As I write this, storm clouds are gathering in the west. That’s a pretty common situation here in Boulder, Colorado, in the summer. We get fine, clear mornings, and sometimes rain in the afternoon. In general big storms aren’t exactly rare, but this summer we’ve been getting pounded. On my bike rides it’s been routine to see the creeks in the area swollen to the point of overflowing.
But this summer, that situation has turned more dangerous. We’ve been getting some serious flood scares, and the reason may not be obvious to people who don’t live in the area: fires.
Last year, the Fourmile Canyon area north and west of Boulder burned pretty vigorously for many days. The smoke plume was visible from space, and it caused a lot of local grief. What wasn’t clear to me at the time was how this would affect flooding.
The image above, taken on June 7, 2011, is from NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite, and is a combination of far-infrared and visible light. Water (reservoirs and lakes) shows up as purple in this false-color image, vegetation is mostly green, and red/orange shows the fire damage. You can see Boulder to the lower right of the burned area.
When fire burns off all the plants, there’s nothing to hold the rain water in when we get storms. The water all washes downhill, in this case into the Fourmile Creek. That runs into the Boulder Creek, and that, well, here’s a natural color image which shows why that’s bad:
Alex Parker is an astronomy PhD student at the University of Victoria, and had a neat idea: create music based on 241 supernovae found in a three-year-long survey of the sky. The data were from the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope, and he made a video of the effort:
Each note represents one of the supernovae. The volume is based on the star’s distance, and the pitch based on how long it took the supernova to rise to maximum brightness and fade away — that’s tied to the exploding star’s total energy released, and was the key factor used to discover dark energy — together, they are combined into this "Supernova Sonata". Clever, and cool.
Speaking of which, I also got an email from Mike Lemmon of Neue Music. For a website called Experience the Planets, he created music I’d characterize as "atmospheric" — more tonal and ethereal than most synth music. I happen to like this kind of stuff, and I find myself listening to his "Planets" as I’m working. It’s not for everybody, I know, but if you like that kind of thing as I do you should give it a shot.
It’s available on iTunes, or you can go to the link above and listen while thumbing through some incredibly beautiful artwork of the planets.
I’ve had a cable modem for quite some time, but for many years before that I had to get onto the internet using a dial-up modem (and I remember having to bite the bullet to buy a second phone line so we could get calls while online). And I also remember how slllloooooowwwwww the bitrate was.
The connection itself didn’t take long, and made that weird wheeeecccchhhh woooooccchhhhhh noise. But what if the connection had been as slow as your downloads? What would those weird noises sound like slowed by a factor of 7?
I have no reason to post this other than I thought it was cool. As it happens I just watched "Quatermass and the Pit" (for about the hundredth time) the other day, and was reminiscing about old scifi movies. Doesn’t this sound like it could be in one of those old soundtracks?
A few months ago I posted about the Autism Science Foundation: an organization that funds real research into autism. We don’t know what causes autism, but ongoing research is making progress, and ASF is helping support that.
For today only, they are featured on the Philanthroper home page. Philanthroper is a group that helps raise money one dollar at a time. I like this idea. Giving a dollar isn’t all that hard for a lot of people, and the process is pretty painless: if you have a buck and a Paypal account, it takes less than a minute.
A lot of time, money, and effort is being wasted looking into a connection between vaccines and autism when we know no such connection exists. I’m glad there are groups out there trying to find the real causes, and that’s why I already donated to ASF.
Just as a so’s-you-know: the radio/podcast interview I did with Jules Sherred for Geeky Pleasures is now online for your listening nerdtainment. We talked about a ton of stuff, including the space program, Doctor Who, space colonies, Trek, asteroids, antivaxxers, and nudity.
Oh, did that get your attention? I figured it would. People love it when I talk about Doctor Who.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?" -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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