Opportunity Itself
The hard-charging Opportunity rover is on the move again after sitting out the Martian winter. Its sojourn lasted four months at a site called Greeley Haven which sounds so picturesque we can hear the waterfalls running past the resort information center this very minute. In 200 years, they might. Two weeks ago, as reported in the link above by Space.com, Opportunity re-upped for another tour of the Martian surface 8 years after it was meant to shut down. This will probably be remembered as the most successful NASA mission after the Moon landing. And Opportunity just sent back a self-portrait - proving that while it explores like the machine it is, it takes pictures like a tourist. God speed, little rover.
Go, Lego Canadien. Slip the surly bonds of Earth.
As reported by Universetoday.com, two Toronto teens from the Agincourt Collegiate Institute launched a Lego figure proudly displaying his patriotism to the True North with a flight-ready Canadian flag. Their capsule, equipped with both still-photo and video cameras, flew by helium balloon 25 kilometers into the stratosphere. The footage captured is a testament to their abilities as engineers - Lego man survives even the parachute-aided 32 minute descent back to earth - and a love of exploration.
We don't generally watch tennis here at the press...
We’re starting to regret our choice.
Space to fill
Another link alert from my friend, Mr. Ridgeway, on his yearly excursion into the “spider’s web” as he calls it. Comparable size of stars starting from the Earth and ending at Canis Majoris. Majoris is right. As my friend, Mr. Ridgeway, said, “They are very big.”
Ode to a Grecian Computer
From my friend, Mr. Ridgeway, a link to the story of the Antikythera Computer, sunk off an island in the middle of the Mediterranean and recreated to show us things could be worse - we, at least, don’t have wind up our iPads before they wind us.
Star Wars
Who pays for these things? There are a few things millions of dollars might be better spent on, but seeing the universe slam its fists together certainly makes me feel better about my own tantrums.
Michael Faraday redux
Meredith Perry, as profiled in this article by Yuki Noguchi at NPR, is a self-taught electrical engineer who has discovered a viable way of transmitting energy sans wires. Her invention, UBeam (finally something about somebody other than “I”), uses vibrations of piezocrystals caused by ultrasonic waves to produce electricity. Over the air. There’s no details on how the electricity is captured and used, whether it’s a direct beam or a blanket of limited area, but here is the innovation of the year. Wireless energy transmission means a major change in how we live, and may be the best solution to problems facing the electric car. Perhaps, with this technology in place, they can recharge as they drive. How this translates from, say, a small device for personal use (like charging a dead laptop) to a utility which we will have to buy into as a public service remains to be seen. But perhaps no one is thinking that far ahead. They should. What Michael Faraday, another self-taught engineer, demonstrated on a table in a London symposium ended up powering much of the world. It’s worth going over the rim a bit on this and taking a good look around.
