Category: Science

The 10th planet discovered is bigger than Pluto!

If you need something to worry about, according to APOD: – Chicago Meteorite Fall, the average homeowner should expect to repair direct meteor damage every hundred million years.

Summer Solstice — from Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy has a chart of when exactly the summer solstice occurs each year. This year, the solstice occurs at 6:36 am (Universal Time) on June 21.

Since I am an early riser, I’ve probably seen the phenomenon of Shadow Set, mentioned by Astronomy Picture of the Day, but had never heard the term before reading about it here.

Machholz Meets the Pleiades in today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

The Horse Evolution faq from Talk Origins discusses the evolution of horses: At this point in the early Eocene, equids were not yet very different from the other perissodactyl groups; the Hyracotherium genus includes some species closely related to (or even ancestral to) rhinos and tapirs, as well as species that are distinctly equine. [Note: the particular species that probably gave rise to the rest of the equids, H. vassacciense, may be renamed, perhaps to “Protorohippus”.]

I was reminded of Jack’s comments about US media coverage of the disaster when I found RatcliffeBlog—Mitch’s Open Notebook: Tsunamis and U.S. media via Anita Rowland.

The Wikipedia has an article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake including an animation of the tsunami it created. The end of the article includes a table of contact information for aid groups.

Today, Astronomy Picture of the Day presents a fabulous photo: In the Center of the Heart Nebula. Although APOD has always been one of my favorite sites, I have been following it a lot more consistently since I subscribed to an RSS feed using Bloglines.

I took my mother to get her flu shot yesterday at the Senior Health Center she uses. We had not planned to do so, but she heard about the flu shot shortage and wanted to make sure she got it. The line was long, but moved quickly and she was done in about thirty minutes.

I usually get one each year, but may not this year since I am not in one of the high risk groups. I started getting them after we moved to Colorado. I was sick so much my first year here that I wanted to do everything I could to minimize getting ill.