Four Centuries of Optical Zoom

Today marks  another landmark scientific anniversary – the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first telescope.  It was on this day in 1609 that Galileo presented his prototype 8x-magnification telescope to the assembled Senate of Venice.  It was not the first telescope—that forgotten honor belongs  to Dutch astronomer Hans Lipperhey who built a simple telescope just one year earlier, in 1608—but it was the one that captured the attention of the Venetian merchants (who were most interested in its practical applications for shipping and navigation) and lit the candle of modern astronomy.  Galileo’s telescope allowed him to make precise observations that confirmed Copernicus’ heliocentric hypothesis and dispatched the notion of an Earth-centered universe.  Galileo’s published defense of this view in 1632 led directly to a papal trial in 1633, in which he was declared “vehemently suspect of heresy” and, after recanting his scientific views under threat of torture, his imprisonment sentence was commuted to house arrest.  Galileo remained in home near Florence (he was allowed one trip to seek medical advice near the end of his life) and was closely watched by church authorities until his death in 1642.  For a laugh, you can read the Catholic Church’s position on the Galileo controversy.

I, for one, am overwhelmed with humility by the science that Galileo’s telescope revolutionized.  It has brought us the likes of Carl Sagan, Maria Mitchell, Giovanni Cassini, and Stephen Hawking.  It brought us NASA and the space program, which will launch the space shuttle Discovery (STS-128) tomorrow at 1:10 AM EDT on a mission to the International Space Station.  There are no words that can, for the casual observer, capture the immensity of the expanding universe that telescopes have uncovered.  There is, at least, an image that comes close.  I am referring to the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which is a composite image of a tiny region of space in the constellation Fornax, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2003-2004.  It looks back over approximately 13 billion years, showing in just a tiny speck of sky that appears dark to the human eye the multitude of galaxies that existed only 400-800 million years after the Big Bang.  Every spot, blur, smudge, and speck on the image is an entire galaxy containing millions or billions of stars.  I will say no more about it, for if you’ve never seen it, this image deserves quiet reflection.  You can click on this small image to view the entire high-resolution version (18.1 MB).  In honor of Galileo, and without further blabbering from this blogger:

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!

Unexpected hiatus, it seems – over 2 months without an update! I’m not letting this blog die, though. At the moment I am very busy but I wanted to post quickly to say Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla! Without you, I wouldn’t have my car, my computer, my phone, my job, or Survival Machine.

Here’s one of Tesla’s patent drawings:

Alternating Motor patent diagram by Nikola Tesla

Ouranos ex machina

Dear Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,

Verily, I beseech ye to establish a Nobel Prize for Magnificence, and award the first one to Steve Eves.

Humbly,
simian

Seriously, wow.

(No) space shuttle launch tonight

I was just about to post to remind everyone to watch the space shuttle Discovery launch tonight, but I just learned that NASA has scrubbed the launch due to a leak discovered (discovery-d?) in the external liquid hydrogen fuel tank—aka the big red phallus under the shuttle.  The mission was going to take seven crew members on a two-week mission to continue construction on the International Space Station, after which the goliath project would be 81% complete.  The mission’s ISS add-ons include new solar panels and the last piece of the ISS’s girder (the longest part, to which the biggest solar panels are connected).  This was going to be the first shuttle launch of 2009; Endeavour’s November 2008 launch was the last one.

Here’s NASA’s mission page for the mission, dubbed STS-119.  From their clock it looks like they’re going to make the next launch attempt tomorrow night at around 9PM EDT.  So stay tuned!

Daylight Awesome Time

Daylight Savings Time is one of my favorite annual events. It’s sunny and spring-like on this late-winter day, and I’ll have an extra hour to enjoy it when I finish working today. Maybe I’ll try to go to Wyman Park to launch a model rocket, or ride my bike for a while. What a great day! I think this evening might be a good one for nighttime sky observation, too, as the air is so clear. Also, not starting up at sub-freezing temperatures has allowed my Prius to get some killer gas milage in the past few days. And lastly, my utility bill should be WAY lower next month. I’m done with Winter. Not going to miss it, either. I’ll post something of substance later this week; for now, it’s time to enjoy the daylight!

Words From The Ether

I finally gave in to the temptation and jailbraked (or pwned, if you prefer) my iPhone a couple days ago. It was so worth it. Foremost among the plethora of new features my phone now has are the ability to record video and the ability to sync its calendar with my Google Apps (gmail) calendar. These things were major shortcomings of the iPhone, and now they’re all better! (No thanks to Apple). I can also now send and receive multimedia SMS messages such as picture mail. I highly reccommend QuickPwn (I will update with a link soon) for Jailbreaking your iPhone; it was a clear, uncomplicated process that took less than 30 minutes start to finish.

I’m actually writing this entry in WordPress on the iPhone (not an app that requires jailbreaking). So, I don’t feel like typing much more at the moment. I’ll probably post screenshots of my phone once I get it tricked out just the way I like. In the meantime, here’s a self-portrait I took with a app called Snapture (jailbreak required) that packs a lot more features than Apple’s bare-bones built-in camera.