The Emptiness of Space?

I just saw this image on the Bad Astronomy blog and it stunned me. It was recently recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope using it's newly replaced Wide Field Camera to view a relatively "empty" region of space for 48 hours.

Conclusion? Not. Empty. Those are galaxies. Up to 13 billion light years away. We live in a big place.

Listening to: I Believe in Father Christmas by U2 from All You Need is Love (a Starbucks freebie CD).

Teach the Controversy!

If you've been a regular reader of my blog, which I can almost guarantee you aren't (that hit counter is getting to be an embarrassment), you know that I have a disgust for religious fundamentalists, especially those that deny evolution. Recently I came across a web site selling t-shirts that mock the "teach the controversy" approach of crypto-creationists. Tip: there's no credible controversy about the concept, but the details are constantly being refined or expanded. Maybe Satan buried fake dinosaur bones to confuse believers, eh? Or maybe we should seriously discuss astrology in science classes.

Recently there was an e-mail exchange between a prominent hard-core religious fundamentalist and a evolutionary biologist which resulted in, to use the language of today's youth, epic pwnage. Maybe someone deserves a t-shirt...

A different controversy with a sadly similar intellectual basis is taking place out in Alberta, amongst other places, where the Catholic bishops are opposing the immunisation of young girls against cervical cancer. When you strip away the arm waving it boils down to wanting to control the morals and sexuality of women rather than protect them from a preventable and sometimes fatal disease. The bishops equate protection from STDs with encouragement of pre-marital sex. This position is deeply hypocritical, medically harmful, and smugly paternalistic in the worse way.

In happier news, I enjoyed watching the French Grand Prix almost live on Sunday. The main developments revolved around Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton. Lewis started in 13th after a ten place penalty for his pit lane crash in the last race and never really made any progress forward as he drove too aggressively and had a number of minor contacts. He was also given a drive-through penalty for a failed passing attempt. Kimi on the other hand started at the front and stayed there until his exhaust pipe broke off and began flapping around. He lost power and had to let his team mate Filipe Massa by until enough of the engine cover had burned off (!) to allow the exhaust gases to escape. Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen had a good fight for third in the closing laps, but Jarno held him off.

Two spinning classes planned for today, gotta get those "kilometers" in! Tomorrow is a swim and then a modeling job for Home Depot.

Listening to: Big Me by Foo Fighters from Foo Fighters.

Cosmology

"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end." - Stephen Hawking
"A watched pot never boils." - Anon.

Just couldn't resist that first quote. Hawking made it at a recent presentation about cosmology at UC Berkeley. He now believes that the universe "popped into existence from nothing". Myself, I think the world rests on the back of an enormous turtle.

I got back to the pool today, for the first time in three weeks. I've been coughing too much to feel like I had a right to be there! I swam an easy 2200M in about 40 minutes, but spent a lot of time chatting to everyone. A swimmer mentioned that she was interested in doing a triathlon, which started an even longer discussion. Got to get more miles under my shoes though, it's only nine days to the Around the Bay 30K race in Hamilton! (Bib number 3429 for my fans.)

I saw Guillermo del Toro's fantasy Pan's Labyrinth this evening. Great visuals and performances and an interesting allegory for fascist Spain under Franco. Pretty graphic violence though, so not a kid film.

Listening to: Black Black Heart by David Usher from Morning Orbit.

Science Fiction - Not.

This is is not a scene from a science fiction film. It's a photograph of a real thing, called the "Z Machine", in operation. The Z Machine is an experimental particle accelerator used for nuclear fusion research at Sandia National Laboratories. It only operates for a tiny fraction of a second, but this is what it looks like while it is generating temperatures of 1.8 million degrees Celsius and producing 290 trillion watts. This is 80 times the electrical output of the entire world, but only for a few billionths of a second.

When I saw this picture all I could say was "wow." The equipment is submerged in an insulating pool of water, and the dramatic arcing is a product of electrical leakage. Click on the picture to see a higher-resolution version. The Z Machine is in the news at the moment because it recently achieved a high enough power output to hint at practical fusion power generation. That would mean "free" "endless" power...

Listening to: Use It by The New Pornographers from Twin Cinema.

Made it!

NASA's latest and greatest Mars probe, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, began circling Mars today. This is a tricky process, requiring great precision to execute successfully. About one in three Mars probes have been lost, usually during this stage. Click on the image at right to see a 10 MB QuickTime animation of the process.

Moving along, I finally saw Capote this week with Sheryl. I found it a bit slow but thought it was a great insight into Truman Capote's personality and talent, especially through Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal. The film focused on the time he spent writing In Cold Blood and didn't mention the loss of his friends later in life because of his continuing literary betrayals.

I also have to mention my son's recent scheme. A few weeks ago Chris found an old Christmas Latte coupon from Starbucks in his mother's car. I think it was from 1998. He wanted to try to cash it in, so when we went to see Date Movie (his choice, you may want to avoid this movie) he brought it along. Sure enough, the baristas honoured it with a laugh. But they ran out of whipped cream and had to change canisters before they could finish. So they gave him another free drink coupon! He cashed that one in a lot faster, getting himself a Venti-size Caramel Macchiato a few days later.

Last thought before signing off. At the pool today one of the regulars was wearing a wet-suit! We struck up a conversation and it turns out he's going to race in a half-ironman triathlon in San Diego next week. He was actually wearing his girlfriend's wet-suit, as he'd picked up the wrong one by accident on the way out the door (she was swimming too, but in the usual bathing costume). I'm looking forward to getting into my new wet-suit sometime soon.

Listening to: The Long and Winding Road by The Beatles from Let It Be... Naked. Not in the iTunes Store...