Category Archives: science

The final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour

By Dave | Published: May 1, 2011

STS-134 NASA Tweetup and the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour On April 28th and April 29th, 2011, I was fortunate enough to participate in the NASA Tweetup for STS-134. It was to be the final flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the second to last mission in the Space Shuttle program. I [...]

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Stepping out of the office…

By Dave | Published: April 26, 2011

You know, just in case you need me the next few days… [via Carson Skinner on Twitter]

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Practicing my Space Shuttle landing skills

By Dave | Published: April 26, 2011

Practicing my Space Shuttle landing skills., originally uploaded by Dave Schumaker. I figured since I’m heading to Cape Canaveral and all, I should start brushing up on my shuttle landing skills. You never know if a crew member suddenly comes down with an illness and they’ll need to replace them with someone from the NASA [...]

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Solar death ray

By Dave | Published: January 31, 2011

This is pretty fantastic! Eric Jacqmain built a “solar death ray” using 5,800 mirrors glued to a satellite dish. The R5800 is my latest and greatest solar creation. Made from an ordinary fiberglass satellite dish, it is covered in about 5800 3/8″ (~1cm) mirror tiles. When properly aligned, it can generate a spot the size [...]

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Earthquakes in 2010 – A final update

By Dave | Published: January 3, 2011

Back in March of 2010, I wrote a post looking at the frequency of earthquakes occurring around the world and examined whether or not there were more earthquakes occuring than normal. Specifically, I chose to look at earthquakes between M6.0 and M6.9, as they are sufficiently large enough to be detected by seismometers around the [...]

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How geologists see themselves

By Dave | Published: December 14, 2010

(Click to view full size) Original author unknown [Via Jon U.]

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Get to know a geologist

By Dave | Published: December 14, 2010

The annual American Geophysical Union conference is in town this week and I’ve been fielding a bunch of questions about the strange creatures (known as earth scientists) that are inhabiting downtown San Francisco. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but Uncyclopedia nails the description of a geologist. Geologists are ‘scientists’ with unnatural obsessions with beer and [...]

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First evidence of other universes?

By Dave | Published: December 13, 2010

This stuff is so trippy to think about. Now Stephen Feeney at University College London and a few pals say they’ve found tentative evidence of this bruising in the form of circular patterns in cosmic microwave background. In fact, they’ve found four bruises, implying that our universe must have smashed into other bubbles at least [...]

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Schrödinger’s cat

By Dave | Published: December 1, 2010

Apparently, I’m on a physics kick as of late. Artist unknown [Via Science Punk]

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High speed camera on a train

By Dave | Published: December 1, 2010

This is a pretty great video, featuring a high speed camera on a train, looking at a passenger platform as it passes by. More info here. It could be one of the coolest visual examples of special relativity that I’ve seen! [Via Kottke]

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