Off to ogle at Venus...

Right, I'm taking the two dogs out for a walk before getting on my bike for a wild ride around town that will climax on top of Mt. Helix (hopefully before 3:30PM) to catch the transit of the planet Venus across the sun. 

Alas, my good camera (the one with 10x zoom) fell off the wagon the other day... literally, so I'm left with the not so good camera (the one with 4x zoom and a few dust spots on its lens) to try to capture some good shot of the rare phenomenon with. That, and the eclipse glass I bought from the North Star Science Shop at the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park, of course (if you're in San Diego and don't have a good #14 welder's shield or don't know (or can't be bothered to know) how to make a pin hole projector to safely watch the transit with, they're selling eclipse glasses at Fleet Sci Ctr for only $2).

And here's a little prayer to Venus...

Offenbach's Helen may be a bit flaky, but she has a point; Venus is a bit airy and hard to catch.... I hope you'll be able to catch a glimpse of the transit, if it is visible in your area. The alignment is so rare that if you miss this one you most likely won't live to see the next one in 2117. If you are in South America or Africa, though, I'm afraid the transit happens at night your time, and so isn't visible... though you can watch the event live via the NASA Edge Program at Mona Kea, Hawaii.

Edit: Well, well, it's nice and sunny outside (I was expecting at least partly cloudy today)... think I'm heading to the beach instead of up the mountain to catch Venus (after all, who wants to ride down wiggly Alto Dr after sunset anyhow? Besides, the sun will look bigger as it sinks into the ocean!).

A Bit of Science to Spice Up A Day

The computer is malfunctioning, so I'm taking it easy on this blogging thingy. Am running into lot of interesting stuff this month, though. will drop in to tell you about some of them later, but for now here's a cool video for the cool weekend.

Dr. Michelle Thaller is the assistant director for Science Communication at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

New Tests of Einstein's General Relativity

Like Charles Darwin's theory of the diversity of life, Evolution by Natural Selection, Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, General Relativity, has been around for a hundred year now, and it is still being tested by current independent studies based on real observations... without failing to produce accurate results.

Chandra X-Ray Observatory recently (as of April 14th, 2010) reported on how Einstein's theory stood up better to independent observations of gravitational effects in distant galaxies than its two new challenging theories; the f(R) theory and the DGP gravity, do (calculations based on General Relativity correspond better to what were observed than calculations based on the other two theories do).

This doesn't mean that Einstein's theory has been positively proven to be 100% accurate, of course. Science is not in the business of offering 100% certainty. It is in the business of minimizing uncertainties. And the more theories like General Relativity and Evolution by Natural Selection withstand their (almost daily) tests against real observations and experimental data, the more confidence they earn in that they are the current best description of the natural phenomena they describe. And since the people that came up with f(R) and DGP gravity are good and real scientists, they aren't pushing for their idea to be given equal time in science class with the theory that beat them.... Unlike what those people who are trying to push for a religion in disguise as a 'science' to be taught in science classes in America regardless of how thoroughly it had been debunked like to do...

Just A Cool Clip For My Fellow Nerds...

I'm a geek.... I like watching things like this...

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Space shuttle Endeavour having an acrobatic moment while astronauts at the International Space Station give its exterior a visual inspection. The video is played at 8 times the actual speed.