"I claim this dust mote in the name of…"

An unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the state of astro-geology is being presented by the University of California at Berkely. You can participate in their stardust@home project to analyze aerogel images for interstellar dust grains that were returned to Earth a few days ago aboard the NASA mission Stardust. If you pass the training course …

Argument by Incredulity

A British philosopher was quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today saying, “A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.” This philosopher, Antony Flew, has been a devout atheist (if that is not an oxymoron) for a good while now. Check out his wikipedia entry for …

Freaky Cool Asteroid!

Monday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day is of asteroid Itokawa, which is currenlty being examined by a Japanese spacecraft named Hayabusa. This is a fascinating mission which involves a sample return, but that’s not why I’m writing this… Take a look at the image. The asteroid is nubbly! No craters! No smooth surface! It looks …

Thin Member Fracture (a.k.a. Fun with Spaghetti)

What do you do during your lunch break? Today, I decided to check out who was awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel Awards and for what. My favorite one of these was the alarm clock that runs away and hides, which I heard about on NPR a few weeks ago. I think it was on Morning …