Time magazine reports that recent earthquakes at Yellowstone have been raising fears that the volcano at Yellowstone, which normally expresses itself only through the benign rhythmic spouting of the Old Faithful geyser, may be re-awakening. A recent check of the USGS page for earthquakes in the last 7 days at Yellowstone listed 273 earthquakes in that period in the region under Yellowstone Lake. The USGS refers to that as a ‘notable swarm’ of earthquakes, which is somewhat less than reassuring.
(more…)

Make some time to get out and observe the moon this weekend if weather permits. It appears much larger and brighter than usual because the full moon just happens to coincide with the point in it’s oval orbit when it is nearest to the Earth (it has reached it’s perigee). The difference (about 30,000km or 18,000 miles closer than usual) isn’t much given that the moon is about 405,000km (251,000 miles) away at its furthest point, but if you happen to catch it when it close to the horizon, the real difference will compound with the optical illusion that makes the moon appear much bigger to the eye when it’s near the horizon for a truly spectacular experience. This sort of coincidence is rare. It’s been 15 years since this happened last and it will be 2016 before we can enjoy it again.

BBC story
The Guardian

Cathy mentioned today that Google is now tracking the flu. Based on aggregate search queries about the flu and it’s symptoms, Google can plot the course of the flu about 2 weeks faster than the published CDC reports. While the CDC reports are vital and accurate, it takes time to collect the data from the network of about 1500 doctors nationwide, compile, and report on it. The Google search method provides a good match to this data, but provides it much quicker. The idea is that you’ll be able to track the progress on the fly across the US in near real-time. You can view the data for the entire nation, or by state. Check it out at:

http://www.google.org/flutrends/

Some surprising facts have emerged from the study of the human genome over the last few years. Beyond simply confirming Darwinian theory and corroborating paleontological findings, human DNA from folks all over the globe is being compared and analyzed to answer questions we never thought we’d be able to answer. For example, all humans can trace ancestry back to a single woman living in Africa about 200,000 years ago (the African “Eve”). On the other hand, all humans can also trace ancestry back to a single male living in Africa around 60,000 years ago! If a generation is 30 years, thats only 2000 generations ago all our relatives were living in Africa!

This is a great talk by an Oxford Biologist named Spencer Wells. He’s basically involved in building a genealogical family tree for the human race, and he walks the audience through the breakthroughs of the last 15 or so years in genetics in great detail (if a little briskly). If you have 20 minutes, it’s certainly worth a watch.

Back in 2006, astronomers working on the Supernova Cosmology Project found something in the Boötes cluster that they had never seen before. It exhibited a brightening to magnitude 21 and dimming down to magnitude 26 over a 200 day period which might suggest a supernova, but the strange object did not behave like any other known supernova. It had a spectra which was unlike any other cataloged in the vast Sloan Digital Sky Database, and it wasn’t even in any known galaxy. Sky & Telescope had the best synopsis and provides a link to the research paper. Gotta love mystery objects…

This is certainly not new, but I only saw it for the first time yesterday when a friend at work shot me the link. There are a couple parts of the video that are really quite amazing - watch for the part where the robot-dog-from-hell is on ice, for one.

Boston Dynamics BigDog

Lots of cool stuff going on in the skies this week. There’s a new red spot on Jupiter indicating the previously white storm clouds have begun to spun higher in the Jupiter atmosphere to heights near to that of the great red spot. The great red spot has been the defining feature of Jupiter since I was a kid, the fact that it’s now been joined by another huge red spot is a reminder that our solar system is not static. In other news, the Phoenix lander is scheduled to make it’s attempted landing at the north pole of Mars tommorow at 7:53pm. Since about half of the missions sent to Mars have failed, there are a lot of scientists holding their breath right about now. It’s certainly exciting, and landing in this northern region of Mars where there is a lot of ice may help to finally answer the big question - did Mars ever harbor life? Might it yet?
(more…)