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via Friendly Atheist
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Holy complicated orbital trajectory Batman
I’m on the night shift, so I slept through the comet landing. I set my alarm to get up early, but I was just too tired.
Check out Rosetta’s crazy 10 year journey to the comet. It’s crazy that people are smart enough to figure this out, and even crazier that it actually works. I’m looking forward to all the knowledge we will gain from this endeavor.
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There is no paint thinner in your cereal
Sometimes I wish I had the time to research all the nonsense I see posted on Facebook. If a title sounds outrageous, it’s 99.99% likely to be bullshit.
Today I saw that the FDA approved paint thinner in kid’s cereal.
Yeah, pretty obviously bullshit, but one of my family members believed it and posted it on Facebook.
A Google search brings up mostly the crank sites. I dug a little deeper and it seems they were complaining about trisodium phosphate in cereal. Which for starters, isn’t a paint thinner, but it is a chemical! Guess what? EVERYTHING is chemicals. I’m chemicals, YOU are chemicals, your computer is chemicals. They are everywhere, and everything. Chemicals have multiple uses, and every chemical is safe and dangerous. It’s really the dosage that matters. Believe it or not, there is an acceptable level for cyanide in public water systems. It’s extremely low, 0.2 mg/L, but there is a level where cyanide is harmless. Just because you never heard of a chemical, or it has a long name, doesn’t mean it’s bad for you.
Trisodium phosphate at high concentrations is a good cleaner. In food, at a much lower concentration, trisodium phosphate is used as an antioxidant.
I didn’t research it any further because who has time for that? This article was just simply chemophobia with a catchy headline. Why people forward crap like this on is beyond me. It’s just more proof that we need more and better science education in our school systems.
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So true
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Penny 4 NASA
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“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
~Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder
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Boop!
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Talk Nerdy
I’ve been a fan of Cara Santa Maria for quite some time. When I heard that she started a new podcast, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to listen to it. I don’t really have time in my day for any more podcasts, but after listening to the first episode, I had to subscribe. I got caught up on her past episodes over the weekend and loved them. I will for sure find the time to listen to her podcast every week now. If you’re looking for smart science talk, her show is for you.
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Cassini’s “Wave at Saturn”
If you’ve been on the internet the last couple days you probably saw the latest amazing picture of Saturn that Cassini has taken. If not you can see it here. It’s even more amazing with some explanation to what you are looking at. Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society has put together a nice little video explaining what we’re looking at. It’s quite amazing.
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Cat in zero gravity
I’ve always wanted to see how my cats would react to zero gravity. I’ve always wanted to take them for a ride in the Vomit Comet. Guess what? NASA already did it, and yep it’s on YouTube, and as one would expect, it’s hilarious.
