Chris Pirillo » astronomy

Death from the Skies: the End of the World?

Chris — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:49:59 +0000

Death from the Skies: the End of the World? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Death from the Skies is an aptly titled book. It’s written by my good friend Dr. Phil Plait, otherwise known as the Bad Astronomer. It was written to explain all of the ways the World might end… scientifically speaking.

Plait, an astronomer and author of the popular Web site badastronomy.com, presents in loving detail the many, many ways the human race could die, from temperature extremes and poisonous atmosphere to asteroid impacts and supernovae explosions. Such a state of destruction existed some 65 million years ago, when a giant meteoroid struck Earth, sending up so much flaming debris that the whole planet caught fire and the dinosaurs were wiped out. Solar flare activity could bring on another Ice Age. Worse yet would be a gamma ray burster, a collapsed star whose radiation would be comparable to detonating a one-megaton nuclear bomb over every square mile of the planet. Plait discusses insatiable black holes, the death of the Sun and cannibal galaxies—including our own. Balancing his doomsday scenarios with enthusiastic and clear explanations of the science behind each, Plait offers a surprisingly educational and enjoyable astronomical horror show, including a table listing the extremely low odds of each event occurring. He gives readers a good scare, and then puts it in context.

I knew right away when Phil got the contract to write this book. He was extremely excited about this. We met back when I was hosting Call for Help, and we hit it off immediately. We have the same sense of humor, and he is just hilarious! If you think this is just some boring science book… you have another thing coming.

I just started reading the book, and I’m looking forward to getting through it all. I can’t imagine there could be any better book on this subject. From a purely scientific standpoint, Dr. Plait knows his stuff. Realistically, the World could end. And death could come from the skies. Make sure you check this book out, educate yourself, and have some laughs along the way.

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Where Do You Go for a Bit of Web Fun?

Chris — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:55:35 +0000

Where Do You Go for a Bit of Web Fun? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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When I was preparing to do a video on classic gaming, I wondered where I could send all of you to play high quality games. I then remembered a site that has tons of classic games, along with media fun. On Neave, you’ll find things to keep you entertained for days on end.

There are a tons of different things you can try out:

Flash Earth – Zoom into Earth using Satellite imagry from NASA, Google Earth, and more.
Planetarium – Gaze at stars through your browser using Flash imagry.
Games – Lose yourself playing games like Simon, Space Invaders, Tic-Tac-Toe and more.
Imagination – Play with wobbly lines, and create your own design.
Fractal – Recursive Math? Computer-generated art? Either way, they’re pretty.

You get the idea. Those are only some of what you’ll find over on Neave. The coolest part is that with the games and such, you can embed them on your own website. Paul Neave, you rule. I mean that sincerely.

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Do You Want Some 3D Astronomy Software?

Chris — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:24:38 +0000

Do You Want Some 3D Astronomy Software? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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You ever wonder what would happen if two planets got too close to each other? Or what if one of the planets in our solar system decided to spin out of control towards earth? Well now you can! Bwana did a review of Universe Sandbox for us, and loved it.

Smash planets together, introduce rogue stars, and build new worlds from spinning discs of debris. Explore our solar system in 3D or destroy everything you’ve created with a super massive black hole. Tinker with your creation or sit back and watch the effects of gravity unfold. It’s fun, accessible, and easy to use.
Universe Sandbox is free to try for 60 minutes. After the free trial expires you can continue to open, view, and explore systems, but you can no longer interact with them. Once you buy a license all functionality is restored.

According to Bwana, the possibilities with Universe Sandbox are endless. While it provides great educational information concerning the stars, planets, and solar systems, it also provides endless entertainment with simulations. If you are intimidated by the broad range of options provided, the application provides a “Fun things to do” section, which gives you a quick springboard for powerful simulations in the tool. For example, if you want to see Earth with 200 moons, you can! Or, if you want to create a black hole in the middle of our solar system, you can do that as well in your own sandbox! If you have 3D glasses with you, it supports 3D as well!!

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What is the Best iPhone Astronomy App?

Chris — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:34:26 +0000

What is the Best iPhone Astronomy App? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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One of the first things I bought from the App Store is a little program called Starmap. I’m an amateur Astronomer, and just love checking things out in the Galaxy. Sometimes when I’m looking at the stars, I don’t know exactly what I’m looking at. That’s where Starmap could come in handy. The best thing about Starmap is that you can take it with you while stargazing, thanks to your iPhone.

Pocket astronomers will find a screen that shows a sky full of planets, visible stars, named stars, galaxies, and nebulae, and coordinates that you can access and search for from an unobtrusive ribbon of icons. Sensitivity to the accelerometer tips the view vertically and horizontally, and you can pinch and pull the screen to get a closer look at the arrangement of the points of light.
It’s a fair and interesting start, if not a bit static, and the land-locked dreamer in me sees many more interactive possibilities as the tools and technology progress–like a real-time night mode that uses the camera as a telescope to automatically fix the star chart around you and a Wikipedia plug-in that spoon-feeds you information about what you’re looking at. You know, the kinds of extras you’d expect from Google Earth.

Indeed, this is a powerful app. The problem is that at times, it’s unresponsive. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just unusable. When it does respond, it responds so slowly, that I can’t even tell if the app is working anymore. That’s inexcusable. For $12.00, I certainly expected more. For an application to behave like this is totally not right. The idea behind Starmap is phenominal, however… it wasn’t programmed very well. When I try to go back to the home page… the iPhone completely locks up.

So there you have it. While the programmers may have had good intentions, they have some work to do for this to be a viable app. Tell me, what other Astronomy app would you recommend for me to try out? If you’ve had a difference experience with Starmap than I did, please let me know.

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Microsoft’s Free Astronomy Software

Chris — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:34:40 +0000

Microsoft’s Free Astronomy Software is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Even if you’re not really “in to” Astronomy, you really have to check this out. The things you will see are just amazing. Go ahead… I dare you. Open your eyes, broaden your horizons. You never know what’s out there waiting.

Check out the free World Wide Telescope by Microsoft. The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft high performance Visual Experience Engine and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.

I also have another neat program to tell you about. I received an email from Erick, just after finishing the recording for this video. He wanted us to check out Stellarium. This is also a free program, which does virtually the same thing as Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope. With Stellarium, you can also choose “night mode”. The best part of Stellarium is that it works on ALL platforms, including Linux.

Let me know what other free and unique or fun software you know of, that others of us haven’t heard of yet. I’m always willing to check out something different and new… and pass along the cool stuff to everyone else.

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Register or Name Your Own Star for Free

Chris — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:50:57 +0000

I received a random email from one of you (’regnierericd’) this morning. It was one of those ‘Name a Star’ things. I was a little leery, so I passed it off to the best Bad Astronomer I know. Phil wrote back:

Hey, nifty! I like this, they aren’t a scam like the International Star Registry. I’ll have to promote this, and maybe talk to them. There’s more they can do…
For example, I looked up your star on SIMBAD, a database of astronomical objects. I found out it’s a K0 star, meaning it’s a little cooler than the Sun (maybe 4000 Kelvins). I don’t know if it’s a normal star like the Sun or if it’s a giant; I couldn’t find that info. But if it’s a main sequence (normal) star like the Sun, it’s a little less massive (about 0.8 times the Sun’s mass) and smaller (radius = 0.85 Sun). Those numbers are rough.
The distance was a bit tougher; it’s never been measured for this star. But knowing what kind of star it is and how bright it is, I can estimate the distance as 100 parsecs, or about 325 light years (again, if it’s a normal star). There are about a million stars within a sphere centered on the Sun and 100 parsecs across, just so’s you know.
The designation they gave it isn’t quite right. It’s SAO 5615, where that stands for Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. It has lots of names, but that’s as good as any.
I also went to a server that generates star field images from real digitized sky surveys. The image is attached; your star is the faint one in the exact center. :-)
Enjoy!

Astronomers eat Kittens, Scientists are Assholes

Chris — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:24:15 +0000

Astronomers eat Kittens, Scientists are Assholes is a post from Chris Pirillo

My friend, Dr. Phil “Cranial” Plaitt, is a really bad astronomer. He’s so bad, he’s been writing about things not related to astronomy:

This may sound crass, but it’s true: it’s my blog, and I’ll write what I want to. If you don’t like it, there are lots of other sites about astronomy on the web. Spare me the lectures, the drama, and the grandstanding in the comments… In a recent post, I was accused of bashing Christians, bashing religion, saying that all global warming deniers are also young-Earth creationists, and I’m sure if I look more carefully there’s something in the comments about me eating kittens, too. I never said any of that. People are reading their own issues into what I wrote, and and not reading what I actually wrote.

I can’t believe he’s admitting to eating kittens – or, that he’s putting down people who do happen to eat kittens (which I do, on occasion, in a white wine sauce). Seems that this “thought freedom” virus is spreading to other well-known science blogs, like Pharyngula:

…the single most common epithet people were flinging around was ‘asshole.’ Even people who were defending me would often say things like, “You’re an asshole, but…” / There are people who read Pharyngula just for one of those topics, and I get email all the time telling me that one or the other of those is “boring” (except the cephalopods, everyone loves those). I’m not surprised that many people are utterly uninterested in some part of what I write — probably the only person on the planet with exactly my constellation of interests is me, and that’s who I write for. So telling me that some aspect of this blog is “boring” will never have any impact at all, especially not when it is apparently exciting enough to stimulate you to write.

So, why do I write about whatever it is that’s on my mind…? Because, I write about whatever it is that’s on my mind. My audience isn’t just you, it’s anybody who cares to read – and, more importantly, respond. The world has been flooded with tech blogs and tech bloggers, and that makes me more of a commodity if I don’t clearly illustrate that I believe I have a modicum of understanding of the world beyond this stupid (and yet wonderful) keyboard.

A Planet Nowhere Near Mars

Chris — Wed, 02 May 2007 21:11:32 +0000

A Planet Nowhere Near Mars is a post from Chris Pirillo

I can point out several objects and constellations in the night sky:

The Big Dipper
The Little Dipper
Cassiopeia
Orion
Orion’s Belt
Orion’s Pocket Protector
The Moon

I’m a bad astronomer – but not as bad as my friend Phil. He’s the best bad astronomer. Actually, he’s really good, really smart, and really entertaining. The other night, we talked about what was happening with a recent discovery:

The European Southern Observatory is reporting that they have found the most Earthlike planet yet orbiting another star. It has about 1.5 times the Earth’s diameter, and five times its mass. This makes it the smallest extrasolar planet yet found (two other planets have already been found orbiting that star, with 15 and 8 times Earth’s mass).
This is amazing enough! But it gets far, far better. The parent star, Gliese 581, is a red dwarf, meaning it’s smaller and cooler than the Sun. The as-yet unnamed planet orbits this star much closer than the Earth does the Sun; it stays about 11 million kilometers (6.7 million miles) from its star, while the Earth is 150 million km (93 million miles) from the Sun.

[Video archives for ustream recordings have been unstable, but I have no other way of extracting the sessions at this time. If you want to know more about what's happening, we're always playing live]

Apollo UFO

Chris — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:39:53 +0000

Apollo UFO is a post from Chris Pirillo

The Science Channel aired “First on the Moon- The Untold Story” this afternoon, and it’s full of holes – according to the Bad Ass astronomer, Phil Plait, and his NASA nerd friend, David Morrison. I really wanted to believe that Apollo 11 astronauts saw a UFO, but according to David at NASA:

I just talked to Buzz Aldrin on the phone, and he notes that the quotations were taken out of context and did not convey the intended meaning. After the Apollo 11 crew verified that the object they were seeing was not the SIVB upper stage, which was about 6000 miles away at that time, they concluded that they were probably seeing one of the panels from the separation of the spacecraft from the upper stage. These panels were not tracked from Earth and were likely much closer to the Apollo spacecraft.

Dr. Phil… er, the good Bad Astronomy guy says there’s more unexplainable to explain:

As another quick example, they also talked about flashes of light that the astronauts saw in their eyes – these turned out to be subatomic particles (really, atomic nuclei) from space interacting with the fluid in their eyes. This is fairly well understood now. The show implies – it even comes right out and says – we don’t understand this phenomenon, which isn’t true.

TV shows need to be more like blogs, ya know? In the sense that real scientists could have swept in and commented on where that program went wrong. Instead, we’ll have people out there believing that many of the “facts” presented in the show were researched and documented appropriately. Where is there a (single) Web site on which viewers could easily fact-check programming like this?!

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

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Network Tools for Windows

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

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chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

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