Did You Know.....

[Warph]

Tardigrades or "Water bears" are the only creatures that can survive the extreme conditions in the vacuum of outer space.

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/9/4/motherboard-tv-meet-the-guy-who-hunts-space-bears-in-rural-virginia

[Warph]

The flash on Jupiter is visible as a bright spot on the left edge of the planet's
disk, as seen in this photo image

http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/10/13789057-flash-spotted-on-jupiter-is-it-a-hit?lite

....that Jupiter took a massive hit for us?  Did You happen to Thank Jupiter Today?  And by Jupiter, I don't mean that goofy Roman god with the awful wife.  I mean our friend, the planet.  Jupiter took a hit for us today, and we owe it a debt of gratitude.  An asteroid or comet clearly meant for Earth crashed into Jupiter instead.  It's as if the whole point of the gassy behemoth were to deflect giant flying things from making it into Earth's orbit and possibly disrupting a wedding.  Or our ass's... sorry, axis.

"It's kind of a scary proposition to see how often Jupiter gets hit," said George Hall, an amateur astronomer from Dallas who captured the flash on video this morning.

Hall didn't actually see the hit when it happened.  Early this morning, he brought out his 12-inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with the Point Grey Flea3 video camera attached, just to capture imagery for a composite picture of Jupiter.  "Jupiter happens to be ideally positioned at about 6 o'clock in the morning. It's right overhead." ...

Jupiter impacts are of great interest to astronomers, amateur and professional, because they're part of the orbital billiards game that has shaped our solar system.  In some cases, the cosmic interloper is destroyed before it has any visible effect on Jupiter's cloud tops.  In weightier cases, the object breaks up and leaves black marks on the planet's atmosphere.  The case of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1994 is the most notable in recent memory. (according to: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/02/is-jupiter-a-shield-protecting-earth-from-impacting-comets-asteroids-maybe-not-experts-say-.html )

Beyond the planetary science, there's the "phew" factor: Astronomers suspect that giant Jupiter's gravitational pull serves as a cosmic shield, sweeping up incoming objects that would have a deadlier effect if they were to slam into our planet.  Some scientists say that without Jupiter, life on Earth wouldn't have had much of a chance. (emphasis emphasized by me)

Billiards game?  I think not.  We all know why Jupiter is where it is.  So let's lift a flask of low-carb, nonalcoholic mead in honor of Jupiter.  Here's to you, you fat freaking planet.

And hey... you stay classy, Sinope.

[Diane Amberg]

Those last two are really very interesting and would be great for  discussion.
  I wonder how many people would write off those interesting little creatures as something from Industrial Light and Magic. There have been many ,many projects and experiments that went up on the shuttles. I wish we could learn more about them, like that one on the tardigrades. That is so cool. Thank You.

[Warph]

             

             

http://news.yahoo.com/mammoth-fragments-siberia-raise-cloning-hopes-165221958.html

...that a Woolly mammoth remains found in Siberia may contain living cells

Hair, soft tissues and bone marrow found on Siberian expedition, raising hopes that extinct creature could be cloned

A Russian university says scientists have discovered frozen woolly mammoth fragments that may contain living cells deep in Siberia, bringing closer the possibility of cloning the extinct animal.

The North-Eastern Federal University said in a statement on Tuesday that an international team had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow at a depth of 328ft (100m) during a summer expedition.

Expedition chief Semyon Grigoryev said a group of Korean scientists with the team had set a goal of finding living cells in the hope of cloning a mammoth. Scientists have previously found bodies and fragments, but not living cells.

Grigoryev told online newspaper Vzglyad it would take months of lab research to determine whether they have indeed found the cells.

Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out 10,000 years ago.

[Warph]

              
           

So who knew?  Had I not gone on John Kennedy's http://blog.beliefnet.com/faithmediaandculture/2012/08/film-asks-cosmic-question-did-god-create-the-universe.html ... blog, I would not have known that Barbara Nicolosi had coproduced with Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., a new documentary, Cosmic Origins... "mind-expanding film about creation, science, and faith" ...featuring an embarrassment of Christian riches opining on how a close examination of the physics of the universe points to more than just order but order with a purpose.

The documentary is hosted by Stephen Barr of the University of Delaware and teacher Angela Baraquio Grey, and features interviews with Nobel laureate Arno Penzias, Templeton Prize winners John Polkinghorne and Michael Heller, astronomers Jennifer Wiseman and Owen Gingerich, and theoretical particle physicist Lisa Randall (who's from Queens, NY).

Check out the film's website for screenings near you.  Then watch the trailer here:

             

[Warph]

....that this is an homage to a selection of pioneers, engineers, inventors and scientists.  There is a choice quote from each of them.  They are presented in no particular order, but there is a common theme.  Can you work out what it is?


Sir Christopher Cockerell (1910-1999)

Sir Christopher Cockerell invented the Hovercraft in 1953. His first prototype was built using a hair-dryer and a pair of tin cans (one was a coffee can, the other a food can).  

"Hovercraft will always be around... you can't un-invent something!"



Charles Babbage (1791-1871)  

Charles Babbage was the great-grandfather of the computer.

His Difference Engine was the first programmable mechanical computer.  Not a bad achievement for someone whose parents ordered his teachers that his "brain was not to be taxed too much" after suffering a childhood fever.  Interestingly, you can still see his brain today; it's sitting in a jar in the London Science Museum.

I like the following quote he once made, "Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all."



Michael Faraday (1797-1867)  

Faraday was a chemist as well a a physicist.  He established the basis for the electromagnetic field, discovered Benzene, the Bunsen Burner (though obviously it was not named after him) and built the first electric DC motor.  He has been described as the best experimentalist in the history of science.

"The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success are concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation and communication."



R. J. Mitchell (1895-1936)

R. J. Mitchell was the designer of what is, without question, the most beautiful plane every built (with Concorde coming in second).  Not only good looking, but also aerodynamically perfect, with elliptically loaded wings.

A prolific engineer with 24 aircraft designs to his name, his S6B was winner of the Schneider Trophy race and later broke the air speed record.

And remember his advice, "If anybody ever tells you anything about an aeroplane which is so bloody complicated you can't understand it, take it from me: it's all balls."



Sir Alexander Flemming (1881-1955)

With his discovery of Penicillin in 1928 (for which he later received the Nobel Prize), Flemming changed the course of history and saved countless millions of lives.

"One sometimes finds what one is not looking for."



George Stephenson (1781-1848)

Father of the Steam Engine, and co-inventor of a miners safety lamp.

Not only did he build the first steam locomotive, but he also built the World's first public railway line.  It's his railway line that is the origin of standard gauge (4 ft 8½ in) now used by the majority of the World's railways.

I like standards.



Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee (1955- )

Inventor of the web.  Without him, you'd not be reading this now.

"Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves."



Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996)

The inventor of the Jet Engine, the device that shrank our planet.

Before the jet, aircraft were propeller driven vehicles; those that could afford to travel would cruise about in "flying boats" with the journey itself being just as important as the destination.  With the jet engine came speed, and now aircraft are just the mechanism to get to the destination.

"A nation's ability to fight a modern war is as good as its technological ability."



John MacAdam (1756-1836)

The inventor of a better surface for roadways than soil and mud!

Transportation of everything got easier, and with good roads personal transportation (cars) became more prolific.

"The thickness of the road should only be regulated by the quantity of material necessary to form such impervious covering and never by reference to its own power of carrying weight."



Alan Turing (1912-1954)

A mathematician, cryptanalist, and one of the World's first Computer Scientists.

He was influential in creating the first modern electronic computer and, with his code breaking colleagues, probably shortened WWII by two or three years.

"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."



Sir Henry Bessemer (1813-1898)

Henry invented the process to mass-produce steel.

Inexpensive and rapid production of steel was essential for the production skyscrapers, factories and, well, pretty much everything made out of steel.  Steel is still made the same way today.

"I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right."



Charles MacIntosh (1766-1843)

A chemist, and inventor of waterproof fabrics.

Credited with the invention of the waterproof coat that still bears his family name.  (Created by disolving India-rubber in a solvent of naphtha).

Sorry, no interesting quote!



Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892-1973)

After initial passive experiements to detect lightning (with the aim of enabling pilots to avoid approaching thunderstorms), his idea morphed into the active RADAR invention we know today.

It was another invention that greatly shortned the war and undoubtedly saved many lives.

Ironically, later in life, Watson-Watt was pulled over in Canada for speeding by a policeman toting a radar gun.  He is reported as saying:

"Had I known what you were going to do with it I would never have invented it!"



George Cayley (1773-1857)

The first person to define mechanical flight (way back in 1799), and the principles of aerodynamics.

He designed the first glider to (succesfully) carry a human aloft.  His tri-plane, built in 1853, was piloted by his coach-driver and flew 900 feet across a small valley to become the first pracitcal heavier-than-air flying machine.  This was fifty years before the Wright Brothers mades their first powered flight!  He understood that powered flight could not be achieved until a light-weight engine was developed to give the thrust and lift required.  

"To make a surface support a given weight by the application of power to the resistance of air"

A forward thinker too, in 1809 he said:

"I may be expediting the attainment of an object that will in time be found of great importance to mankind; so much so, that a new era in society will commence from the moment that aerial navigation is familiarly realised... I feel perfectly confident, however, that this noble art will soon be brought home to man's convenience, and that we shall be able to transport ourselves and our families, and their goods and chattels, more securely by air than by water"

He spoke that over 200 years ago!

In his spare time, he also invented a new type of telescope, artificial limbs and a caterpillar tractor.



Common theme:



Did you work out the common theme?  That's right, all the above people are British.



Want more?

How about James Hargreaves, the inventor of the Spinning-Jenny which, in 1764, greatly sped up the production of cloth?


Sir John Douglas Cockcroft and Ernest Walton who split the atom?  Not forgeting Ernest Rutherford who became known as the "father of physics" for his pioneering work on the atom.

Or Humphry Davy the surgeon who first used laughing gas, and co-invented the safety lamp.

Wilford Sweeney earned 23 patents ranging from acrylonitrile/styrenesulfonic acid, Nomex, carbon fibre, semiconductive fibre, and a new solvent for aromatic polyamides.

There are plenty of prolific engineers and bridge builders too, like Thomas Telford, Joseph Locke, George Bidder, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, William Jessop, Charles Vignoles, Benjamin Baker

(Neville) Barnes Wallice designed airships, WWII bombers, geodesic airframes, earthquake bombs and the famous Bouncing Bombs of the Dambusters Raids.

Sir Joseph Whitworth (the World's Best Mechanician) pioneered the rifled breech loading gun, and the process of fluid-compression to make the steel, and is also responsible for the standard for screw thread angles at 55° with a standard pitch for a given diameter.  (Have I mentioned that I like standards?)  He also built a knitting machine and horse-drawn mechanical roadsweeper.



I almost forgot about the scientists:

Charles Darwin, Robert Boyle, Richard Dawkins, Francis Crick, Paul Dirac, Robert Hooke, Stephen Hawking.  Anyone heard of Isaac Newton?

Edward Jenner discovered the efficacious protection that cowpox gives against smallpox.

Thomas Young partly deciphered the Rosetta Stone, and John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre.

The internet is a good place to dive into investigation in the true inventors of the TV, and the first bicycle with foot pedals and chloroform... There is slightly less dispute about Alexander Graham Bell for the telephone, and no dispute about Alexander Bain for the fax machine.

[Fire Elk]

Some people complain about their jobs. I doubt this guy gets paid a ton of money. Warning: this has to do with animal husbandry.

[jarhead]

From Warph:
Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out 10,000 years ago.

Warph,
That is something I seriously doubt, but that's just my uneducated opinion. Too many Natives talk  about them and the mastodons like the stories were passed from not too many generations ago .
Sometimes I think highly educated scientists come up with crap just to make themselves look like geniuses and get their name in a book.
Kinda like a Sandia point I found, artifact hunting. So ancient it probably pre-dates T-Rex ---oh wait---maybe it doesn't !!!!

[Fire Elk]

I remember hearing a story about some wooly mammoth or mastadon being served in NY City for $500 back in the 80's or 90's. I think it was found IQF (individually quick frozen) in Russia.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2725/prehistoric-its-whats-for-dinner

[larryJ]

It was reported today that some 250,000 (that is a quarter million) people are leaving the state of California every year............

So I did some math.........

Assuming no one would want to move to California, and using the census figures, there were, in 2010, 37,253, 956 people in this state.  Now, if a quarter million people are leaving each year, then that figure is now reduced to 36,795,623, or so, by the end of this month.

Which means, that in the year 2159 on or about Christmas Day, I will be the only one left living here.

Scary thought.

Larryj