colleagues, are why there were no super hero movies in the 60's.  Neil Armstrong with the X-15. 

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Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
Neils Bohr 

Personally, I understand quantum theory just enough to find it completely incomprehensible. 

Pix

A protest sign from the Colbert/Stewart rally in Washington last year.

Fukushima Daiichi

    Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1 -4 March 18, 2011.  Photo by Digital Globe.

The press reports about the disaster at Fukushima have been fragmentary and occasionaly hysterical.  This article from the BBC is the best one page explanation of what happened and what needs to be done.  Highly recommended.

50 Years in Space

    Yuri Gagarin in the capsule before launch.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the 1st human to orbit the earth.  It was a stunning achievement that took the world by surprise.  As the tides of history flow and our own age is forgotten, they will still remember Yuri Gagarin.  Nobody else can ever be the 1st man in space.

Pix

    One of the amazing photos from Japan showing the power of a tsunami.

Water

Radiation

 

     Finally, a useful comparison of radiation doses.  Watch out for those bananas.