Cool Shoe Lace Techniques

For anyone who likes tying their shoes in creative and funky ways, you should check out this entry on Monicel's Blog.

Source: StumbleUpon.

100-Year Starship

Read about the possible planned long-term space flight at FoxNews.com - Is NASA Covering Up the 100-Year Starship?.

Trapped Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Subsurface Water - NASA.GOV

Despite the slightly sad fact that the Mars rover is essentially stuck in place and has been that way for a while now, the mission is not a failure. In fact, it's far from over! The rover's instruments all still work and it can still effectively send back photos and data. Yesterday it was announced that even the wheels spinning ineffectively in the Mars soil has uncovered some new surprises. There is really good evidence of subsurface water. Since the search for life on other planets always begins with the search for water, this is very interesting news. You can read more at NASA.gov.

This is an artist's rendition of the rover. The article has a very nice photo. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University.

Gir - The Doom Song

I wanted to share this song from Invader Zim that we all know and love, but it would appear that the video cannot be embedded traditionally. So go to YouTube to see it in full.

Doom, doom-doom-doom, doom, doom-doom, doom-da-du-doo-doooom!

News About the International Space Station

Today, the International Space Station breaks the Mir record for continuous human presence in space. The ISS will celebrate 10 years in space on the 31st. The final flight of Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-133) will launch on November 1st.

Teens Against Bullying

Making a difference against bullying is something everyone can agree on.

The Sounds of Jupiter :: NASA-Voyager Recording

Okay, here is a fair warning. This is pretty spooky.

Despite the fact that space is a vacuum, it is remarkable to note that the planets and the sun do make sound --even our own planet. We would never hear these sounds with our natural ears, but special equipment can pick it up and reprocess it into a range our ears CAN hear and this is the result. Here's the description from YouTube.

Fascinating recording of Jupiter sounds (electromagnetic "voices") by NASA-Voyager. The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind, planetary magnetosphere etc. create vibration "soundscapes". It sounds very interesting, even scary. Jupiter is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. The entire planet is made of gas, with no solid surface under the atmosphere. The pressures and temperatures deep in Jupiter are so high that gases form a gradual transition into liquids which are gradually compressed into a metallic "plasma" in which the molecules have been stripped of their outer electrons. The winds of Jupiter are a thousand metres per second relative to the rotating interior. Jupiter's magnetic field is four thousand times stronger than Earth's, and is tipped by 11° degrees of axis spin. This causes the magnetic field to wobble, which has a profound effect on trapped electronically charged particles. This plasma of charged particles is accelerated beyond the magnetosphere of Jupiter to speeds of tens of thousands of kilometres per second. It is these magnetic particle vibrations which generate some of the sound you hear on this recording.

There are other video clips available with the sounds of other planets. I need to reiterate that some of them sound so spooky that I hesitated to post them here. But they only sound scary because of the processing and the fact that these are sounds we would not normally hear. There are entire CDs worth of these sound effect recordings.