Whoa... What would you do if a frozen lake started rising up and across the shore,overwhelming your house?
That's what these people faced when the Mille Lacs Lake, Minnesota did just that on 11 May 2013.
(A language warning if you are showing the kids, about two-thirds into the first clip.)
And after that, it just kept on coming, pushing in doors and windows:
14 May 2013
13 May 2013
Commander Hadfield does Major Tom and wins the internet today, hands down.
Commander Chris Hadfield handed over the reins to the International Space Station overnight to Pavel Vinogradov , and will be climbing into the Soyuz capsule together with Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko for a wild three-hour ride back to Kazakhstan later today.
Prior to his departure, he tweeted the following musical number. What else, but David Bowie's Space Oddity! And like so many of his posts, it created a social media sensation! Understandably: this was an outstanding post. Enjoy!
I found myself thinking that his singing voice was not what I expected—a lot higher pitched. But then I remembered that the ISS atmosphere is thinner than on Earth, noticably changing vocal pitches.
I do wish the one scene where he sang:
"Floating in a most peculiar way..."
was flipped 180 degrees so he was hanging from the 'ceiling'.
Nice to see towards the end that the guitar was caught just before it crashed into anything. That is going to be one incredibly valuable guitar once it's back on Planet Earth!
Hadfield's return to Earth will bring to an end what I'm sure was the most shared and publicly followed six months in ISS history. When I started following him on Twitter while he was still training for this mission, he had a few thousand followers. As he is leaving the ISS he has an amazing 777,000 followers!
Prior to his departure, he tweeted the following musical number. What else, but David Bowie's Space Oddity! And like so many of his posts, it created a social media sensation! Understandably: this was an outstanding post. Enjoy!
I found myself thinking that his singing voice was not what I expected—a lot higher pitched. But then I remembered that the ISS atmosphere is thinner than on Earth, noticably changing vocal pitches.
I do wish the one scene where he sang:
"Floating in a most peculiar way..."
was flipped 180 degrees so he was hanging from the 'ceiling'.
Nice to see towards the end that the guitar was caught just before it crashed into anything. That is going to be one incredibly valuable guitar once it's back on Planet Earth!
Hadfield's return to Earth will bring to an end what I'm sure was the most shared and publicly followed six months in ISS history. When I started following him on Twitter while he was still training for this mission, he had a few thousand followers. As he is leaving the ISS he has an amazing 777,000 followers!
10 May 2013
Holy crap! This trailer for the movie Gravity will scare the bejesus out of you...
So you've got your application in for the MarsOne one-way trip have you?
Watch this trailer for the upcoming movie Gravity, and tell me it doesn't make you pause for a moment...?
Go full-screen and turn it up!
Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, the International Space Station, October.
I can't wait. I think...
Watch this trailer for the upcoming movie Gravity, and tell me it doesn't make you pause for a moment...?
Go full-screen and turn it up!
Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, the International Space Station, October.
I can't wait. I think...
1 May 2013
Whoa! What happens when you stall a 747 straight after take-off...
On Monday, a US commercial cargo 747 took off from the Bagram airfield at Kabul, Afghanistan, climbed too steeply into a classic stall, apparently worsened by some cargo shifting rearward.
This is what happened then, as captured from a dashcam of a person I'm sure is very thankful they didn't set off 10 seconds earlier that day...
All seven people on board died. All were US citizens.
I always have a sense of wonder that such enormous things can stay up in the sky. But it's even more stunning to see one fall so precipitously.
There's a little more information over on Russia Today.
23 April 2013
Gorgeous wing-tip vortices from an airliner landing in fog
This short video is a sleeper...
It's only 50 seconds long and you start wondering whether it was worth the click through.
Then...wow.
I am so going to have to take the camera out to the Canberra Airport next foggy morning...
It's a Swiss Air A340 landing in Zurich, and was published in January this year by Andy Ruesch. And it's a pretty good example why formation flying is kind of dangerous.
(Via@CatherineQ, @scimomof2 and The Laughing Squid)
It's only 50 seconds long and you start wondering whether it was worth the click through.
Then...wow.
I am so going to have to take the camera out to the Canberra Airport next foggy morning...
It's a Swiss Air A340 landing in Zurich, and was published in January this year by Andy Ruesch. And it's a pretty good example why formation flying is kind of dangerous.
(Via
17 April 2013
This is not a movie trailer. This is a real space mission pitch.
Scientists are often accused of doing great science, but not doing very good at selling their science.
Perhaps this very cool 'trailer' is a sign things are changing around that?
It's for LISA—the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna—a European proposal to put three laser-equipped spacecraft into an Earth-trailing orbit and configured in a triangle with each side measuring one million kilometres. It uses lasers between the craft to measure separations down to picometres.
The goal? To detect that elusive phenomenon the gravity wave.
I like it!
This is how the mission purpose is described on the project website:
16 April 2013
Elysium trailer looks the honest to dog goods!
After the horrible letdown that was Prometheus, one can be forgiven for being wary about getting excited about awesome scifi trailers. So this one about the upcoming movie Elysium has really really hoping that the movie goes close to the promise of the trailer. Because what's in the trailer looks totally freaking awesome...
Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, and direction by Neill Blomkamp, who did that amazing surprise package District 9.
Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, and direction by Neill Blomkamp, who did that amazing surprise package District 9.
Public stargazing this Friday night—Mount Stromlo. I'll be there. Will you?
The members of the Canberra Astronomical Society will be back up on Mount Stromlo this Friday night for the second of this year's joint ANU/CAS public stargazing nights.
After the full-cloud washout from last month, if the skies are clear this week, we expect a huge turnout. 500 people is normal, and on one pretty busy night last year, I was sure every one of 500 people checked out Saturn through our telescope...
It will be the first public outing for my new telescope and the big wide-field eyepieces I bought especially for these public viewings. I've been setting it up to control the new equatorial mount via bluetooth straight from Stellarium on a notebook PC, and using a wireless gamepad for steering. This process uses programs called ASCOM EQMOD and Stellarium Scope.
It would be nice if I could get some clear sky to actually test it first…There's one crucial component that I haven't tested yet—the sky alignment program Alignmaster. :-/
Please make sure you check the Mt Stromlo All-sky Camera before you set off, to see whether anything is visible:
Here are the details posted by ANU. Note the 'warm clothes' advice—it does get cool and windy up there! Ski jacket is my standard gear…
After the full-cloud washout from last month, if the skies are clear this week, we expect a huge turnout. 500 people is normal, and on one pretty busy night last year, I was sure every one of 500 people checked out Saturn through our telescope...
It will be the first public outing for my new telescope and the big wide-field eyepieces I bought especially for these public viewings. I've been setting it up to control the new equatorial mount via bluetooth straight from Stellarium on a notebook PC, and using a wireless gamepad for steering. This process uses programs called ASCOM EQMOD and Stellarium Scope.
It would be nice if I could get some clear sky to actually test it first…There's one crucial component that I haven't tested yet—the sky alignment program Alignmaster. :-/
Please make sure you check the Mt Stromlo All-sky Camera before you set off, to see whether anything is visible:
Here are the details posted by ANU. Note the 'warm clothes' advice—it does get cool and windy up there! Ski jacket is my standard gear…
The Mt Stromlo Observatory in conjunction with the Canberra Astronomical Society invite the Canberra community to attend our public observing night.
Come and see the rings of Saturn, the craters of the moon as well as beautiful star clusters and nebulae. On the night attendees will be taken on a ‘tour of the universe’ with talks by astronomy experts and observations on several telescopes.
This event is free and open to the public. No bookings are required.
Warm clothing is recommended. In the event of cloudy weather, star gazing will be cancelled. You can check out the weather at Mt Stromlo using our all sky camera.
15 April 2013
That "rare meteor shower" on April 22? Not so much... I explain why.
Have you seen that email getting around about the Lyrid meteors on April 22 being a "rare meteor shower"?
Yeah about that. Not so much...
Rare? Not unless you count annual as rare. Not unless you count all the other meteor showers each year as also rare. This is an extract from the highly-recommended Astronomy 2013. It's published every year and contains a wealth of information about what each month's viewing holds in store. About $25 through astronomy clubs and suppliers, more in book stores. Click on the picture to zoom in. 33 significant meteors showers, with six predicted to have 20 or more per hour, three with 100 or more.
So...not very rare. How about spectacular? Well that would depend on the Moon. So here's the extract on the Moon viewing:
12 April 2013
Life with the NBN: my live interview on ABC Radio
This week I was interviewed by Genevieve Jacobs on Canberra's ABC Radio 666 about what it was like to get the NBN connected.
The interview was a flow-on from my account here of our installation, which has been an incredibly popular article. At time of posting, it has had more than 3800 views, the second most popular post I've done.
A late cancellation of another piece the ABC had planned meant that my interview went on for more than 20 minutes—the longest live to air piece I've had—with questions coming in from listeners during the piece. The interest was magnified a heap by the release the afternoon before of Tony Abbott's and Malcolm Turnbull's Tin Can Plan—or #fraudband as the Twitterverse has branded it!
They've subsequently posted an article and the audio.
You can listen to it here.
One clarification on something I said during discussion of 'phantom power consumption', which I subsequently read in the NBN instructions: NBN Co recommend that the power supply is NOT turned off on a regular basis, although it is okay for extended absences like holidays. So if you are hooking gear up to one of the 'green' power boards I discussed, keep the NBN power supply out of the loop. They also say that it only uses the equivalent of a 10-Watt light bulb.
Afterwards, I got a lovely message from Genevieve:
The interview was a flow-on from my account here of our installation, which has been an incredibly popular article. At time of posting, it has had more than 3800 views, the second most popular post I've done.
A late cancellation of another piece the ABC had planned meant that my interview went on for more than 20 minutes—the longest live to air piece I've had—with questions coming in from listeners during the piece. The interest was magnified a heap by the release the afternoon before of Tony Abbott's and Malcolm Turnbull's Tin Can Plan—or #fraudband as the Twitterverse has branded it!
They've subsequently posted an article and the audio.
You can listen to it here.
One clarification on something I said during discussion of 'phantom power consumption', which I subsequently read in the NBN instructions: NBN Co recommend that the power supply is NOT turned off on a regular basis, although it is okay for extended absences like holidays. So if you are hooking gear up to one of the 'green' power boards I discussed, keep the NBN power supply out of the loop. They also say that it only uses the equivalent of a 10-Watt light bulb.
Afterwards, I got a lovely message from Genevieve:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)