Big Picture: Volcano violence March 21, 2009
Posted by sarah in: geology, pics, science . Add a comment
The Big Picture series in the Boston Globe has had two awesome features this week. The first is a series of photos of the undersea volcano that erupted near the South Pacic island group of Tonga, triggering a series of earthquakes and a tsunami warning. The Guardian is reporting today that the eruption has created a new landmass in the Tongan archipelago. Amazing! The Earth can kick our asses any day.
Image credit: AP Photo/Trevor Gregory
Hubble images Saturn transit March 18, 2009
Posted by sarah in: pics, science, space . Add a comment
This week NASA released some great images from the Hubble Space Telescope using the WFPC2 camera in February of a beautiful transit of four of Saturn’s moons over the planet’s surface. A transit like this is only visible from Earth once every 15 years so it’s quite special that we got to see it through the eyes of Hubble this time. Click to enlarge!
More details of the images over on the Planetary Society weblog here, including an animation of a sequence of images put together by Emily.
Image credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)
Watch Men save the planet March 17, 2009
Posted by sarah in: random, women . 4commentsI saw the film Watchmen last week, the adaption of a classic in the graphic novel genre with the same title by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It’s pretty enjoyable, especially if you’re in the mood for some great visual effects and gore. Lots of blood and bone-crunching. I’ve never been a big comic or graphic novel fan but I decided to read the book and in fact it’s really good! The drawings are beautiful and the writing is very imaginative with lots of depth. So if you want to know what the hype is all about but aren’t a fan of severed limbs and arteries then I recommend the book. I do want to say something about the female characters though.
The threat of space debris March 15, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2commentsSpace debris, the rubbish from old, defunct, or shattered satellites circling the Earth in an expanding sphere, has been a hot topic these last few weeks. Back in 2007 China came under fire for demonstrating its military muscle by shooting one of its satellites to pieces from the ground. In February two satellites collided in orbit at high velocity, spraying debris throughout space and causing fears of some of the rubble crashing down to Earth. While our growing extraterrestrial rubbish tip may seem like a pretty trivial thing to concern ourselves with, the threat it poses to our scientific and technological endeavours in outer space has become worryingly clear.
Because she's worth it March 11, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2commentsContinuing the theme of women astronomers winning big prizes, one of this year’s L’Oréal-UNESCO awards for women in science was awarded to Brazilian astronomer Prof. Beatriz Barbuy. Barbuy is a professor at the University of Sao Paulo (site in Portuguese) and also currently the Vice-President of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Her work in astronomy focuses on the study of chemical abundances in stars and stellar populations thoughout the history of the Universe. Barbuy is also the first astronomer to win this award in its 11-year history.
Very nice!
A press release from the IAU here.
The official site from L’Oréal is here (web designers, meet usability, you need to talk).
PS: Thank you L’Oréal for supporting these awards and for doing lots to encourage more women to take up science. I appreciate that. You could help even more by not trying to convince us (us = men and women) all the time that wrinkles and cellulite are bad. Also, stop making false scientific claims in your adverts (here, here).
