Author: Richard

While it may be quite snowy tonight, depending on where you live, you should still make it a point to get outside and glance up at the sky. The Geminid meteor shower, the most intense of the year, peaks tonight and tomorrow (Dec. 13 and 14). Not only is it a spectacular display, it’s also a mysterious one, too:

[The Geminid meteor shower] lasts for days, is rich in fireballs, and can be seen from almost any point on Earth.

It’s also NASA astronomer Bill Cooke’s favorite meteor shower–but not for any of the reasons listed above.

“The Geminids are my favorite,” he explains, “because they defy explanation.”

Most meteor showers come from comets, which spew ample meteoroids
for a night of ‘shooting stars.’ The Geminids are different. The parent
is not a comet but a weird rocky object named 3200 Phaethon that sheds
very little dusty debris–not nearly enough to explain the Geminids.

Read more here. And be sure to tune in to your local sky tonight!

I found this fascinating and highly amusing. Pictured below is the rotating billboard advertisement for a podiatrist in Los Angeles. Long story short, locals hold that if this happy foot is facing you as you drive by, you’ll have a good day – the sad foot, a bad day. From Homegrown Evolution, via Boing Boing:

The podiatrist’s sign above marks the entrance to our neighborhood. It
charmed us the first time we saw it: It’s a foot — with feet!  And we
immediately named it the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign. Soon we learned that
other people called it The Happy Foot/Sad Foot Sign as well. The name
seemed predestined and universally applied, and it was recognizable
enough that we could pinpoint our location off of Sunset Blvd. by
saying, “You know the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign?”

The Foot rotates slowly, unless it’s broken, which it often is of
late. But when it’s rotating, you are always tempted to check out which
side is facing you when you first come into sight of it.  A happy,
smiling foot is portends a good day, or at least a general thumbs up
from the universe. We’ve always thought so, and come to find out, many
other people also practice this form of primitive divination.

Read more here.

This was another bizarre headline that I just couldn’t pass up. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the aging ex-Soviet oil oligarch president of Kazakhstan, has made some interesting requests of his scientists. From The Guardian:

Not satisfied with 19 years in charge of the gas-rich central Asian
state, Nazarbayev urged scientists today to unlock the secret to
immortality.

The 70-year-old leader stressed in a speech that a
new scientific research institute in the capital Astana should study
“rejuvenation of the organism,” as well as “the human genome, production
of human tissue and creation of gene-based medicines”.

In an
aside to students, Nazarbayev added: “As for the medicine of the future,
people of my age are really hoping all of this will happen as soon as
possible.”

Read more here.

… is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and is quite impressive. Check it out:

the world’s largest aquarium // ATL.GA from stillmotion on Vimeo.

Perhaps the hypothetical Planet X – a theoretical gas giant beyond Neptune suggested by astronomer Percival Lowell – is real after all. In fact, “a century of comet data suggests a dark, Jupiter-sized object is lurking
at the solar system’s outer edge and hurling chunks of ice and dust
toward Earth.” From Wired Science:

In 1999, Matese and colleague Daniel Whitmire suggested the sun has a hidden companion that boots icy bodies from the Oort Cloud, a spherical haze of comets at the solar system’s fringes, into the inner solar system where we can see them.

In a new analysis of observations dating back to 1898, Matese and
Whitmire confirm their original idea: About 20 percent of the comets
visible from Earth were sent by a dark, distant planet.

Read more here.

Fewer Christmas traditions are stranger than that of Krampus. Krampus, as you may or may not be aware, is St. Nicholas’s sinister (and lesser-known) demonic sidekick. If old St. Nick is the good cop who rewards well-behaved children with gifts of toys, then Krampus is the bad cop by far: he punishes naughty children by beating them with birch switches (and by terrifying them with his demonic visage). The tradition likely has its origins in the old trope of saints vanquishing demons through the power of God and forcing them into their thrall.

While most Americans remain unfamiliar with Krampus (despite his frequent examination on blogs such as this one), he is widely celebrated in Austria, Hungary, and the alpine regions of Europe. According to Wikipedia, young men in those parts will traditionally “dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December, particularly
on the evening of 5 December, and roam the streets frightening children
with rusty chains and bells.” So grab your mask, hit the streets, and get in the Krampus spirit! Just be prepared for some weird looks, if you’re outside Europe.

Check out this amusing blog dedicated to photos of the North Korean leader looking at various things. E.g.:

(Via Laughing Squid)

It’s not extraterrestrial life, unfortunately – but this is still a hugely important discovery. They’re gonna have to rewrite – or at least amend – the biology textbooks. From Gizmodo:

NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn’t share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth, using arsenic to build its DNA, RNA, proteins, and cell membranes. This changes everything.

All life on Earth is made of six components: carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. Every being, from the smallest
amoeba to the largest whale, share the same life stream. Our DNA
blocks are all the same. NASA scientist Felisa Wolfe Simon and her team
have found a bacteria whose DNA is completely alien to what we know
today. Instead of using phosphorus, the newly discovered
microorganism–called GFAJ-1–uses arsenic for all its building blocks.

This certainly seems to suggest that life might have a broader range – and take stranger forms – than we’ve previously predicted. Read more here.

Ah, Black Friday. The day-after-Thanksgiving shopping spree that draws millions of deal-stealers into long, cold lines at 4 AM (or earlier) while I remain blissfully asleep in my warm bed.

Picture Black Friday, in its own words, is “a photojournalism project that aims to revisit
and analyze a combination of forces- a worsening economy, financial
desperation, excitement, fear, and a distinctly American cultural
tradition- that culminate the morning after Thanksgiving.” Check out last year’s winner:

Tycho Brahe, in the words of Wikipedia, was a “Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations.” In fact, this pioneering gentleman-scientist made the most accurate astronomical observations and calculations of his time – and served as a mentor to the better-known astronomer Johannes Kepler. All told, Brahe made many important contributions to the fledgling science of astronomy. His life, however, was far stranger and more fascinating than a cursory glance at his biography might have you think. From the New York Times:

When Danish and Czech scientists exhumed the remains of the astronomer Tycho Brahe
in Prague this month, they dug up much more than some bones and hairs.
They found something that has eluded astronomers for thousands of years:
a story with major box-office potential.

It’s “Amadeus” meets “Da Vinci Code” meets “Hamlet,” featuring a deadly
struggle for the secret of the universe between Tycho, the swashbuckling
Danish nobleman with a gold-and-silver prosthetic nose, and the
not-yet-famous Johannes Kepler,
his frail, jealous German assistant. The story also includes an
international hit man, hired after a Danish prince becomes king and
suspects Brahe of sleeping with his mother (and maybe being his
father!).

For comic relief, there’s a beer-drinking pet elk wandering around
Tycho’s castle, as well as a jester named Jepp, a dwarf who sits under
Tycho’s table and is believed to be clairvoyant.

That’s definitely a film I would see. You can read more here.