Cosmic Log : Reader Mail

Stellar views of meteor show

Alan Boyle — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:45:00 GMT

Malcolm Park

A fireball seems to shoot right through a house in Grafton, Ontario. Malcolm Park
captured the image as he was setting up to photograph meteors on Monday night.

This week's Leonid meteor shower may not rise to the level of a shooting-star storm, but it's certainly producing a flurry of fine-looking pictures.

...(read more)

Silly mysteries solved

Alan Boyle — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Duane Hoffmann / msnbc.com

Where do missing socks go? Would you believe they drop into a mini-black hole?

Now let us consider cosmic mysteries of a completely different sort ... for instance, why do socks disappear in the laundry?

Many hypotheses have been put forward: The eminent thinker Jerry Seinfeld once proposed that socks carefully plan their escape. Another researcher invokes quantum mechanics. Some crackpots even suggest looking under your washer's agitator or in your closet. Can you believe that?

Last weekend, an eminent panel of theorists (including myself) gathered to reflect upon "cannibalistic socks" and other riddles at the SpoCon science-fiction and fantasy convention in Spokane, Wash. I think we may have made as much headway as the Solvay Conference did back in Einstein's day. Here's the rundown on our results:

...(read more)

Your moonshot memories

Alan Boyle — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 23:52:00 GMT

Courtesy of Bob Bickers

The Bickers family sits around the television on July 20, 1969, in
their home in Memphis, Tenn. From left are Bob, William, Linda
and Alice Fay Bickers. Robert Sr. took the picture.

Even the highest-resolution camera in orbit around the moon can't make out the mark left behind by Neil Armstrong's "one small step" 40 years ago - but NASA's giant leap left a huge mark on men and women around the globe. For proof, all you have to do is page through the more than 1,400 messages answering the question posed 10 days ago: "Where were you when Apollo flew?"

...(read more)

Where were you when Apollo flew?

Alan Boyle — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:36:00 GMT

Co Rentmeester / Time Life Pictures via Getty Images

Gamblers watch moonshot coverage at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas in July 1969.

On July 20, 1969, I was an Iowa farmboy watching every black-and-white move of a fuzzy-looking, spacesuited figure on our living-room television set. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was doing pretty much the same thing in New York City (though he was a mere 10 years old, four whole years younger than I was).

Sen. John McCain was sitting in a Hanoi prison - and wouldn't even find out that someone landed on the moon until a year and a half later. But for myriad millions of people around the world, even for McCain's Vietnamese captors, the Apollo 11 landing and that "one small step" on another world was a red-letter day that would be remembered through the decades.

Now it's your turn to share some moonshot memories: Where were you when Apollo 11 flew? Even if you're took young to have been around when the first moon landing took place (which is the case for more than half of the U.S. population), you can still feel free to comment on the past, present and future of space exploration.

...(read more)

Celebrity science quiz

Alan Boyle — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:05:00 GMT

Today show

  Click for quiz: Why
  was Leonardo da Vinci
  in the news?

Where can you find Stephen Colbert, President Obama, Cleopatra and Leonardo da Vinci all in one place? The Technology & Science section here at msnbc.com, of course. All these celebrities, past and present, were in the news over the past week.

The big question is, why were they in the news? Let's make that 10 big questions. Today, we're rolling out the celebrity edition of msnbc.com's Science and Space Quiz - or the Sci-Q test for short.

...(read more)

Home sweet communal home

Alan Boyle — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:20:00 GMT

When gasoline prices crossed the $4-a-gallon milestone, that got a lot of people thinking about ways to reduce transportation costs. Many are taking a second look at pedal power and mass transit. Others are looking at energy technologies that offer alternatives to fossil fuels. Longtime Cosmic Log correspondent Christopher Eldridge takes a totally different view: Instead of figuring out cheaper ways to travel, how about figuring out cheaper ways not to travel?

...(read more)

Luxuries in space

Alan Boyle — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 01:10:00 GMT

In the wake of the X Prize Cup, one reader wrote in to ask why anyone would pay $200,000 for a quick space trip on a rocket plane. "I assume it means much quicker travel time coast to coast, but your story never mentioned anything about why this is the next step in aviation evolution," said Cutter Garcia of Los Angeles.

Point-to-point travel is definitely on the minds of spaceship developers - but before they get to that point, all they can offer are up-and-down sightseeing trips. At least at first, rocketeers will be banking on a luxury market ... the kind of people who are willing to pay $95,000 to go on a North Pole expedition, or buy a cell phone for $20,000. So who better to design the interior of the spaceship than Frank Nuovo, the man behind that $20,000 cell phone?

...(read more)

Supernova nightmares

Alan Boyle — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:58:00 GMT

NASA

Some astronomers would be delighted if a super-bright supernova blast like the one reported this week were to occur in our own galaxy. One says it could be "the best star-show in the history of modern civilization." But if the blast was pointed right at us from close quarters? Well, that would be bad.

How so? And how bad? For the answers to those questions, you can turn to some cool Web sites, a few good books ... and a couple of bad movies.

...(read more)

The hype over Hawking

Alan Boyle — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:45:00 GMT

As physicist Stephen Hawking tours America in advance of his April 26 date with weightlessness, he’s clearly hyped up about the trip, says Zero Gravity Corp. founder Peter Diamandis, who saw the great man up close and personal at the California Institute of Technology last week. "He is so excited about the flight,” Diamandis told me. “It was wonderful to see him smile."

...(read more)

Space simulations galore

Alan Boyle — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:50:00 GMT

There are plenty of ways to become a virtual traveler in outer space. Second Life may be the simulation flavor of the week, and NASA may be carving out its own space there, but there’s a long history of virtual worlds that give you the feel of the final frontier.

...(read more)