rishel.org

I've been meaning to write a post about this, but it looks like slashdot beat me to it. Meg's Dad is part of the team working on the STeReO project. A few weeks ago they had a "Family Day" and Meg and I got to go down to APL and see the satellites before they were prepped for launch. Meg's dad has been doing the autonomy testing. His job was to simulate breaking parts of the satellite, or knocking the satellite out of alignment, and seeing how well the onboard AI can figure out where the Sun is, then figure out where the Earth is and then re-establish radio communications with Australia, or a number of other listening posts. Crazy cool geeky stuff.

• Guess What I Learned Today: It's amazing what you can find on the back of a package of Halls cough drops:

  "Excessive consumption may have a laxative effect."

  That is, as they say, Good to know.
  (1)

• Eye stuff: been finding a few interesting links about eyes lately.

  The Eye Color Calculator is a pretty slick flash app to find out What Color Eyes Would Your Children Have?

  The color blindness webfilter runs your webpage through a filter so you can see how ugly it is to me. Set it to Protanopia to see like I see.

  I've been trying it out, and I don't see any difference. So either the filter is broken, or works really well.

  Update: a trichromate tried out the filter for me. apparently it is working. (3)

Hot Damn. Researchers Report Bubble Fusion Results Replicated. This press release contains interesting sentences composed of almost everyday words like:

The research team used a standing ultrasonic wave to help form and then implode the cavitation bubbles of deuterated acetone vapor. The oscillating sound waves caused the bubbles to expand and then violently collapse, creating strong compression shock waves around and inside the bubbles. Moving at about the speed of sound, the internal shock waves impacted at the center of the bubbles causing very high compression and accompanying temperatures of about 100 million Kelvin.

I almost understand this.

(via MeFi)

• Two Rocks Are Better Than One.: I've been saying it for years, but it's nice that someone who's actually walked on another planet agrees with me. Retiring astronaut John Young recently gave an interview with the Houston Chronicle where he gives some scary, or as I hope, motivating statistics:

  The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You're 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event in the next 100 years than you are getting killed in a commercial airline crash.

  The most dangerous thing we do in Houston, of course, is drive our automobiles to work every day, so you know how dangerous that is and how many people get killed doing that. But wiping out civilization. …

  It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.

  (via /.) (0)