Lots going on in the world, Here's just a little taste of some of the new rumblings in the physics universe.
Alright, first and foremost, I am very excited to present to you the nascent episodes of a new pwn physics podcast spawn: pwn physics vocabulary: word-of-the-day podcast. It's something I've been thinking about for a while now, and have 5 episodes in the pocket. I'll be throwing up one a day for this week, then we'll take a little break until the real thing launches. Any feedback you have would be most welcome. So, I hope you check it out, and that it keeps physics things fresh in your mind! They are designed to be very short, maybe 2-3 minutes, just to keep everything nice and lubricated, and hopefully every once in a while present you with something you've never heard about before!
Next up, Stephen Hawking has been a busy boy. You probably know him from his infamous "A Brief History of Time" book, but he is seriously popular in the physics world, and has done mind bending physics in the realms of black holes, and their surrounding parts. Recently, he has proclaimed that he doesn't think the species will survive another 1000 years on this planet without breaking our earthbound shackles and seriously exploring the cosmos. Check out the full story here. He's also part of a new effort to spend 100 million over the next 10 years in search of extra terrestrial life, with Russian Entrepreneur Yuri Milner. Read more about it in the New York Times article here.
As I've did an episode about Units of Measure when we first started, on twitter I've been following @UnitFact, which is maintained by John D Cook, and he presents one fact a day about units of measure. Usually they tend to be about exponential prefixes, or how much certain things way. Very interesting, but highly relatable to things which I already understand. One that was a little more unusual, but still in the edges of my expertise, was that the fundamental unit of measure of Bitcoin, a new type of "cryptocurrency" is called a Satoshi. This is supposedly named after Bitcoin's inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. However, Satoshi does not exist. It looks like this was a nomme de guerre for someone who didn't want to be found. One of the current experts and evangelists of bitcoin, Andreas Antonopoulos, has done 3 episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he explains more about Bitcoin than you may care to know. It's fascinating, and below I have linked up the Youtube versions of the episodes. Great listening if you're on a car ride and have 8-10 hours to burn.
The Smithsonian has started a Kickstarter campaign to preserve Neil Armstrong's moon space suit. They have already met their goal, and are now trying to overshoot for funds to preserve Alan Shepherd's Mercury space suit. Check out the campaign, the rewards, and if you want to chip in, do so here. The idea is to have everything prepared so the display can be in place for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, in 2019. The nickname for the campaign is "reboot the suit".
Finally, with New Horizons having flown past Pluto successfully, and regaled us with many new images, I leave you with this piece of information, courtesy of @SarcasticRover on twitter: "New Horizons only cost 700 million. That's how much people in Colorado spent on weed last year. Both perfectly valid options." When you put it that way it doesn't really sound like we're breaking the ol' taxpayer piggy bank for these missions. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Although New Horizons has taken the lion's share of attention, there is a probe, Dawn, which has made it's way to dwarf planet, Ceres, which is the largest object in the asteroid belt. There are some shiny spots in one of the craters which are currently unexplained. It is clearly a reflection from something, current speculations are salt and ice. Check out the full story from NASA here.
