Why Fire is Cool - entry #4 - Ancient Energy Unleasher

When you heat a can of beans on a campfire, you are transforming the chemical energy contained in the firewood into thermal energy (heat).  As you are in your tent drifting off to sleep and the bean-induced-fart-chorus begins, you may ask yourself where the energy in that firewood came from.  As with most energy sources, the answer is that it came from the sun!  That firewood was once a tree that was merrily pursuing its life's purpose of fashioning itself a body out of carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, in a process known as photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis requires an energy source (sunlight), therefore the products of photosynthesis (wood, etc) can be thought to contain that photosynthesized energy.  When you burn firewood, you are essentially running photosynthesis in reverse, releasing the energy from the sun that the tree went through so much trouble to absorb.

So, fire is cool because it allows us to unleash energy from the sun in small amounts, whenever we please, regardless of when that energy first arrived on earth.  In the case of firewood, that energy arrived anywhere from a few years to a few thousand years ago, depending on how long the tree had lived.

The Llangernyw Yew, a 4,000-5,000 year old tree.

This same concept applies to anything else we burn, even fossil fuels, which is where things get crazy.

Solar Beat

File this post under my constant quest to rise above the constraints of my perception of time and space.  The people at whitevinyldesign.com made this awesome little animation thing of the eight "classical planets" plus the "pluton" (formerly known as a planet) pluto and the "dwarf planet" (formerly known as an asteroid) ceres orbiting around the sun.  You can speed them up and slow them down and listen to their 10 unique tones.  I seriously spaced out for 10 solid minutes while watching this thing, I encourage you to do the same.

via whitevinyldesign.com via Krulwich wonders

Isn't it cool how the innermost planets move soooooooo much faster than the outermost planets?  Makes me think of how a penny circles faster and faster around the central axis of one of those spiral wishing wells as it gets closer to the center.  Conceptually identical.

New World Plant Extravaganza!

All of these plants are originally from North or South America.  The exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the "new" and "old" worlds that happened beginning in the late 1400s is known as the Columbian Exchange.  None of these plants existed in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia prior to then.

Corn!!
yes, that includes popcorn, which believe it or not, does grow on a cob

Potatoes!!
no Irish potato famine without these bad boys.  also, imagine potato-less pierogi's!?

I came from That??!?

Last weekend I visited the Field Museum in Chicago.  It may come as no surprise to some of you that this museum completely blew my mind.  My friend Willard and I spent almost the entire time in their "Evolving Planet" exhibit, which walked us from the formation of the earth through to the present day.  Afterwards we talked about asteroids and looked at some wicked crystals.

Anyhow, the most surprising discovery from this visit concerned Dimetrodon, which when I was a child was one of my favorite dinosaurs from my extensive collection of plastic dinosaur toys.  My Dimetrodon toy looked vaguely like the one below, minus the "Dino-Strike Clamping Jaws".

What an awesome sail on his/her back, right?  Coolest dinosaur ever, or so I thought until my weekend stroll past the "Synapsid vs Diapsid" section of the evolving planet exhibit.  It was in this section that one of my childhood dino dreams died, and out of the ashes rose what I like to call the phoenix of discovery!  I discovered that Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, but was instead our ancestor!!!!!  While that sinks in, here are some cool Dimetrodon pictures.

Time Lapse Awesomeness - pt 1

I love to think about how differently we would see the universe if our sense of time were significantly altered. There are a number of illegal ways of doing this, but one legal way of experiencing an altered sense of time is through time-lapse photography.

Here are some awesome time-lapse videos by this guy Henry Jun Wah Lee:

Extinct American Mammals

The idea of introducing wild lions, elephants, and camels to north and south america was first put forward by Paul Martin of the University of Arizona. Pretty wild! He is a proponent of this idea or "re-wilding" because relatives of these animals once roamed all across the americas, but went extinct around 11,000 years ago. Curiously, this was around the time that humans came on the scene.

Straight to the waaay cool stuff though. Here are some pictures and short descriptions of the crazy variety of giant mammals (megafauna) that once called the americas their home.

Starting off with more familiar animals, the Dire Wolf, Canis dirus. This was the largest known member of the canine family, averaging around 5 ft in length.

Moving from dogs to cats, the American Lion, Panthero leo atrox, was the largest known member of the cat family. They averaged around

Apollo 11 Slow-Motion Launch Video

This is a slow motion video of the apollo 11 launch, closeup on the engines. Be sure to have the volume turned on because the accompanying description rules.


Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Awesome!!!

Also, everyone has probably seen the apollo 11 moon-walk videos a bunch, but the later apollo missions had two things apollo 11 didn't have... better video equipment and a ROVER:


Apollo 16 LRV Grand Prix HD from Doug Ellison on Vimeo.

via @nauticalgrandpa via kottke.org

The Grand Canyon Rules, pt 1

Recently I went to the grand canyon, which is one of the top five most amazing sights I imagine I will ever see in my life. Here is a picture of me at the north rim:

Me, Mind Being Melted.

At the visitors center, on the side of an awesome miniature model of the canyon, there is this amazing quote from geologist Clarence Dutton (1841-1912) that sums up quite well how I feel when standing on the edge of the canyon:

Dimension means nothing to the senses, and all we are left with is a troubled sense of immensity

Slow and steady wins the race

I've been thinking a lot recently about time scales, how quickly and/or slowly things happen, and how we humans perceive that.

Look at how slowly this mudslide happens!!!! Way more slowly than I thought mudslides would ever happen. This is from southern italy, where 200 residents were evacuated to avoid this really slow mud.



According to howstuffworks.com, mudslides can sometimes reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The speed of the mudslide increases as the soil contains more water or the slope is more steep. So, just based on what we can see visually from this video, the mud looks a lot like dirt, meaning there is not much water, and the slope is not that steep, so it makes sense that this mudslide is relatively slow. It also makes sense that the slower a mudslide is, the more likely it is to be caught on video, which might be one reason that this is the only mudslide video i can find on the internet. EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE!!!!!!!

Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Today we're going to talk about what you can see and can't see when you look up into the night sky. Let's see where it takes us.

Step outside tonight and gaze into the heavens. Almost all of the lights you see up there are stars that are in our very own milky way galaxy. If you're like me, you live in a city and can't see but a handful of stars. So, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, here is what the sky looks like from the middle of the desert (definitely click on this to see the big version, definitely).