I’m sorry, I really am, but I have had so much on my plate this year that something had to go, and blogging never paid my bills, so…

I have missed writing this blog though.  Every once in a while, I’d turn my neck from all these computer monitors and look out the window.  I’d blink about a hundred times and think, “I just thought of a great post, I miss that blog.”

I wasn’t sure anyone would still be around after such a long haitus, then one day a flurry of notifications came into my inbox from my long neglected friends (that’s you guys).

Hundreds of comments being posted on this post told me that a social networking site must have picked up another post.

All that activity woke me from my work-induced trance and reminded me that I really missed this blog and my dear readers.

I tried to approve all those comments, but alas, my login had been taken from me months ago because I didn’t meet the minimum posts.  I was under the impression that the blog would be taken down, but it wasn’t.  It was just sitting there, looking sad and neglected.

Feeling frustrated that I couldn’t approve all those comments prompted me to ask if I could make some arrangement with b5 that would allow me to post.

I mean, if the blog wasn’t going to be taken down, then periodic posts would be better than no posts at all, right?

So, I wrote an asked if I could post when I had time, WITHOUT being held to a weekly minimum, if I agreed to post for free.  This was a win-win because I could post when I actually had something to say, and the blog wouldn’t languish. 

AstronomyBuff probably won’t be their best performing blog, but, by allowing me to post without feeling pressured to do so, virtually guarantees that it’ll be one of its more interesting.

Anyway, I have lots to tell you about.  Especially about dark energy.  Been working like crazy writing code to find that stuff once the telescope goes online in 2011.

I know some of you are still around, thanks for hanging in there.  If you’ve left, well, then you’re not reading this anyway and it won’t matter.  I can’t promise how many times I’ll post, but I will promise it’ll be when I have something interesting to say.

Post from: EveryJoe

I know, I know…

Things are fine, I’m fine, but once in a while, life piles a bunch of crap on you all at once and you have to deal with it, that’s what I’m doing now.  Please hang in there and thanks so much for your patience.

I’m  on the lookout for some help during this time to help keep the blog alive, other people who may feel like helping out during this time.  If you or anyone you know would like to contribute a post or two, I’d be very grateful and would happily provide some compensation and some attention in the form or link-love.

I’d hate to see this languish with periodic posts if I don’t have to, so please let me know.  There’s no way I’m going to get to six posts a week though, not for a while yet…

Post from: EveryJoe

Where Have I Been?

Okay, new contest. Sudoku for Astronomy Haiku.

It’s easy. Write me haikus and you could win your very own Sudoku Hand-held Game!

So, anyway, here is the deal:

I have somehow ended up with two very nice hand-held electronic sudoku games. One of them, the igadget sudoku, even has a backlit screen. Fancy.

The other one is called a Sudoku Advance. I am giving them away to the authors of the two best haikus.

Winner takes their pick of these two brand-new sudoku handheld games, and second-place gets the other one! They both are loaded with over a million puzzles of varying levels so you can sudoku yourself silly.

Okay, so submit your astronomy haikus to me, people! Post them in the comments of this blog post.

I got a really, really great haiku, from BrianV. Here it is:

Beyond swaying palms
A field of shimmering stars
Eternity waits! –BrianV

Amazon says this about the Sudoku Advance hand-held game (retails for $14.95):

Product Description
Model Number :MP-88 Sudoku is the addictive number puzzle that has taken the USA and the UK by storm and is now taking over the rest of the world. It is branded by many as “the hottest puzzle since the Rubiks Cube”. Over 1 million of the nation’s favorite puzzles are crammed into one LCD Sudoku game. Sudoku is so addictive it should have its own rehab program. It’s Sudoku, the puzzle game that’s gripped the nation. Virtually every national newspaper features a daily dose of Doku, and the pocket puzzle books are flying off the shelves, but if that’s not enough to satisfy your habit, the Sudoku Advance is for you. This easy to use electronic gizmo has an incredible 1 million puzzles built in. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, here’s how you play. While numbers are a big part of Sudoku, you don’t need any mathematical skill to play. Sudoku is a game of logic. Each game consists of a grid divided into nine squares. Each of these squares is divided into nine boxes. Your job is to fit all the digits from 1-9 into each square, making sure that each horizontal and vertical line on the main grid also has all these digits. No repeats within a line or a square are allowed. Be careful one wrong number can ruin your whole game… With the Sudoku Advance you can set a time limit for your game as an extra challenge, or a step count’ to see how quickly you can complete a grid. Should you get stuck, there’s a Handy Hints option, or if you’re really flummoxed, use the help, check or undo functions. Great fun and great value, no fan of Sudoku should miss out on this game. Studies show that playing Sudoku can improve memory, mind clarity, and even stop and prevent brain illnesses such as Alzheimer! Therefore there are some scientists & researchers recommending playing Sudoku, as part of our regular daily activity.

And, Amazon says this about the Igadget Sudoku Hand-held (retails for $21.97):

Electronic Sudoku game with backlight, silver Multi Levels- Over a million test Questions 3 Helpful hints per game: Allows you to fill the unsolved cell Time / Date / Alarm Backlight for night time play Easy to operate Pause function Answer Feature: Allows you to peek at the answers Operates on 2 AAA batteries included Dimensions: 8″ X 5.5″ x 75″

Daniel-san, Fuh you beginner Luck!

Photocredit: Smallestbones

Karate Kid Photocredit: mrlerone

Post from: EveryJoe

New Contest: Sudoku for Haiku

Many of you have probably heard this story, but I am going to blog about it for the heck of it because I love this story so much.

The most famous version of this story is pretty much the way it appeared in Stephen Hawking’s 1988 book A Brief History of Time, and it goes like this:

“ A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Yes, yes, old lady, you’ve got it right–it’s all turtles, all the way down.

This is one of those legendary stories whose actual original source is unknown.

Perhaps the lady did indeed ask such a question during Bertrand Russell’s 1927 “Why I’m not a Christian” lecture in which he had said, “If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu’s view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, “How about the tortoise?” the Indian said, “Suppose we change the subject.”

The solution is easy, Mr. Indian:

infinite turtles.

I love infinite regression–a stacked function of tessellation–causation dependent, ad infinitum. M.C. Escher eat your heart out.

Eat your heart out, Escher, and your heart’s heart will eat its own heart, and its heart will eat its heart out–its very own heart of hearts–and feed upon itself in nourishment and destruction, like the symbol of the ouroboros, and so on, and on, ad infinitum.

And if you have a regressive flea infestation problem, you REALLY have a problem with its own problems….

“Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.”

–Augustus De Morgan, mathematician (parodying Jonathon Swift’s poem)

Turtles, I say, strange, armor shelled reptiles, walking battle helmets: with the bunkers on your backs, you are the true symbols of eternity.

Thank you, turtles–for being the keepers of world, of the universe, for being the long stack, for being the Chukwa, the totem pole swimmers within the universe’s primordial milky way stew.

photocredit: Rob Ireton

image credit Escher tessellation: Andreia

Post from: EveryJoe

Turtle Cosmology: infinite regression

s m a i s m r m i l m e p o e t a l e u m i b u n e n u g t t a u i r a s

Now rotate your decoder ring two half turns left…..

Actually, the above mish-mash of letters is an anagram.

An anagram. A, how d’you say? a word scramble. This one was written by none other than Galileo himself (Galileo sometimes wrote in anagrams to keep his discoveries secret).

The correct solution to the anagram is “Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi”. That is Latin for “I have observed the highest (most distant) planet [Saturn] to have a triple form.” He was referring to Saturn’s rings.

However, Johannes Kepler, in his attempt to decode Galileo’s anagram, failed to solve the puzzle correctly. Instead he got, “Salue umbistineum geminatum Martia proles,” which translates as “Hail, twin companionship, children of Mars”, or “I greet you, double knob, children of Mars”.

I wonder if Martians would take offense to that, you know, being called Double Knobs and all.

Some say that Kepler’s misunderstanding led to Jonathon Swift’s writing of the two moons of Mars in Gulliver’s Travels over a hundred years before the discovery of the moons (as I talked about in the previous post). Or, perhaps, Dr. John Arbuthnot, a close friend of Swift’s, lent him a great deal of ideas and calculations about Mars and the approximate positions of its possible moons. Perhaps a lucky guess?

Photocredit: reedwade

Post from: EveryJoe

I greet you, double knob, children of Mars

Gulliver must’ve traveled to Mars.

How else do you explain the fact that Jonathon Swift, writer of Gulliver’s Travels, predicted the two moons of Mars and their approximate positions over a hundred years before their discovery?

Explain that.

I think Gulliver must’ve made a pit-stop to Mars somewhere down the line.

Here is a small excerpt from the book:

They [the Laputians] have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of its diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the center of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies. – Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift – 1726

Sidenote: the two moons of Mars (named after the Greek god of war) are Phobos, meaning “fear”, and Deimos, meaning “panic”. Mars, you are such a gentle planet. Mars was also known as “Ares” to the Greeks. Deimos and Phobos were his two sons who accompanied him to war. Mars was such a family man.

In 1877 the moons were discovered by Asaph Hall, over a hundred years after Gulliver’s Travels was published.

Jonathon Swift, you are brilliantly wonderful, wonderfully brilliant, brilliantly talented–yet, at the same time, undeniably spooky.

How do you know so much, Mr. Swift? How you so sm’aht?

He described Phobos’ orbital period to be 10 hours (real figure=7.6) and Deimos’ as 21.5 hrs. (real figure= 30.2).

Spooky, Mr. Swift. Spooky.

Photocredit for Gulliver Travel Legoblock men scene: woordenaar

Photocredit for book: wpwend42

Post from: EveryJoe

Gulliver Traveled to Mars?

I watched this movie called “The Heavenly Body” starring Hedy Lamarr on Turner Classic Movies. I am not sure why the movie is called “The Heavenly Body” …..unless they are referring to how astronomically hot Hedy is. What is the name Hedy short for? Hedwig?

Anyway, the plot goes like this: an astronomer who works long hours at an observatory suddenly finds out one day that his wife, played by Hedy Lamar, has taken a strong interest in astrology. Naturally, he is horrified, he does not know what to do, so he tries to no avail to convince her that astrology is rubbish. Despite his efforts, she continues visiting an astrologer every week for her personal horoscope, determined to adjust her life according to the house of her sign. One can imagine the comedic conflict that ensues when her horoscope predicts that she will meet the handsome man of her dreams, her true love, the man whom would devote his time and attention to her instead of spending hours doing research in an observatory. And, then, out of the blue, such a man appears!

I thought the movie, though a tad bit predictable, was really funny, clever, and well done. Two thumbs up from the Astronomybuff.

The TCM website says this:

The Heavenly Body was particularly timely, with a plot revolving around a popular craze, astrology. Although astrology had been practiced since the days of ancient Egypt, it had enjoyed a particular revival of popular interest since the ’30s, when the London Sunday Express carried a natal chart of the newly born Princess Margaret. The American Federation of Astrologers had been founded, as the American Federation of Scientific Astrologers, in 1938 to encourage serious study of the stars as keys to human psychology and behavior.

Next on my queue to watch is Sweeney Todd and Halloween (the new Rob Zombie version).

Photocredit: stratosphaerenlieder

Post from: EveryJoe

The Heavenly Body (1944)

You are but a capital, cursive O. Theta, you are but a zero with a curvy line. An egg with a skull cap. You are but a simply decorated easter egg. How simple you are–yet, so useful. You, you, simple symbol, simple ambassador of mathematics, physics, meteorology…. Just look at you.

You are on the Earth Day Flag.

They call you the “dead theta,” the official flag symbol of earth day.

When did you die, I wonder? Did you receive a proper burial?

According to Wikipedia:

According to Flags of the World, the Ecology Flag was created by cartoonist Ron Cobb, and was published for the first time in October 25, 1969. The flag was patterned after the flag of the United States, and had thirteen stripes alternating green and white. Its canton was green with a yellow theta. It originally had a symbol that was a combination of the letters “E” and “O” taken from the words “Environment” and “Organism”, respectively. Later flags used either a theta because of its historic use as a warning symbol, or the peace symbol. Theta would later become associated with Earth Day.

Theta, you are even a warning symbol. You are like the pirate skull and cross bones for peace and conservation! Theta, you are one cool, mean mother.

In classical Athens, the Greeks used you as a warning sign and a symbol for death.

You are, according to wikipedia, an “aspirated dental plosive.” Somehow I like the sound of that.

The Greeks assigned you the value of 9. You may have been partially derived from Egyptian hyroglyphs depicting the sun.

Here are some other things you’ve been used for:

• A plane angle in geometry.
• The voiceless dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as in the words thick or thin (but not as in the, which is the voiced dental fricative).
• The Potential temperature in meteorology.
• The score of a test taker in item response theory.
• Theta Type Replication: a type of bacterial DNA replication specific to circular chromosomes
• Threshold value of an artificial neuron.

Your upper-case letter (Θ) is used as a symbol for:

• Dimensionless temperature in transport phenomena.
• Big O notation. Denoting an asymptotically tight bound in analysis of algorithms.
• Θ (set theory), a certain ordinal number.
• Representing pentaquarks, exotic baryons in particle physics.
• Earth Day.
• Brain Signal Frequency (Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta) ranging from 4–8 Hz

Thank you, Theta. And, happy Earth Day.

Post from: EveryJoe

Happy Earth Day, Theta

I do not drink Starbuck’s coffee often, as I prefer the local coffee from Columbia Street Roastery in good ‘ol Champaign, IL.

With that said, I must share with you this cute-cup quote:

Coffeecup photo courtesy of: Shawnblog

Post from: EveryJoe

Quote on a Starbuck’s Cup

April is National Poetry Month.

What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to write an astronomy limerick or haiku?

Haiku is 3 lines: 5 syllables in first line, 7 syllables in second line, 5 syllables in last line.

Okay, here is an example:

Astronomybuff,
I carry them in my heart,
how I love thy blogs.

Now, I want to see yours, people. Be creative. Show me your best work!

With vast convolutions Draco holds
Th’ ecliptic axis in his scaly folds.
O’er half the skies his neck enormous rears,
And with immense meanders parts the Bears.

-Erasmus Darwin’s Economy of Vegetation

Poem photocredit: Moirabot

Post from: EveryJoe

Happy National Poetry Month, Astronomybuffs!