The Physics Of Space Battles (Video)

How scientifically accurate is your favorite sci-fi space battle?

UFO Friend, Foe, Or Fantasy (1966) - Featuring A Young Carl Sagan

Presented by Walter Kronkite, this classic overly skeptical but still important to research one-hour documentary includes an interview with a 32-year old gum-chewing Carl Sagan. Although his presentation skills aren't quite refined at this point (spit out the gum, Carl!), the early seeds of his scientific skepticism are quite evident!

How To Tell If That Female Gamer Is Really A Male

Uproxx has the following on the subject:

Researchers from five universities across the United States and Canada studied footage of 375 gamers playing a custom World of Warcraft quest. They wanted to determine if differences in online behaviors in characters of different genders aligned with the societal expectations of conduct from men and women. That’s a really fancy way of saying that they wanted to see if male characters act like men, and female characters act like women. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that the 23% of men playing as female characters don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

Men playing as females display a lot of different behaviors than actual women playing as their own gender, and most of it is in the way they move. For instance, the men tended to have their character “move backwards more often” and jump more frequently. How frequently do they jump? 116 times as often, on average. That’s a lot of jumping. Males also tend to stay further away from their party. Other differences include picking more attractive avatars, and using lots of smiley emoticons in chat.

Gravity (2013) - The Honest Trailer

Middle Earth, Viewed From Space

Ever wonder what Middle Earth,

The Eye Of Sauron

Source: http://www.me-dem.me.uk/

SETI Says We'll Meet Aliens Within 25 Years

SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak bet hundreds of people at our Boing Boing: Ingenuity live event that we'll hear from an extraterrestrial within 25 years. Watch this video to understand why the odds are in Seth's favor. 

Albert Einstein Vs. Darth Vader (Short)

Albert Einstein vs. Darth Vader - Please Don't Use the Force, a stop motion animated short by Patrick Boivin.
Just having fun kicking Darths' ass!

Superman's Home Planet Discovered

Well, sort of.

Discover Magazine brings us the story on how Neil de Grasse Tyson (who is also going to meet Superman in issue #14 of the Superman comic) told the last son of Krypton about his findings:

I’ve often wondered exactly what kind of star Krypton orbited and where it was. Up until now all we’ve known is that it was red, and red stars come in many flavors, from dinky red dwarfs with a tenth the mass of the Sun up to massive supergiants like Betelgeuse which outweigh the Sun by dozens of times (I’ll note that a deleted scene in "Superman Returns" indicates it’s a red supergiant). 

Well, that’s about to change. DC comics is releasing a new book this week – Action Comics Superman #14 – that finally reveals the answer to this stellar question. And they picked a special guest to reveal it: my old friend Neil Tyson. 

Actually, Neil did more than just appear in the comic: he was approached by DC to find a good star to fit the story. Red supergiants don’t work; they explode as supernovae when they are too young to have an advanced civilization rise on any orbiting planets. Red giants aren’t a great fit either; they can be old, but none is at the right distance to match the storyline. It would have to be a red dwarf: there are lots of them, they can be very old, and some are close enough to fit the plot.

What Would Happen If You Fell Into A Volcano?

Researchers in Ethiopia asked this same question. And, to find the answer, they packed up some organic waste (about 30 kg worth) and tossed it into the Erta Ale shield volcano. And, well, look at what happens to the top-most layer of the lava, which is dense enough to support a normal person (even if the heat is too much).

Another Reason To Love Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Check out this article from NPR where NdGT takes on some of this summer's big films (Prometheus, Men In Black III, The Avengers) to talk about the science behind them, including Thor's hammer.

Tyson pays so much attention, in fact, that he got James Cameron to fix the stars in the sky in Titanic for the recent 3-D rerelease. On Friday's Morning Edition, he talks to David Greene about this summer's big movies and how they stack up, science-wise. You should note that there is some talk in this conversation about what goes on in Prometheus, Men In Black 3 and The Avengers, so if you're desperately hoping to be surprised, you might tread cautiously.

Imperial March (Bill Beats)

Halo 4 Release Date Confirmed!

This was posted on the IGN website:

Following on from rumours and conjecture this morning, it's been confirmed: Halo 4 will launch worldwide on 6th November, 2012.

We Are The Explorers.

Narrated by Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime).

Not A Review: Impact (2008)

While editing episode 141 of the podcast, I watched the film Impact on the Syfy Channel. And some of the things that were said in it were just....oh, I wanted to yell at the television. I mean, seriously, if you're going to write a movie about something like the Moon being driven into the Earth by the impact of a near-Earth object (NEO), then you should first at least try to UNDERSTAND some of the things you're having your scientist characters say.

These are just a few items that should either have been learned in a basic physics or earth science class or else just quickly checked out on Wikipedia or other online sources.

Does the Moon have a magnetic field?

Living on Earth, we tend to take the concept of magnets and the north and south poles for granted. The reason we are able to use a compass here on Earth is due to our planet having a large metallic core. Without going into a HUGE explanation, the simple version is this: the Earth's inner core is a giant ball of mostly iron surrounded by a liquid outer layer of molten metals. Since the core rotates at a different rate than the liquid shell around, friction generates an electric field between the two layers, and the motion of the core through that field creates a moving electric field which produces a magnetic field (Ampere's Law). This is the source of the Earth's magnetic field. ^[1][2]

The Moon, however, does have a magnetic field, but it is extremely weak. It's core is small at less than 25% of the Moon's radius (the Earth's core is 50% of the Earth's radius), and does not project a field.

Would the Moon falling towards the Earth create electricity?

Given that the Moon is actually a magnet, then it would generate an electric field while moving. A simple way to explain it is to use the Right Hand Rule for magnets in motion. When a magnet moves it creates an circular electric field around itself. If you point the thumb of your right hand and then curl your fingers (like you're gripping a can sideways)  then you can see what the field would look like. The thumb points in the direction of the change in the magnetic field (the motion) and the fingers point in the direction of the electric field being generated. This is the science behind generators, which use spinning magnets to generate electricity.^[3]

This effect was experience when, as the Moon fell towards the Earth, people on the surface of the Earth began experiencing electric surges. The problems lies not with the effect itself but with how the lead characters, who are scientists, react to it.

They say they have no idea what is causing the surges! Which is sad since Faraday's law is something taught in any basic physics course. Anybody who was an astrophysicist, cosmologist or similar discipline would know these things. It would be a part of their basic training at university.

Would objects on Earth suddenly float up towards the Moon?

No, they wouldn't. As the Moon moves towards the Earth, the pull of gravity by the Earth would slowly be counteracted by the gravitational pull of the Moon.^[4] You would gradually feel lighter, but never so light that you would float. The only way you would feel that light would be if you were on the object of less mass (the Moon), and even then it would be so close to impact between the two objects that your floating would really just be you falling off of the Moon onto the Earth.

The tides are caused by the Moon's gravity pull on the bodies of water on the side of the Earth facing the Moon, and on the crust on the far side of the Earth from the Moon. If anything would be affected by the Moon coming towards the Earth it would be a significant increase in both tidal activity as well as tectonic activity. The Moon would wreak havoc with the Earth's crust and with coastal regions as higher tides and flexing plates would cause the surface to violently shake and fracture.

To go further with this, if you DID suddenly become weightless or float away, there's no reason why you would then fall back to Earth again. In the film, a father and son as well as a commuter train experienced this floating and then both were cast back down to Earth violently some time after. But the gravitational force is a constant force at a distance. You wouldn't have a surge that would then evaporate and cause such an event. And it would have at least balanced that out if they had shown objects on the far side of the Earth suddenly being crushed under the same gravitational fluctuations.

If anything, the surface of the Moon would be experiencing a huge bit of electrical activity. Especially since, in reality, as the Moon moves through the Earth's magnetotail particles on the Lunar surface will actually rise up off of the surface and float!

But it is funny to see a grandfather and his two grandkids fly up into the air in their car, but the grandfather's hat and the girl's pig tails are unaffected by the reverse gravity that they're experiencing...

Conclusions

Sure, this film wasn't meant to be a serious scientifically based story. But to have a scientist say something as ridiculous as "The Moon is not capable of manipulating gravity itself" or for scientists to say, on one hand, that the Moon's magnetic field has changed and then say they don't know what is causing electrical surges on the Earth's surface is just ridiculous and shows sloppy writing and no interest in validating even simple science for the story. I wrote this opinion in less than 15 minutes with just a few google searches for references. I'm sure the writers had more time than that to work some real information into their story...

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_magnetic_field#Earth.27s_core_and_the_geodynamo
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biot%E2%80%93Savart_law
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday's_law_of_induction
[4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation

50 Year Annivesary Of The Orbit Of Friendship 7

It was fifty years ago today that John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in the Friendship 7 module.

Episode 139.1: A Little Comic Book Update (for 08 February 2012)

McPierce read:
 * Fear Itself: The Fearless #8 (of 12)
 * Action Comics #6
 * Betrayal Of The Planet of The Apes #4 (of 4)
 * Green Arrow #6
 * iZombie #22

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Intro song: "Another New Crisis" by Kirby Krackle.
Outro song: "Hey Gordy" by Stormtroopers Of Death.

Check out Kirby Krackle at .

Another example of zombism in the insect world...

In a story that is pretty reminiscent of the zombie virus from "Dead Rising", bees have been show to be the victims of a zombie plague.

In this case, not a zombie virus. But from the larvae of a fly (apocephalus borealis).

The fly manages to lay its eggs in the body of a simple honey bee (apis mellifera), in the abdomen. Then, after the eggs have gestated, the honey bee stumbles out of the hive and flies away to die.

The larvae eventually kill the bees from the inside, and chew their way out through the now dead bee's head.