LR2 Blogs

A very interesting product. I’m curious if it’s on the market anywhere.

RIP: Mr. Wizard we will miss you.

Don Herbert, who explained the wonderful world of science to millions of young baby boomers on television in the 1950s and ’60s as “Mr. Wizard” and did the same for another generation of youngsters on the Nickelodeon cable TV channel in the 1980s, died Tuesday. He was 89.

Bad Astronomy Blog » When I say centrifugal, I mean centrifugal!

Let me clear and blunt here: that’s wrong. Centrifugal force is every bit as real as centripetal force. It’s just in a different frame. “Centripetal” means “center-seeking”, and “centrifugal” means “outwards-seeking” or, more literally, “center-fleeing”. You’d think these are opposites, but they are in fact the same thing! It just depends on your point of view.

To everyone who’s ever told me there is no such thing as centrifugal, go read that link 3 times.

The cartoon is courtesy of xkcd.

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Ethanol

David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year’s supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.

I know a lot of people who’ve been claiming this for years. Hopefully more people will realize that ethanol (and in my opinion hydrogen too) are not viable long term solutions to our dependence on oil unless we find a much more efficient way to product them.

Rare Carbon Dioxide “Lake” Found Under the Ocean, Scientists Report

A team of scientists based in Japan and Germany has found an unusual “lake” of liquid carbon dioxide beneath the ocean floor.

On Earth’s surface carbon dioxide (CO2) is normally a gas, but in the cold, high-pressure ocean depths it cools and becomes a liquid.

I’m wondering what happens if somehow this stuff is disturbed and boils to the surface.

Pope sacks astronomer over evolution debate | the Daily Mail

Pope Benedict XVI has sacked his chief astronomer after a series of public clashes over the theory of evolution.

He has removed Father George Coyne from his position as director of the Vatican Observatory after the American Jesuit priest repeatedly contradicted the Holy See’s endorsement of “intelligent design” theory, which essentially backs the “Adam and Eve” theory of creation.

University of Rochester Press Releases

In the past few years, scientists have found ways to make light go both faster and slower than its usual speed limit, but now researchers at the University of Rochester have published a paper today in Science on how they’ve gone one step further: pushing light into reverse. As if to defy common sense, the backward-moving pulse of light travels faster than light.