Physics versus Philosophy - game over?

It's time to take stock of things and get a feel for the waters, folks! Thus the following poll. I hope you'll take the 10 seconds required to put your two cents in. And, don't be afraid to leave a comment either!
Has physics, in the form of relativity, quantum mechanics, and M-Theory (Superstring theory), made philosophy obsolete and/or useless?


Free Web Survey

Thanks!
--Gary D. Timothy-- (a.k.a., The Eclectic)

Ahh,... to fly like a bird! Well, it can and has been done with the Snowbird!

Humans have dreamed of flying like birds under their own power ever since time began. Paul MacCready accomplished this feat in 1977 when he flew the Gossamer Albatross over the English Channel. It was quite true that he flew under his own power, but the wings of his craft were fixed and unmoving, except for directional controls. Still, this was an awesome achievement and MacReady was named by some to be the Engineer Of The Century.

But now there is Snowbird, a craft that is also completely human powered once it's in the air. And Snowbird, as what's known as an ornithopter, actually flaps its wings to sustain flight. True, it does need a pull from a car to get airborne, but once it's up,... well just watch the extraordinary video below!

On July 31st and August 2nd, 2010 the Snowbird maintained altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds - the world's firstself-powered flapping wing flight!

Ahhh,... to fly like a bird!

For more information: Check out the Human Powered Ornithopter Project website.
To watch this video on YouTube: World's First Human-Powered Ornithopter
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My other places: Eclectic Universe Home Page - Eclectic Universe Forum - Eclectic's Universe Blog - Thinking With Reason
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Stand Up For Science - Evolution is REAL Science!

I ran across the two videos below on YouTube. If you're teetering on the edge of believing or not believing evolution theory, these videos might just inspire you. If you're sure that evolution is bunkum, then you too might want to check out the videos. And if you're already sure that evolution is the way to go, then these videos might just answer some questions for you anyway!

First up: Does the fossil record support Evolution?

Next up: Where are the Transitional Forms?

As I have asserted before on Gather.com and other sites, and as this video explains, nearly every species can be considered a transitional form. That is, all species stand somewhere between a former species and a later species on the evolutionary tree of life!

For those of you who do not accept the theory of Evolution, ignorance may be bliss, but I'm here to tell you that a little science knowledge can work even greater wonders!

For more videos and information: Stand up for REAL science

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My other places: Eclectic Universe Home Page - Eclectic Universe Forum - Eclectic's Universe Blog - Thinking With Reason
You can also JOIN ME on SideTick, RedGage, and MyLot - three other places to earn cash just for being social!!

The Milky Way Big Picture (Showcase) - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

The Milky Way Big Picture (Showcase) - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

This is a video of the Spitzer Space Telescope's mission to capture over half of our Milky Way Galaxy, gloriously illustrated with wondrous visions, and explained beautifully by an astronomer.

It really is a Must See video!!


I do hope you enjoyed it!
--Gary D. Timothy--

I Finally Found Uranus and YOU can too!

Now, this is a special event for me because I’ve never positively identified it before in the night sky. There have been times when I thought I was looking at Uranus, but I’ve never before been sure of it. At its brightest, it is sometimes barely visible to the naked eye in very dark skies with no light pollution, but it usually requires a good star chart to find.

Uranus is the seventh planet out from the Sun, beyond Saturn and smaller than Saturn too, so it’s no wonder that it’s much more difficult to see. Below is an image captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during it’s flyby of the planet in 1986.



Above: Voyager 2’s view of Uranus. As you can see, Uranus is quite featureless – it’s one of the gas giants, so you are basically looking at its opaque atmosphere although it is thought to have a rocky core. Both Voyager 1 and 2 are still functioning and sending data back to Earth after over 33 years! They are both currently leaving the Solar System and are, respectively about 17 and 14 billion kilometers from the Sun.

Science Vine - Issue 3: Petrified Lightning, Suing Science, & Shuttle Wake-up Songs

Science Vine – Issue 3 - August 31, 2010

Petrified Lightning

I’m sure most of you have heard of petrified wood, and maybe even seen some yourself either in pictures or at a museum. But how about petrified lightning or fulgurites? It’s possible that at some of you who have never heard of petrified lightning or fulgurites have actually seen them without realizing it!

When lightning strikes the Earth in some sandy or silica-rich soil, it can literally melt the ground and leave it’s mark as fulgurites: hollow, glassy tubes that represent the path the lightning took. They are often root-like in structure, with evident branching, which seems consistent with the branching lightning seen in the sky. And they can range in size from very small to several centimeters wide and several meters long.

You might be petrified of lightning, but there’s nothing to fear from fulgurites. And if you find one, especially a big one, you could be in for some serious money from collectors and/or museums. But even though lightning strikes the Earth 100 times every second on average according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, fulgurites are very rare. So, while you might have seen one without know what it was, you probably won’t find one even if you know what you’re looking for. Isn’t that the way it always works?

For more information:
Wikipedia: Fulgurite
FactOidz: Fulgurites: Petrified Lightning in the Ground (Warning! Fascination content is HIGH! And, there’s pictures here too!)
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Man seeks to sue science.

Man logically loses litigation attempt.

According to a Discover Magazine blog:

Back in 2008, a Hawaiian fellow named Walter Wagner claimed the Large Hadron Collider’s hunt for the Higgs boson would end in apocalypse, and sued to stop the collider from going online. His suit was soon dismissed by a federal judge, but with the fate of the world on the line, Wagner kept trying.

A simulated event at the CMS particle detector of the LHC of the european particle physics institute, CERN. This simulation depicts the decay of a Higgs particle following a collision of two protons in the CMS experiment. [Image credit: CERN. From Wikipedia user Harp.]

But, to make a long story short, an appellate judge for the United States District Court in Hawaii has ruled that Wagner failed to show “credible threat of harm.” You see, the United States doesn’t control the collider, which spans the border of Switzerland and France. The LHC was indeed built with some U.S. government financial support, but the U.S. only has observer status on the operations governing body: the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) council.


So, it appears that the U.S. can’t be held accountable if the LHC somehow destroys the Earth by creating an Earth-eating black hole or similarly apocalyptic strange matter!

For those of you who have a sense of humor, check out the LHCDefense.org site I’ve listed below. It’s a serious site, but intelligent beings that know a lick of science won’t be taking it seriously!

For more information:
Discover Magazine: Judge: Man Can’t Sue over LHC’s “Potential Destruction Of The Earth”
LHCDefense.org: THE OFFICAL SITE FOR CITIZENS AGAINST THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

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Did you ever wonder what astronauts wake up to when they’re orbiting about 200 miles (325 kilometers) high above the Earth in the Space Shuttle? Why, Space Rock music, of course!

And who gets to choose the particular songs they hear? Why, Houston, of course! EXCEPT that now NASA has just opened voting booths to the public. That’s right, now YOU can vote on what music our shuttle astronauts get to wake up during the STS-133 mission, which is currently set to launch in November of this year.

So, to have your own voice in the musical voices that shuttle astronauts will hear, check out NASA’s Top 40 and pick out a song! They’ve listed 40 songs, all of which you can listen to, that have been played on previous missions, and the songs range from Beautiful Day by U2 to Rocket Man by Elton John to What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. The theme from Star Trek by Alexander Courage is currently leading in the polls, followed closely by Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. Over 1.2 million votes have been cast so far, so get yours in now!

And on that note (pun intended, of course), so ends this issue of Science Vine.

© 2010 Gary D. Timothy
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My other places: Eclectic Universe Home Page - Eclectic Universe Forum - Eclectic's Universe Blog - Thinking With Reason
You can also JOIN ME on SideTick, RedGage, and MyLot - three other places to earn cash just for being social!!

Science Vine - Issue 2: Google Mars, SpaceQuakes, and a Tachyon Joke

Science Vine- Issue 2, July 27, 2010

Overheard on TheScientist.com Naturally Selected blog:

And the bartender says “Sorry, we don’t serve tachyons here.”

…

A tachyon walks into a bar…

Now, just in case you’re relatively physics challenged, click here for help with seeing the light. Or you can just left click and drag your mouse pointer over the seemingly empty space below for a clue.

A tachyon is a theoretical particle that travels faster than light, and as such, it would travel backward in time. This means that a tachyon would arrive before it left! Thus the reverse nature of the joke above.

For masochist individuals who wish to torture their own gray matter into temporal shreds of technicalities, please see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon) for a good time before you get there.

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In NASA Release 10-163, it seems that NASA and Microsoft have teamed up again to offer a 3-D close encounter with Mars! Yup, you can not only Google Earth, but also Google Mars now.

NASA and Microsoft Research are adding new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with high-resolution 3-D maps of the Red Planet. This online virtual telescope allows you to explore the universe using images that NASA spacecraft have taken.

I recently checked it out for myself. Below is a screenshot from my computer featuring the Happy Face on Mars. Conspiracy theorists, please note that the crosshairs in the images are not alien formations on Mars, but rather alien formations on my computer screen!

Eclectic's Universe Wordle

Check out this wordle that I created using the text from this blog. It's my first one, so don't be too critical, okay? Ha!


Yeah, I know, it's awful blurry, but you'll get a bigger, better, crisper view if you click on it!

The Science Vine – Premier Issue: Surfing the Science Side

This will hopefully be the first of many Science Vine posts by me, your friendly eclectic science guy. Now, since this is the first post of this series, I hereby justify the title of this article as “premier.” It could also be considered premier as in “first in importance” or “outstanding quality” but that would depend on your point of view and I graciously grant that it might be debatable if you are not me. But I won’t go there, even if I already have! (Oh the ego of this eccentric eclectic!)

But enough of the alliterated nonsense – let’s just get right to it, shall we?

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The Science Vine for July 12, 2010 (Issue 1): Surfing the Science Side of the Internet today, I found the following little grape seeds that could blossom into full blown grapes from the Science Vine should you actually choose to read more about ‘em from the links I’ve so magnanimously provided.

The Moon continues to NOT be implicated in the rise of bad behavior during full moons. Yet another study has found no correlation between full moons and crimes. See the USA Today article Full moon eclipsed as accessory to crime (By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY )for more info. Yet soooo many folks, cops and bartenders included, continue to believe that all the lunatics come out to play on nights with a full moon.

Practical Astronomy Magazine - Free Download eZine

Practical Astronomy Magazine - Free Download eZine



For anyone with the slightest interest in the night sky and/or astronomy! Become a member and subscribe for free and get access to back issues and other cool stuff on this site! But it's a time-limited offer folks, so get there now or be square!

Also, if you have a mind to, and can actually write worth a whit, they you can also write and submit your own articles for consideration. Wouldn't it be cool to be published in this magazine? I'm going to have to try this out myself!

From Practical Astronomy's about page:

About Practical Astronomy Magazine

Practical Astronomy magazine was founded in 2009 and has always been distributed for free, using digital download from the internet.

Its primary driver is to encourage amateur astronomers worldwide, to share their observations and astronomical experience. So far, contributors from at least ten countries have been published in the magazine.

Contact (and send images/articles for publication) to Kevin Brown: editor@practicalastronomy.com

The magazine is published by Structure Ltd (a UK registered company) in pdf format, making it readable and printable by most computers in the World.

It’s been assigned the International Standard Serial Number ISSN 2042-2687, by the British Library.

Here’s a message from the editor..

The title “Practical Astronomy” just about sums-up my personal Astronomy ethos. So I thought, I really should help create this regular, downloadable magazine.

Magazine Editor, Kevin Brown

The objective (!) is to share practical astronomy techniques and news…

And also, encourage you to get outside and do some observing!

Thank You,

Kevin Brown FRAS