Cosmos Computed

This morning, New Horizons became the first spacecraft to make a flyby observation of the Pluto system. During the mission, the spacecraft captured the most detailed photographs of Pluto's surface we've ever had, and possibly ever will have. It also found many new properties including size, mass, atmosphere, and surface composition. In a period of a few hours, we discovered more about Pluto than we've found in the 85 years since Clyde Tombaugh captured its first photograph. Before After  (images credit: NASA) To complete this mission, the spacecraft flew for more than 9 years through the emptiness of space. This may sound like a long time, but it's actually amazingly quick. In fact, New Horizons set the record for the fastest speed at launch, and during the flyby, the spacecraft was moving at a rate of over 30,000 mph, or roughly 50 times the speed of sound. Picture an object twice as heavy as a grand piano moving 25 times faster than a bullet from a gun. Yikes. The man...

I have some crazy news! I was radiated by some radiation, and became radioactive. Over time, my radioactiveness decreased, and as it decreased, my mass decreased as well. I am now a foot shorter than I used to be, and weigh 50 pounds less! At the top of this post, you can see a picture which proves it. In the photo, I'm sitting on a weird box that materialized in the middle of the road... Okay, so you probably know what's going on here. I didn't really shrink; I'm obviously sitting on a chalk drawing. I designed the chalk drawing to look 3-dimensional when viewed from a certain angle. From other angles, it looks totally different; some of the lines that appear parallel in the photo aren't actually parallel at all. It only looks that way because it's an illusion. Here's another example: This was a little more complicated to draw. Not only were there parallel lines, but there were also circular shapes and hidden areas. And here's my best chalk drawing so f...

A few days ago I found a field full of bright yellow flowers. It looked kind of nice, so I started taking pictures. My main goal was to get a photo which showed the vast number of flowers, without any extra information that might distract the mind. I ended up with this: There are probably a couple thousand flowers in that photo. I was amazed at how many flowers there were. Anyway, as I was photographing the flowers (probably Perky Sue), I noticed that there were a lot of bees in the field, buzzing from flower to flower and (presumably) collecting nectar and pollen. So I took some photos of the bees. Of course, I didn't stop at that. Among other photos, I got a photo of a giant dandelion (actually called a Salsify, although "Goliath Puffweed" would suit it way better): A cactus flower: A flowering yucca ( not to be confused with yuca, also known as cassava, which is toxic when raw, and grows in South America): And daisy fleabane, which is a weird name for a cool flower: Y...

You may have noticed that my blog background changed a couple days ago. I've been meaning to change it for quite a while, but I didn't get around to it. Then, a few days ago, I had some free time on my hands. Why not create a 3D model of Earth, I wondered? So I pulled up Blender (a free computer graphics program I use) and got to work. I actually wasn't entirely sure where to begin, but I had an idea of the basics. I needed to: Map some terrain onto a sphere Make an atmosphere Create clouds Prevent the clouds from looking like a weird shell around the planet I'm not fully fluent in all the different techniques and features for Blender, so I looked for a planet Earth tutorial online. I soon found a BlenderGuru tutorial describing how to create and render a model of the planet Earth. The problem with the tutorial is that it was for a different version of Blender, and as a result didn't do everything I wanted to do. I watched most of the tutorial, did some more Google ...

Imagine you have a blender. To your blender, you add a couple scoops of ice cream and some milk. Then you press the buttons on the blender. Soon, you have a delicious vanilla milkshake. Next, you add strawberries and press buttons again. The result is even better than before: a strawberry milkshake. Input Output Of course, strawberries aren't the only option. Suppose that, instead of strawberries, you added cocoa powder and avocado. The result is a chocolate-avocado milkshake. Or you could have added some mint leaves, for a mint milkshake. Or some peaches, for a peach milkshake. In each of these cases, you pick the ingredient, and get a different milkshake. Whatever ingredient you pick, the result is always a milkshake. In other words, the blender took your ingredients, and returned a flavor of milkshake. The blender is like a function. In math, a function takes a number, and follows a set of rules to do something to that number. No matter what the number is, the function always fo...

Monosodium glutamate, commonly abbreviated MSG, is a very common chemical used to enhance flavors in food. MSG works by activating the "umami" receptors on the tongue, effectively enhancing flavors and making food taste a lot better. This is similar to the way sodium chloride (table salt) works, but MSG is much more powerful, so sodium content can be reduced by adding MSG to food. For this reason, many food companies use MSG as a food additive. Despite these apparent advantages, most people would agree that MSG is unhealthy and should be avoided. Sensitive individuals even experience negative side effects after consuming food containing MSG. But what exactly is wrong with MSG? If a person is not MSG sensitive, is it okay for them to consume it in their food? Virtual model of monosodium glutamate Before answering these questions, it would be best to start with the molecular structure of MSG. Monosodium glutamate, also known as sodium glutamate, is an ionic compound with the f...

I recently created a couple of nature-themed animated GIFs. (Click the images to view larger.) The first image is a blossoming tree. I thought the tree looked pretty, but I realized that part of the beauty came from the gentle swaying in the wind. So I decided to animate the image. To do this, I snapped a quick series of photos. Then, I used GIMP to reduce unwanted noise and scale them down. Finally, I saved the images as a looping animated GIF. The result takes a while to load, and seems kind of jerky, so I'm not sure whether I like it. My next image is a late snowstorm. In many snowstorm photos it is difficult to tell the difference between the falling snow and the already-fallen snow. Again, an animated image seemed necessary. In this case, however, a series of photos wasn't quick enough, so I took a video instead. I then grabbed a sequence of 10 still frames from the video. Again using GIMP, I scaled them down and saved as a GIF. The problem with animated images like this ...