When Worlds Collide

The book, "When Worlds Collide" was one of my favorites as a kid. It wasn't until much later in life that I saw the George Pal movie adapted from the book.

The idea of a rogue planet seemed frightening as a child, but as I grew older is seemed more and more implausible. What mechanism would cause a planet to break free of it's stellar system? Sure, in the vastness of our universe there must be some rogue planets, but surely there couldn't be many?

Well it turns out that not only have astronomers sighted a rogue planet, but that many models of our universe predict that there are twice as many rogue planets than there are main-sequence stars.  Urk.

Astronomers have discovered a potential "rogue" alien planet wandering alone just 100 light-years from Earth, suggesting that such starless worlds may be extremely common across the galaxy.
The free-floating object, called CFBDSIR2149, is likely a gas giant planet four to seven times more massive than Jupiter, scientists say in a new study unveiled today (Nov. 14). The planet cruises unbound through space relatively close to Earth (in astronomical terms; the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years wide), perhaps after being booted from its own solar system.

Rogue planets are Nature's way of asking, "How's that space program coming along?"

Kiss a Wookie, Kick a Droid

If you want a big, overbearing, orchestral movie score, John Williams is the man.

I kid! I kid because I love his work.

But not as much as this:



UPDATE: Just to be clear, the video is of a chap lip-synching to an acappella quartet. The quartet is called "Moosebutter," they approved of this video. For more Moosebutter, check out www.moosebutter.com.

Be Extra Careful Wrapping Presents this Christmas

X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape

By Malcolm Ritter

updated 10:23 a.m. PT, Wed., Oct. 22, 2008

NEW YORK - Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

"We were very surprised," said Juan Escobar. "The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous."

EarthDesk

I love cool stuff, but I hate a computer desktop cluttered with widgets and I am cheap.

These contradictory impulses are all satisfied by my latest, coolest acquisition: EarthDesk.

I started out with it configured in equirectangular:



But now I am keeping it mostly set to globe:



For extra bling, I added a starfield, taken by the Hubble telescope, behind the globe.



So now my desktop looks like this: