Concrete is something many of us take for granted, but concrete is cool. The ancient Romans were experts at concrete construction Continue Reading
Science
Excellent follow up on 67P GP – what is this thing really made from? Comets were conjectured to be “dirty snowballs” but are they really? From looking at the photos, this comet looks far more rocky than icy.
What gives?
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko- A Single Body That's Been Stretched
Below are two photos of comet 67P/Churyumov- Gerasimenko. The first is a close-up of the so called body, the second is a portion of the head. These two areas have numerous matching points showing that they were once joined together. It therefore follows that 67P/C-G was once a single body that has since been stretched, resulting in the two lobes we see today.
67P/C-G is therefore not a contact binary as has been suggested. Nor is it an unstretched single body that has been eroded to form the separate head and body.
As it’s clear the comet was stretched, it must have been subjected to one of two scenarios. It either underwent a close approach to Jupiter under the Roche limit in the distant past or it underwent spin-up to around a 90-120 minute rotation period which would overcome its gravitational pull. The former scenario would need to allow stretching…
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I realize we’ve been focusing on space but that’s because number one, it’s extremely cool, and number two, there are a lot of great things that have been going on – and there’s far more than I can blog on so here’s some cool sites so you can follow the fun: Continue Reading
Thanksgiving – the American holiday of feasting; family; friends. Continue Reading

Metals are cool; Continue Reading
These links are some of my personal favorites. Continue Reading
There was a time, some time ago, when practically every little boy, especially the ones reading every single Tom Swift novel, thought, “by the time I grow up, there will be colonies on the moon and regular trips to Mars – oh, and flying cars“. Sadly, that future is here and as the common complaint goes, “where’s my flying car?” Forget the moon colonies; forget Mars trips.
Despite the paucity of moon colonies and flying cars, there are a lot of cool things out there besides personal submarines – how about jet packs? Almost got that one covered, and I’m not talking about this: Continue Reading
I find this image haunting. Philae, the mission lander, as photographed from mother-ship Rosetta after release and en route to the surface of comet. Continue Reading
Excellent discussion of Rosetta mission problems…
I hope this does not come true.
A cliff hanger descended over the Rosetta space mission as fate casts a shadow when an attempt at landing went fatally awry.
It turns out that fragile and complex technology was used instead of robust tried and tested nuclear plant. Fault intolerance.
The solar cells in Rosetta’s solar panels are based on a completely new technology, so-called Low-intensity Low Temperature Cells. Thanks to them, Rosetta is the first space mission to journey beyond the main asteroid belt relying solely on solar cells for power generation. Previous deep-space missions used nuclear RTGs (Radio isotope thermal generators). The new solar cells allow Rosetta to operate over 800 million kilometres from the Sun, where levels of sunlight are only 4% those on Earth.
— http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Frequently_asked_questions
But they forgot the possibility of or ignored an unknown environment might have cliffhangers waiting. It has landed in shadow.
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Here’s something interesting: a personal submarine. I’d love to have one of these; but they look kind of expensive.

http://www.uboatworx.com/C-Explorer_3.dhtml?lan=ENG Continue Reading

What gives?