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Showing posts with label astrophysics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astrophysics. Show all posts

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Tweet, tweet, tweet ... Having a terrific time at the #CSIROTweetup

Ok ... Yesterday I left work early and Went out to the CDSCC (Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex - http://www.cdscc.nasa.gov/ ) and spent an absolutely wonderful evening at the #CSIROTweetup (news article about it here - http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/21/3354487.htm ;_) ... we then stayed the night out at a school camp near there, and we are now in at CSIRO Discovery and the talks are about to begin ... And tonight we go back out to CDSCC to do it all again ...
Actually I can probably keep blogging during the talk, in between eating bites of my lunch ... Multi tasking?! LOL

Actually it is kind of funny ... A whole bunch of "tweeps" having a Tweetup in a radio quiet area (the telescopes need to be able to "hear" the signals from the spacecraft they are tacking, and there isn't any phone signal out here, in fact we have to turn all wireless devices off or to airplane mode ... so we have all been cut off from our usual connections to the www/etc. ... Apart from several computers they set up for us to use :-)
... So here we all are ... back in town with mobile phone coverage and guest access to a wireless network ... So everyone is sitting in the lecture theatre, phones/iPads/Netbooks in hand busily tweeting, emailing, checking phone messages and what have you ...
(I am trying to do this on the iPad but I am adding the links and a few other bits later when not using the iPad - LOL )

[later the same day ... er ... actually it is the next day, just - have not gone to bed yet - late night coming up]
oops - the lectures got too interesting (actually the first one was too - but I had already heard almost the same one a couple of months ago so I could kind of listen and blog and still understand it all ;-)

After the lectures/etc we had some spare time - which a few of us spent the first part of at the pub - lol - then we headed out to a nice picnic area by the river on the way out to CDSCC and had a BBQ ... and then we all arrived here at CDSCC for an entertaining evening of sharing computers to tweet/etc/eating party pies, watching stuff on the big screen at the front of the room, listening to someone talk about NASA and stuff, and generally have a good time ... now we are watching the NASA live coverage of the launch (of http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ for those who have not looked at the other link at the top - lol)

ooh "T minus 1 hour and 9 minutes" ... woo hoo - getting excited ...

ok ... time for some photos ... yes - I was the first one here to look at the computers and think to myself "oooh - usb slot - might try connecting my phone/camera"... worked fine with both of them ... but first ... here is a photo that I DIDN'T take - this is a group photo that one of the other "Tweeps" took and tweeted a little while ago - and is now saved on my phone - LOL


And here is a photo I got someone to take of me, last night ;-)

And guess who?! ... well - I had the wig with antennae so I had to put it on ... and the person organising things just took this photo and tweeted it ... so I "borrowed" it.

and now that I have monopolised the computer for way too long - someone else's turn ... should be just under an hour till launch now ... time to see if there are any party pies left ... LOL

I wonder if I can call this an early Wednesday ABC post, seeing we are up to the letter T in a couple days?
[edit: I decided "yes, I will ;-)" just added the letter T link here and am about to go add this link to the linky thingy there]

Sunday, September 27, 2009

odd socks ... and other things ...

... Ever noticed how you put 2 socks in the wash ... and one seems to go missing?

I have heard many people complain about that, and about the same thing happening to pens and teaspoons and tools and stuff ... yet wire coat hangers seem to multiply in numbers that indicate they must be breeding with each other or something ...

If you don't know what I am talking about you have probably never read the right blog posts, or been on an e-mail list/forum/yahoogroup for long enough to see the subject come up ... because the subject has come up several times on the newsgroups and yahoogroups I have been active on. (in fact the moderators on the scquilters yahoogroup recently had to tell everyone to stop going on about it because it was generating too much off topic e-mail - lol).

I decided to do a quick google search to see if I could find an example ... funny how the first result that came up in the search was this one - http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/21/if-you-dont-have-an-lhc-heres-how-to-create-your-own-black-hole/
... hmmm - I think the reason for that might have been MY comment on there! (you should be able to find it not quite half way down the page ... or further down in this blog post if I remember to copy it here (I did - further down in this post) ;-)

the second thing that came up was this perfect example - http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=78511 ... change all the references to woodworking/screws/etc to quilting/pins/etc and it is almost exactly the same conversation as what I have seen on the quilting lists I am on - lol

hmmm - some rather odd results come up when one types "odd socks wire coathangers pens black holes" into the google search box - lol
(I found and had a read of a couple or really weird but quite interesting blogs and a rather strange, but interesting, short story ;-)

so why am I posting about odd socks/etc NOW?

er ... 2 reasons - the main one is because I just found a photo that reminded me of it.

I took the photo a few weeks ago ... after I took the washing off the line, and carefully put all the socks in pairs as I put them in the basket
(well - all those that were pairs - DS's socks never have pairs - they never get put in the wash in pairs because he usually just gathers up the first armload of dirty washing off his bedroom floor when he has a clean up of his room, and chucks it in the laundry ... and ... he doesn't usually wear them in pairs anyway! - he just grabs 2 socks that are near enough ... or the first ... or even the only ... 2 socks he can find in the mess on his bedroom floor and wears them.)

... anyway ... I DO usually wash mine in pairs
(except for the "pair" I have been wearing lately where one is pink and the other green - because they are the same type of sock, bought at the same time from the same place, and the other pink and green sock both have holes in them!)

but ... I only had ONE red sock ... and I knew I had hung 2 on the line the day before - becuase I actually remembered doing it!

The other one wasn't still on the line ... however it had been windy that day, so I had a look around under the line/around the yard to see if it had fallen/been blown off ... but there was no red sock lying on the lawn or anywhere I could see ... so I took the rest of the stuff off the line (no - the red sock wasn't IN something else - I checked - becuase our washing machine likes to play that game - it even stuffs shirts and things inside doona covers) and then I had a potter around and pulled up some weeds from the garden/lawn and picked up some other stuff that was lying around under the pergola (where the washing line that had the socks on is) ... when I just happened to glance INTO the bucket of water that was beside me ...



yep - found the red sock! LOL

... which ended up becoming one of the few examples of when one of my socks goes into the wash alone - becuase it went in with the next load of washing I did before it re-joined it's partner - lol
(well ... who knows what is in those buckets - probably a mix of whatever was in the bucket before I found it in the rubbish pile on a nearby building site, rain water collected as it ran off the side of the pergola roof, dust, dog slobber, and whatever insects/etc may have drowned in there)

btw ... this is the comment I left on that Universe Today post (which was about making tiny black holes without needing to use the LHC to do it):
aykayem Says: August 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 am
yes – let them make those black holes and do their research – before I lose any more socks! Black hole type phenomena have also been observed (by both myself and other members of various newsgroups/e-mail lists I have been active on) in relation to wire coat hangers and pens – there seem to be black holes which swallow up and/or spit out those items – and in some kind of pattern/proportion that results in this equation/rule – the number of wire coat hangers/pens/odd socks/etc that can be found in a location near one of these black holes is inversely proportional to the need one has for said item. I also seem to have a black hole in my sewing room (although I think it, or another one, may also sometimes be active in other areas of the house too) – and it seems to swallow things up and then spit them out again when I am no longer looking for them (usually when I have given up trying to find them, and used something else instead).btw – I have even made a (small ;-) quilt with a black hole on it – the photo is on my blog ( in this post – http://aykayem.blogspot.com/2009/01/other-4-journal-quilts.html )

hmmm on my comment on that post the ;-) shows up as a smiley face - I didn't know it would do that else I would have put another ) after it :-)

anyway ... that quilt leads on to the other reason I am posting all this weird stuff about odd socks, wire coathangers and black holes ...

well - not that quilt exactly - as you can see from that comment, and the link I put in there - I have already posted about that one ...

but ...

I have made another black hole quilt! LOL

and ... I have already posted a photo of that one too ... but only part of it ... in the post before this one - so now you get to find out WHY there is cat hair on my event horizon ...

The reason there is cat hair on my event horizon is because we have a cat, who likes to "help" me sew - so there is cat hair on all of my quilts (and on everything else I make) ... including this one:



(as usual - if you click on it you should get a bigger version)

I made it for the ACTTAA exhibition, which was last weekend ... which is why, in my usual manner of working to deadlines - I made the quilt the weekend before that!
... even though I have known for ages (almost a year) that the theme/title of the exhibition was "Heaven And Earth" ...

btw, the title of the quilt is "Good Heavens, Where Did All These Coat Hangers Come From? … and Where On Earth Have All My Biros/Keys/Teaspoons Gone?!"

oh - and for those who might be wondering where I got all those teeny tiny coathangers from - I made them out of paperclips!
(it created a bit of interest at work - me sitting at my desk, in my lunch break, bending paperclips with a pair of pliers - lol ... I did it at work because I knew where a pair of pliers were there ... I have a pair here at home too ... but they are "lost" somewhere in the pile of mess in my sewing room ... probably hiding in a box of bits for some half finished project or another ... )

hmmm ... talking about black holes - time seems to vanish into them too - it seems to have taken me just over 3 hours to write this blog post ... but I did eat my tea in the middle of it, and uploaded some photos, and read a few e-mails/etc ...


Thursday, September 17, 2009

There is cat hair on my event horizon ...

They say nothing can be seen inside a black hole, and nothing can exist there in any recognisable form ... but I guess cat hair can exist anywhere ...




so what exactly IS this?

... well ... it is part of a quilt, which I finished on Tuesday night, and delivered Wednesday morning - for the ACTTAA exhibition that opened this evening, and is on tomorrow/this weekend ... I will post a picture of the whole quilt later, along with photos of the other stuff I have in the exhibition, and maybe a few other photos of stuff that I have done and not posted about ... but I am not sure exactly when "later" will actually be - LOL

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

But ... I was Busy ...

... so this B post is just a little Bit late.

(er ... it is Belated? ... such an odd word that one - usually only seen on Birthday cards for those who forgot to send the card earlier ... and it looks stupid there too ... lol)

I could probably have thought of Bazillions of B things to post about, for ABC Wednesday, if I had not Been too Busy to post this sooner (actually there probably was a couple of times I may have had time to post something a Bit sooner ... But at the time I didn't Bother, Because I was going to do it "later" - lol)

But ... seeing I mentioned it last week (well - the week before last probably, seeing I was meant to post this last week - lol) ... I had better Bore you all with what I said I would say about Black h0les ...

B is for the Big Bang theory and how the Big Bang resulted in the creation of a Bazillion galaxies (some Big and some small) ... galaxies that astrophysicists tell us each have a Black hole in the middle of them ... and which also contain Bucket loads of Big stars that have died/collapesed and formed even more Black holes ...
But ... the Big question is - where ARE all these Black holes, and what is going to Become of them in the future - will the universe just keep getting Bigger until everything is too far away from anything else for anyone to care? or will some/all the stars become black holes and eat up everything else? If that happens, then what will the universe Be like?- what will happen once the Black holes are all that is left? - will they just keep eating each other up (due to Being attacted to each other's gravitational pull) until there is one Big Black hole? ... That is where my thoughts were going when I started to wonder - where does all that stuff go?! - maybe that is when it becomes too Big to fit in so little a space and we get another Big Bang? or maybe our Big Bang (the one that created our universe) is just the other side of some small Black hole in the Backwaters of some other universe?

hmmmm ... what if our whole universe is just some weird little Blob in some scientist's Bottle?

maybe I had better stop writing all about what comes out when my Brain goes Beserk, before I drive you all Bonkers!

btw ... B is also for Boo Boo - like the Bag of tools that was lost by that astronaut working on the ISS - I just found out it was supposed to have been going to re-enter the atmosphere yesterday - http://www.universetoday.com/2009/08/02/orbiting-toolbag-will-enter-atmosphere-aug-3/ ... I wonder if it is Back yet? - actually it won't/didn't come "Back" anywhere - it will/did Burn up on re-entry - lol

(unless it gets swallowed up by that Black hole that comes and visits my place - the one that eats one sock out of each pair I put in the wash, and swallows up all the Biros/pens and spits out wire coat hangers ... )

Before I go ... I can't not say that B is for BLOG ... lol

... which reminds me (just after I actually posted it!) that I should mention that I am still trying to Blog my way to Antarctica ... hey - I even have 1 vote! - someBody has actually gone there and voted for me!
(... now that I have more than 0 votes I won't get the Booby prize? - another few thousand votes and I might actually Be able to win this - lol)

Thursday, July 23, 2009

A is for ... ABC ... Again ...

A is for ...

Alphabet! ... and All the letters in it! LOL
yes - ABC Wednesday is now starting it's 5th round ... so - let's see how well I can keep up this time ... lol (it is a wonderful excuse to try and post at least once each week - lol)

A is Also for All that stuff I posted about last time (Arachnids and Aykayem and All sorts of other Amazing ... or was it Awful? ... stuff)

And ... er ... And! - that word that one should NOT start a sentence with - lol

A is for Antarctica!
... An Amazingly Awesome place that I really want to go to ... which is why I decided to try and blog my way to Antarctica ... trouble is ... I will need more than 2000 votes to win (someone else already has 2002 votes, and a few others are not far behind) ... And I don't think I have Any yet ... sigh ...
(maybe I need to change that Awful profile picture? ... or do some Advertising ... maybe I should tell the ABC radio people About it? - I could tell them that they need to help me, by doing an interview/publicity/etc, because it should be an Australian who wins? - LOL)

A is also for Astronomy ... which is Also Apt - not just because 2009 is the International Year Of Astronomy (As I mentioned in the other A post) but it is Also for the Aniversary of the first Moon landing - 40 years ago this week (I could have said "Today" if I had posted this on time - lol) and Apollo 11 and the Astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were the first to set foot on the moon. (First humans, and first Americans ... much to Russia's disgust ... hmmm - I wonder if humankind would have made more/greater advances, or made less progress, if America and Russia had been working with each other rather than against each other?)

A is also for ACTTAA - the ACT Textile Arts Association (which I am a member of) ... and the theme for our exhibition (in a couple of months time) is partly to do with it being the year of Astronomy - the theme is "Heaven And Earth" (the other thing is the fact that it is also the year of natural fibres)
... I guess that theme kind of covers everything ... well Almost Anything Anyway ... it could be possible that there might be some where/thing that is not part of Heaven or Earth? lol
I Assume one would have to ask an Astrophysicist about that one?

I Actually had an Amazing and Awesomely odd thought About Astrophysics last night ... (it was to do with Black holes and the Big Bang theory - But that can wait for next week ... or whenever I get around to doing my "B" post - lol)

hmmm A is also for the Absence of Any images ...

... In order to make this post more Attractive, I might have to Add one:



This is from my Geocities page (the one that is about to be Absent because it will not exist any more once yahoo "flick the off switch" sometime soon) in fact I just went and copied this one from the geocities page because I can't remember where on the computer I put the original (bigger) copy of it!
(it is Also possible that it is Absent All together ... As in ... it isn't where I put it Anyway ... the likelyhood of that Awful fact being Applicable is dependant on where I Actually put it in the first place ... And ... it is possible that the image IS where I put it, but where I put it is not in Any of the places where I think I ought to have put it - it could be in Another folder Alltogether ... maybe even the other "Andrea" folder, which is on Another computer ... Ahhhhrrrrgggghhhh ...)

So ... what is it? ... well - this is what I have written under it on my geocities page:

This picture is actually an image of gaseous pillars in the Eagle Nebula, M16. It was Taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, on April 1st (!) 1995 .
The image is courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute (ST Sci), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., for NASA., and NASA.Material created with support to AURA/ST ScI from NASA contract NAS5-26555 is reproduced here
was reproduced on my geocities page with permission.
I drew in the fuzzy bit at the top right hand corner (because it had nothing there, just black squares - the image is actually made up of several smaller ones, and there were a couple missing in the corner).


I still think there is something kind of weird and eerie about that image ... that tallest pillar on the left kind of looks like someone got a whole zoo of animals (both real and imaginary) and kind of squidged it all up together ...

... maybe some Aliens did that to it, just to drive us nuts?

A is Also for the Awfull smell of whatever DD just cooked herself for a Midnight snack (toast I think) which would probably smell ok if I was hungry and I wasn't half alseep, and hadn't had black pudding for supper A little while Ago ... hmmm - DD should be in bed - she has school in the morning ... then again - so should I, because I also have school in the morning! (actually I have to go to work in the morning ... but ... I work at a school - lol)

I can think of At least one other A word ... but that could be a bit Awkward (As it is a bit Awfull) because I want to try and keep this blog "family friendly" ... or at least not too bad mostly - lol

so .. I will bid you Adieu (or however u spell that word) ... and I could say a goodbye/goodnight/etc in a couple of other languages that have words for it that start with A, but I can't be bothered looking up how to spell them ...