Dandyfunk

Astronomy MOVIE of the day

Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday had a cool movie up. See it here.

First Law Violation

An Australian man build a robot with total disregard for all three of Asimov's Laws of Robotics.
In fact, he built it specifically as a suicide machine to order to kill himself.
Read the story here.

Robots at work

Some robots get jobs in astronomy, like the Mars Global Surveyor.
Here's one of MGS's latest snapshots, a cool picture of earth and the moon as seen from Mars orbit.

Photo courtesy JPL, more photos here.

Not every robot is so lucky to have a cool job. Some robots don't have the academic background, and find earth-based jobs, most in the auto industry, and some in the security field, like this one:
Vigilante Robot fights drug dealers.

Celebrate pi day a new way

It's not just for geometricians anymore. This year, pi day (or 3-14, for those of you wondering what I'm talking about) is also Talk Like a Physicist Day.
It's also a nice day to celebrate birthdays, like Albert Einstein, Hank Ketcham (creator of Dennis the Menace), Diane Arbus and Kirby Puckett. See the full list here.

I always did have trouble remembering Eris

But not any more. Now I have a new mnemonic to help remember the names of the 8 planets and three dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris and the recently demoted Pluto), courtesy of the winner of the Nation Geographic Planetary Mnemonic contest, 10 year old Maryn Smith from Montana. She came up with My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.

Full story here.

APOD

I check out Astronomy Picture of the Day pretty much, well, every day. If you don't have the time, here's the best of the year: Astronomy Pictures of the Year 2007.

The Future is now

Although it's not as portable as the one Reverend Mother Mohiam carried in Dune,

the pain by nerve induction box has been produced. 

Read the story here.

A Double Sunset . . .

of double stars.

Scientist have found an accretion disk, a sort of nursery for forming planets, around a double star system. While that's not unusual, HD 98800 also has another set of stars, orbiting the future planets. So some day millions of years from now, you (or your descendants) may see four sunsets in one day.
Get the full story here.

When in . . .

One of my favorite series of games is Caesar.
I started with the C1 on a windows 95 box, and although it was dos it was playable. Alas, while interesting, it was too far behind the times.
Next came C2, which I enjoyed best of the series. The Caesar games are a combination Sim City Rome with combat. C2 had you armies fighting off barbarian hordes in a separate window while your city management was conducted in another.
C3 changed the feel of the game by combining the two, and having combat take place inside your city.
What I really liked about these games was the designing and management of the city. Where to put housing, baths, services.  And I always tried to make it look good.

Now comes  Rome Reborn ver 1.0. Not a game, but a  digital recreation of Rome, circa 320 AD.  See it here.

Scientists never sleep

Although its been two years since the Cassini spacecraft dropped its lander Huygens on Titan, scientist are still examining the data from the short lived excursion to Saturn's famous moon. Here's an artist's conception of the landing:

(photo credit to NASA)

Looks like a fine day for a landing on Titan, with Saturn rising above the horizon. You can read all about it here.

Closer to home, the Space Shuttle Atlantis lifted off today. Full story here.