2020 Hindsight

LA Times on The New Geek

Looking at scientist engineers are breaking the straight-A white/male mold.

Gone are the days when space geeks were (only) poker-faced pocket-protector guys with narrow ties and crew cuts. The rocket scientists at the JPL are surfer dudes, sky divers, rock climbers — even "Survivor" survivors. Far from the seemingly bloodless clones of the Apollo era, the young faces on the screen were as sunny, as animated, as varied, as So Cal itself.

Websites for women in science and engineering

Big ol' compilation page, housed at MIT.

100 most influentail women in aviation and aerospace

ran across this among my other searches. Not exactly on topic (to the search; is there such a thing as being off topic at 2020 Hindsight? I think not!), but interesting nonetheless.

Women in Aviation's 100 most influential women in the aviation and aerospace industry

In honor of the approaching Centennial of Flight on December 17, 2003, Women in Aviation International has selected a unique celebration. This year instead of inducting the normal number of women or groups into our Pioneer Hall of Fame, we will instead pay tribute to "100 Women Who Made a Difference" in the first 100 years of aviation.

How to do your own 3D anaglyph imaging (red blue)

A special feature on the JPL site. How to make your own red-blue anaglyph images, from dual camera shots all the way through Photoshop post-processing. ('Twould be fun to play with this and post results here.)

Scientists study the way M&Ms pack

How M&Ms pack is the subject of an article in Science, according to this NY Times story. The pack more densely. All that and they melt in your mouth, not your hand. ; )

NASA Firm on Hubble, but would listen to options

Space.com. They're open to offers of help with a servicing mission, but aren't actively soliciting them. (it'd cost a billion dollars, sez this article).

Rand Simberg points out a fallacy about cost savings, in answer to those who think that skipping the servicing mission will save NASA money.

We won't save half a billion dollars by not saving Hubble. That's the average cost of a Shuttle flight, not the marginal cost, and most of that money will get spent regardless. If we're going to fly Shuttles at all, we're going to spend a few billion dollars a year, regardless of flight rate or where they fly to.

and since this post has begun to stray into funding territory, Simberg's post about prize money in the new NASA budget is worth a read.

Now wait just a second, here....

...is that an earth second or a martian second?

Last night I downloaded that cool Palm app for Martian Time (not that I'll use it for anything more practical than the 'gee whiz' thrill.) Which reminded me of something I was wondering oh, sometime last week or so about Martian time.

A Martian day is longer than an Earth day by some 39.6 minutes, meaning that all earthling humanoids who are staying on Mars time are playing havoc with their body clocks.

Earth time has:

24 hours

x 60 minutes/hour

(or 1440 minutes in a day)

x 60 seconds/minute

(or 86400 seconds in a day)

But I want to know about the units of Martian time.

How many minutes are there in a Martian day? What units of time remain constant, and what units of time are changed?

If Mars time is counted by Earth-second, there are 1440+39.6 minutes, or 1479.6 minutes in a Martian day.

Divide that by 24 hours, and there are 61.65 minutes in a Martian hour. That's if a second is constant: if a second is a second is a second no matter where you are in the solar system.

But if Mars Time has 86400 seconds per day, that is, a day is divided by 24 hours divided by 60 minutes divided by 60 seconds, where the units of division are constant (86400 = 24 x 60 x 60), then each Mars second is 1.0275 times an Earth Second.

I pondered this aloud to Doc M, who said, "That's an interesting question. Because a second is a basic unit of measurement in physics."

Huh?

"The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. If you change how long a second is, then you change fundamental measurements."

Hm, I said. I guess that the universe really does revolve around the earth-- at least so far as measurements go. (But what do I know? Mine is a liberal arts education, I didn't cotton onto some of this physics stuff till much later in life.)

If you're reading this and you know the answer to the constant shared between Earth time and Mars time, spill it!

Edge.org's Question for 2004: What's Your Law?

Provide two laws based on your empirical work, requests Edge's John Brockman.

There is some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some law-like pattern, either grand or small, that you've noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you. Gordon Moore has one; Johannes Kepler and Michael Faraday, too. So does Murphy.

141 contributors to date and counting. One small sample from Steven Levy,

Levy's Law: The truth is always more interesting that your preconception of what it might be.

In journalism, this means that the best practicioners should not have the stories written out in their heads before they report them. Preconceptions can blind you to the full, rich human reality that awaits you when you actually listen to your subjects and approach the material with an open mind. It wouldn't surprise me if the same tabula rasa principle applies when scientists try to answer the big questions.

UPDATE: What should have been there and wasn't: Rebecca Blood's Law of Weblog History

The year you discovered weblogs and/or started your own is 'The Year Blogs Exploded'. Corollary: the year after you started your blog is the beginning of 'Weblog Permanent September.'

Don't think about that! (and what happens afterwards)

What happens when you tell your brain to not think about something? There's a part of the brain that gets more active. This part was examined in MRIs in a new Dartmouth study.

But it also has a side benefit of a more philosophical streak. When the Dartmouth scientists put their subjects in a scanner and told them not to think about an exam or a girlfriend, the images they took didn't show some homunculus crouching in a ventricle of the brain, issuing commands. ("You there--you thought! Disappear immediately!") Instead, they saw evidence of a network continually reconfiguring itself.

The brain -- an amazing thing that has defied understanding for so long -- always manages to get attached to an analogy or metaphor that represents the new New Thing. In earlier days, pulleys and levers. A hologram. A computer (plus, I'm sure, other things in between). And now here, a network. What will be the new New thing a decade or so hence? Our understanding of brain function will adapt and adopt accordingly.

So will this change American appreciation of the sport, then?

Universe may be soccer ball shaped.

Scientists say the universe could be spherical and patched together like a soccer ball -- and it may not be infinite.