Tag: science

5 Steps to Survive a 5:30 AM NASA TV Stream with your Kids

trevor
SpaceX Dragon CRS-8 on approach. Image via NASA.

We love space and science over here at Love Make Share, and we were very excited to get up really early and watch NASA TV’s live-broadcast SpaceX’s Dragon capsule being nabbed by the International Space Station. Without diving into a bottomless pit of discussion about the mission, it was important and cool for a few reasons: The Dragon’s ascent stage, the Falcon-9 rocket, finally managed a controlled landing on a barge in the ocean. Yes, a robot rocket lifted a robot spaceship to space and then landed itself on a robot boat. The Dragon…

Opportunity’s Getting Forgetful in its Old Age

trevor
Opportunity Mars Rover

Ask my 5-year-old who her favourite robot is, she’ll quickly tell you “R2D2.” Press her about who her favourite real robot is, and she’ll confidently answer “Curiosity.” The SUV-sized mobile science lab who charmed the internet with its selfies may have captured her imagination, but for my money, little Opportunity has Curiosity beat, hands-down. To date, Opportunity has exceeded its mission by somewhere near 10 years. That’s pretty old for a space robot, it seems, because the flash memory onboard Opportunity has started getting corrupted after being in use for so long. In human terms, Opportunity is having trouble…

Stunning Timelapse from the ISS

trevor
Dragon capsule and Canadarm

The European Space Agency released a spectacular timelapse montage a couple of days ago of ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst’s photos from the International Space Station. It’s absolutely stunning, featuring auroras, city lights, awesome weather, and images of the atmosphere as seen from outside. My favourite? Canadarm 2 and Dextre manipulating a Dragon resupply capsule. According to the ESA, the process went something like this: Often while conducting scientific experiments or docking spacecraft Alexander would set cameras to automatically take pictures at regular intervals. Combining these images gives the timelapse effect…

Sunday Reading: Spaceplanes, Silencing Scientists, and Skepticism

trevor

Hey, look at that! We’ve got a little light alliteration in our title today, inspired in no small part by the excellent Canada’s Least-Watched Political Podcast. We’ve had CLWPP as a member of spillway(radio) for a couple of months now, and it’s been a blast. Big things are on the horizon with that show, and Greg, Will and I are very excited about the conversations we’ve been having about it. It’s a sunny day in Ottawa and, after breakfast, spillway’s Top Dog and I took a walk by the river.…

TEDx Is Not Dead. But Science Education Might Be.

trevor

A Natural News article was circulated on Facebook recently with the title “TED aligns with Monsanto.” Loosely, it claims that the organizers of TEDx events, which are independently organized events similar to the well-known TED conferences, are shutting down talks about contentious issues, as though it were becoming a more hardened, conservative organization. What is true about this is that TEDx isn’t going to be quite as generous with their stamp of approval in the future. Some months ago, complaints were made on the /r/tedtalks subreddit about the quality of speakers…

Art and Science in Perfect Harmony: IBM’s Atomic Stop-Motion Film

trevor

  Researchers at IBM have made me love stop-motion animation. Using a scanning tunnelling microscope, these fine folks have painted perfect pointillist pictures using individual atoms, and made a fun little short film about a boy and his one special atom.     This may just be a smile-inducing aside to real research into quantum computing but MAN is it cute.

Think the Science Is Still Out on Climate Change? Think Again

trevor

The language above is obviously leaning towards the alarmist, but this infographic by the fine folks at learnstuff.com points out something critical: the effects of climate change are very real, indisputably so, and potentially disastrous. The numbers that they give in the writeup that accompanies their graphic are shocking. 72% of media outlets are currently reporting sceptically on climate change, whereas an overwhelming majority — 97% — of scientists agree that climate change is a real thing, and in fact caused by the effect humans have on the environment. And…

Sunday Reading 18/02/2013

trevor

It’s Sunday, right? No? Well it’s PRACTICALLY Sunday. Here in sunny, snowy Ontario it’s Family Day, which means my students are off doing something other than school and the tiny people here are playing house. That’s right, folks–a long weekend. And here’s something to fill a) your holiday with some compelling stuff or b) to give your brain a break when you’re stuck at work. Giant LEGO X-Wing Might Be The Coolest LEGO Set Ever Made – Luke Plunkett, Kotaku I had to lead with this because of my recent…