Astronomy Picture of the Day today featured a confusing and abstract image, because it’s something probably never seen in this detail before: a collection of red sprites above an active thunderstorm.
Here’s the deal. Occasionally, waaayyyy above the tops of the clouds on some thunderstorms, there is an additional discharge – actually, two different kinds, the other being
I’m going to spoil the entire post by prefacing it with, “If you look hard enough, you’ll find what you were after, even if it doesn’t actually exist.” That’s all you really need to know, but I’m far more long-winded than that, so let’s see what I’m talking about.
I followed a link over to an article on Psychology Today’s website,
Just a quick one here, but check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day from Friday. It features an image of a meteoroid striking the moon during the total phase of the lunar eclipse the other night. This is pretty lucky timing, because had it occurred during any phase that had full sunlight on that portion, it would
Oh, look – another insipid sports metaphor. We can’t really escape them, can we? But I suppose I can take solace in the fact that I don’t know what it means or what sport it’s from. I think it’s jai alai…
Anyway, this is a photo from a recent outing with the Tardy Mr Bugg, who’s
I probably don’t need to tell you that today is Do Additional Research for a Blog Post Day, when anyone who is routinely posting should put aside some time to look deeper into one of their chosen topics. As such, I am meeting with some friends down at an amusement park for further investigation into
And I like lava lamps.
This video comes courtesy of NASA, and the Astronomy Picture of the Day. It’s an elaborate computer simulation based on satellite and weather data, and shows the wind activity in the north Atlantic just a few months ago, during the peak of hurricane season.
It’s surprising to see such detail so soon after the season occurred, but it gives us a good view of how the
Once again, let’s welcome back Randall Munroe and xkcd:
Actually, this isn’t sciencey at all. I remember hearing some religious pundit telling us eclipses were proof of god, because the perfect match of sun and moon sizes could only be done by an intelligent being – coincidences just can’t happen. Eclipses are god’s gift to humans, which explains why so many older cultures
I had initially said that I wasn’t timely on this, and that was even a few days earlier when I’d started to type this up, but then I realized how much I was falling for the same trap that has made “news’ the pathetic state of affairs that it is now. Scientific findings of this nature don’t have this bare moment of interest, like a celebrity doing something stupid, but
Sometimes, what it takes is a nice little illustration to put something in perspective, and Randall Munroe of xkcd is our man for this example. There is a ridiculous amount of propaganda around regarding climate change, with countless claims and excuses and pretty much just pitiful whining that it isn’t happening, or humans aren’t the
Several weeks back, I was contacted out of the blue (rather than out of the yellow or the aubergine, which are much less abrupt) by Catherine Scott, a biologist/entomologist that specializes in spiders she had seen some of my images on BugGuide.net and wanted permission to use them in a post on her own blog, SpiderBytes. After a lengthy and heated discussion on terms (me: