Today is Ada Lovelace Day
In accordance with the Pledge, I would like to recognize the work of Margaret Geller . She and John Huchra discovered the Great Wall. This is one of the largest objects in the universe: Over 500 million light years long. That is 5,000 times the diameter of our entire galaxy.
My contribution last year is here.
At Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (somewhat NSFW)
via
From Cosmic Variance:
Geoffrey Burbidge passed away yesterday afternoon. He was a giant in the field of astronomy and cosmology, and (despite himself) was one of the main contributors to the establishment of the standard Big Bang model of cosmology. He was perhaps best known for his work in stellar nucleosynthesis (encapsulated in the B2FH paper: Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, and Hoyle 1957, Rev. Mod. Phys. 29, 547), which in some sense established that we are all made of “star stuff”. There are few research papers that are widely known simply by their author’s initials (especially over 50 years later); the paper even has its own wikipedia page. (Off hand, the only other one I can think of is EPR.)
I finally updated the web version of my “Today in Clann Tartan History” e-mails that I have been writing for colgaffneyis. Continue reading
The New Horizons probe is Halfway to Pluto. beamjockey gave a good presentation about this mission at Windycon last year
From The winter of our solsticular discontent
The winter solstice marks the longest night and shortest day of the year. However, it’s not when the Sun rises latest and sets earliest! The Earth has the unfortunate habit of orbiting the Sun in an ellipse, which screws things up a bit when it comes to timing.
Plugging Minneapolis into the Sun or Moon Rise/Set Table for One Year: U.S. Cities and Towns shows that sunrise is going to continue getting later for another couple weeks, while we are well past the earliest sunset. Hence I have been seeing a little more daylight when I get off my bus home in the evening.
The Asteroid That Will Almost Hit Earth. An animation of what this will look like from the asteroid’s point of view.
From this post by jeff_duntemann.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 