- Posts tagged Science
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Why did God make rainbows?
Mysteries can be solved. Just ask questions that begin with "How" instead of "Why".
John Hobby is a reader of the blog and a Facebook pal, and the other night he told me a little story about rainbows. I'd like to share it with you today.
"As a young man I was taught that rainbows were God's promise never to flood the Earth again, and it stifled my curiosity about it. I was like "Oh okay, that's nice of God to remind us during rain storms, nothing else to know there."""But I do remember thinking that it was a contradiction, because I had seen rain storms cause flooding; especially in the desert where I grew up."
So after hearing that tale I did some poking around, and wouldn't you know it, the rainbow/flood myth goes all the way back to the bible. The reason that rainbows were the topic of our discussion was because John had already shared a recording of an MIT lecture earlier that evening; a lecture about the real physics of rainbows. While the video was an exciting lesson on the geometry within a common phenomenon, somehow John's personal story of divine promises gone unfulfilled, captured my imagination the most.
Nature is Not Just Everywhere, it's Everything
Hey folks! Not much time for writing today, but I did want to share this quick little poster I did. Hope you like it.
This just came from thinking about the various things we mean when using the word "nature". Most understand that it refers to the natural world and all that's in it, but many forget that every part of ourselves is included. All our ideas, all our history, every triumph and technology*; sprang from the big bang, and nowhere else. "Nature" aka "the universe" is an an ongoing set of processes, and we are but the smallest effect of these causes.
The Blog Turns Two!
Nobody has suggested that March 26th become a national holiday as a result, but it is the birthday of this blog. The following is a brief history of how this site came to be, and what's happened since; along with a few thoughts on where it's going. I apologize if it all seems a little masturbatory, but I wanted to mark the event with at least a smidgen of reflection. You'll notice a number of links throughout, most of which point to articles I've written in the past. Sort of like a sit-com clip show, get it?
On finding your voice
So I've been at this blogging business for a couple of years now, and while I can't be sure what sensation the experience has left in your mouths, at least personally, I think I've acquired a taste for it.
This blog began on March 26th, 2010 with a completely innocuous post, (image below) and no particular agenda in mind. At the time Posterous was a brand-new service, designed more for sharing pictures and video rather than blogging, so I thought I'd give it a test run. There was no custom URL, no title, and no theme. Yet hiding somewhere were the seeds of what the site would eventually become.
An Astronomical Photo-Op
A photographic 'opportunity' on another world.
A very short post today that was inspired by the magnificent photo above. Despite its mysterious, almost ghastly appearance, this is just a picture of the Sun. And while, as a photograph, it is fuzzy and of very low-resolution, it also just happens to blow my mind.
That's because this picture was taken from the surface of Mars, by a little rover called Opportunity, on March 4, 2004. The black spot you see is Deimos, Mars' smallest and outer-most moon, as it transits the solar disc. Here's a much closer photo of Deimos, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Sign the Petition - Stop Muzzling Canada's Scientists
Yesterday afternoon my old partner in crime (well, from at least 6 months back) Callum Sutherland published an article on his blog Milky Way Musings, about Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government policy of muzzling scientists.
Since then he started a petition at Change.org, and I've been doing my best to help promote it. I won't go into excessive detail in this post about why we're passionate about this petition, other than that we don't like scientists being told what they can and can not say.
Saving Science in America's Schools
Listen, I'm a Canadian. I love my country, and unlike many of my compatriots, I don't follow the news of our big neighbour to the south very closely. Of course, it's hard not to at least keep an eye on some aspects of American politics, say Novemeber's coming death-match for the oval office for example, but I'd never describe my knowledge of the affairs in Washington as intimate.
Now, I'm also a skeptic, and I love science. Science gives people a set of tools to apply to new problems, and it is intimately tied to, among other things, the economic prosperity of a nation. Therefore there's one aspect of the American political climate that routinely draws my interest; that being science education.
On this Leap Day, Don't be a Dummy Dad
Hello world! It's leap day! A day of profound celestial significance. A day of righting mathematical wrongs. A day so magical, so mind blowingly awesome, that it remains hidden during just 'ordinary' years. We couldn't handle a leap day every time around the Sun, so it banks up it's amazingness for a quadrennial visit. Leap day is sort of like the 12 Grimmauld Place* of the Gregorian calendar, and at this very special moment in time, it is revealed to us.
Fascinating Nature on Pinterest!
So I'm obviously a social media junkie. It seems that whatever new platform the internet throws at me, as long as there's an opportunity to share cotent with friends and strangers, I'll buy into it wholeheartedly.
Take Pinterest. I was initially hesitant to give it a try, but now I'm hooked. I find it's a great way to share ideas; in a brief, compelling way. Since you can link images to more expansive content, I have to imagine it's a great way to funnel information into the minds of the curious. First you hit them with a pretty picture of Saturn's rings, and then they have the opportunity to read about how they got there.
Under the Microscope - Part 2
Sorry for the recent lack of content folks. As is my usual excuse, blame work. I'm knee deep in a huge project right now, which I can only tell you is a cool one; something I'll share with everybody just as soon as I'm able.
In the meantime, the nice folks at Cambridge University (or at least the curator of their Vimeo channel) were nice enough to forward me two new links to videos in the series I profiled last week. At the time I posted about Under the Microscope, I wasn't sure if the series had been discontinued, so that now that I know otherwise I thought I'd pass them on to y'all.
Under the Microscope
No more talk about God this morning folks. Instead a very quick post about a video series that I just discovered from Cambridge University. 'Under the Microscope' is a collection of images taken, you guessed it, under a microscope, and then accompanied by explanatory narration. I found them fascinating. They're all very short, so you can run through the entire series (below) rather quickly.
