Good News Bad News

It looks like there is a fairly quick solution to global warming. The bad news is in involves India and Pakistan nuking each other.


Apparently even a limited nuclear exchange would have dire climatic consequences. A large one would be catastrophic.

New time scale... now in COLOR

Geologists use a variety of techniques to divide the Earth's history up into manageable units The boundaries between these units mark large changes to the Earth or the Earth's biosphere: extinction, faunal turnover etc. The "official" (this whole process is remarkably unofficial) time scale for North America is put out by the Geological Society of America and is called the DNAG scale (Decade of North American Geology). As we get more and more refined radiometric dates and as old tems exit and new terms enter (like I said: remarkably unofficial) the scale needs to be updated. So here's the new one: know it, learn it, live it, love it. (or just click on it to go to the GSA web site and print it. )

Happy Vernal Equinox

I suppose I could blog once every three months but that does seem to sort of defeat the purpose.

Happy Winter Solstice

And remember the reason for the season: the 23.5 degree tilt of the Earth's axis of rotation.

(ducks the inevitable lightning bolt)

NASA baby... yeah (do your best Austin Powers)

Our engineering club got a behind the scenes tour of NASA a couple of weeks ago. They asked me to come along so they would be sure and have enough professors. We got to talk with engineers who work with the International Space Station and the Vehicle assembly building. We also got to go drive around Pad 39B where Discovery is waiting to launch. Very cool stuff. Click on any of the pictures to make them bigger



The Vehicle assembly building. This is where they "stacked" the Saturn V for the Apollo missions and where they attach the shuttle, Solid rocket boosters and external tank.



Inside the VAB. Photography does not do it justice. It used to be the largest building in the world in terms of volume. Now it's #3 but still huge.



A used Shuttle engine bell in the VAB.



The tops of the solid rocket boosters waiting to be stacked for the next shuttle mission which is going to the Hubble.



Discovery on the pad



Looking straight down the flame trench.



The fence directly in the path of the flame trench where you really really don't want to be during launch.