Patrick

Jupiter’s Birth

Posted on by Patrick
Jupiter

Well, this is pret­ty cool:

Thanks to exten­sive com­put­er sim­u­la­tions, the researchers have cal­cu­lat­ed that the cur­rent asym­me­try [in the counts of Tro­jan aster­oids] could only have occurred if Jupiter was formed four times fur­ther out in the solar sys­tem and sub­se­quent­ly migrat­ed to its cur­rent posi­tion. Dur­ing its jour­ney towards the sun, Jupiter’s own grav­i­ty then drew in more Tro­jans in front of it than behind it.

Jupiter’s unknown jour­ney revealed

Image cred­it: NASA/J­PL-Cal­tech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

A year without glasses

Posted on by Patrick
Eye (photo by Vanessa Bumbeers)

This time last year, I was still wear­ing hard plas­tic eye-shields to bed, thanks to my laser eye surgery. But my vision has been 20/16 since then, and the only glass­es I’ve had to wear are sun­glass­es and (to my wife’s ever­green amuse­ment) read­ing glasses.

Thanks to Dr. Rocha and his entire crew for mak­ing my eyes bet­ter than they’ve been since, oh, grade 2 or so.

(That’s still not my eye­ball. Pho­to by Vanes­sa Bum­beers on Unsplash)

March star trails

Posted on by Patrick

This past Sat­ur­day, the sky was clear and the auro­ral fore­cast looked promis­ing, so I drove out to a dark spot to check out out. The auro­ra, if it was there at all, was a very faint smear at the extreme north­ern hori­zon. But I had bought a cof­fee, so I stuck around long enough to get some star trails.

The pho­to is about 150 images, 10 sec­onds each, ISO 800, f/2.8, 11mm, all stacked in GIMP. The wax­ing half-moon lit the fore­ground for me.

The Tao of Pratchett

Posted on by Patrick

Over on Tor.com, a dis­cus­sion of Sir Ter­ry Pratch­et­t’s works, and how there’s more to them—far more—than just sil­ly puns and goofy characters.

Ter­ry Pratch­ett is best known for his incom­pe­tent wiz­ards, drag­on-wield­ing police­men, and anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­i­fi­ca­tions who SPEAK LIKE THIS. And we love him for it. Once we’re done chuck­ling at Nan­ny Ogg’s not-so-sub­tle innu­en­dos and the song about the knob on the end of the wizard’s staff, how­ev­er, there’s so much more going on beneath the sur­face of a Pratch­ett novel. 

Read the whole arti­cle; it’s worth it.

Today’s library haul

Posted on by Patrick

I can’t decide which one I want to read first. I real­ly like Join Scalz­i’s writ­ing; I loved Son of a Trick­ster and I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing more of Eden Robin­son’s prose; but man, Sara Gran’s last nov­el end­ed on such a cliffhang­er, so I’m lean­ing towards The Infi­nite Black­top.