My green flight(s) of shame December 31, 2008
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Inspired by Stuart, I decided to work out how much I’ve travelled in the course of 2008, and place this distance in some kind of “planetary perspective”. Well, I can say that it doesn’t look pretty! In total, I seem to have travelled over 40,000 km – and coincidentally that’s pretty much the circumference of the Earth. Yikes. Must do better next year.*
To solidify my good intentions, I booked my first trip of 2009 – a very convoluted one in 3 countries- all by train. It was definitely more expensive than flying. What’s up with that?
And speaking of the environment, Alexis Madrigal put together a list of the top 10 green technology breakthroughs of 2008. It’s an interesting read, go take a look. Madrigal is actually writing a book on the history of green technologies in the US, he’s keeping his research notes in a blog, here.
* Oh no. My Dopplr profile tells me I have 43,000 km of travel lined up already in 2009, and I have the velocity of a duck. That’s a bit terrifying. Quack!
Christmas wishes December 23, 2008
Posted by sarah in: me . Add a commentBefore I forget – best wishes to everyone for Christmas and the New Year, or which ever holiday you celebrate around this time of year in your culture or country. I’ll be a bit quite on my blog while I spend some quality time with family and away from my computer!
An Early Universe 101 December 23, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . Add a commentI’ve been learning a bit recently about dark matter, dark energy and the history of the Universe, which are all fascinating. Mark over on Cosmic Variance has writted this interesting post on preheating in the early Universe. This proposed phenomenon has important consequences for the formation theory of dark matter, amongst other things.
While I’m on the topic, one of the best books I read this year was The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth. I admit I don’t read as many popular science books as I should, and I finish even fewer – but this one is a cracker. Guth builds an excellent story about how he arrived at the theory, in collaboration and in conflict with other scientists around the world. It’s a fascinating account of a great scientific discovery, told in such an anecdotal style that it’s super easy to read. It’s completely rekindled my interest in fundamental physics and cosmology, which explains some recent posts (here, or here) on the topic 
Science kudos for Obama December 21, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 1 comment so farUS President-elect Barack Obama has been appointing some excellent people to advise him on all things scientific during his presidency. His latest appointment, John Holdren, to the post of director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, has been met with particular joy from the scientific community, as Holdren is a physicist and leading expert on climate change. Hurrah!
Read more in The Guardian here, or the New York Times here. Phil Plait has some opinions on Obama’s appointments and the future of NASA under his administration.
UPDATE: Obama’s weekly address on YouTube of 20 December was actually about his science policy and appointments, watch it below. Sounds good!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMlXNrBxM0g]
'Arrested development' at work in the Universe December 17, 2008
Posted by sarah in: science . 4comments
Left: Composite image of galaxy cluster Abell 85, using X-ray data (purple) from Chandra and optical image from the Sloan Digistal Sky Survey. Right: Snapshots of the Universe's evolution from a simulation by Volker Springel of MPA, at 0.9, 3.2 and 13.7 billion years.
A cross-continental team of astronomers led by Andrei Vikhlinin have used data from the American X-ray space telescope Chandra to help pin down the nature of the most enigmatic stuff in the Universe, dark energy. By observing clusters of galaxies over a range of different ages, the team were able to track how their masses have evolved over the history of the Universe. Using the statistics of this evolution and comparing them with results from several other complimentary studies, they have significantly narrowed the constraints on the precise nature of dark energy.
