There is a crater on Mars named Galle.  It is nicknamed the “happy face crater” due to a semicircular mountain range and two smaller craters within the main crater that make it look like… well… a smiley face!  Here are some Bing Image results (my first time using it).

The crater was shown in the Watchmen comic book at movie.

Source: Nate and wiki

A helium balloon will not float on the moon.  The reason that balloons float on Earth is that the helium inside the balloon is lighter than the nitrogen/oxygen air.

On the moon, there is no air.  So the balloon will just sink.  Or rather, be pulled to the surface by the moon’s gravity.

Source: Nerdular Nerdance

I caught a show on the National Geographic Channel last night about a sunken Australian Submarine from WWI.

They sent divers down to check it out.  I was trying to fall asleep at the time, but the voices in the show caught my attention.  Because they sounded like they were on helium.

They were.

It turns out that in certain conditions divers mix helium with their oxygen to avoid the affects of “nitrogen narcosis.”  The positive effect: no “nitrogen narcosis,” which sounds rather uncomfortable.  The downside: communication gets a little tough when everyone sounds like chipmunks.

For a brief history of mixed gas diving, head here.

The Leonids are a meteor shower that appear in the sky near the constellation of Leo.

The shower occurs annually in November, but is most pronounced about every 33 years.  We’re on the waning portion of that now.  The most recent peak was from 1998-2002.

During the peak, you can see a few thousand meteors per hour.  Last night it was closer to about 10 per hour.  But, because last night was also a new moon, the view was better than usual.  The best show is in Asia this year, but you should be able to catch a few just about anywhere, if you can get away from the light.

I woke The Wife^® up at about 1:30 AM, and we drove south a few miles to a deserted road with far fewer lights.  Somewhat surprisingly, we weren’t the only people who had that idea.

The show happens almost due east.  You can use Mars as a guide.  (It’s rather large and quite red at the moment.)

We had one confirmed sighting, and a few questionable ones.  Your eyes tend to play tricks on you when you’re staring at the sky for that long.

You may be able to catch a few tonight too.  The show starts around 1 AM Pacific Time/2 AM Central.  Or, if you’re an early riser, you could catch a few before the sun comes up.

This is a few days old by now, but I’m still catching up.  Busy week.

Chinese scientists artificially induced the second major snowstorm to wreak havoc in Beijing this season, state media said, reigniting debate over the practice of tinkering with Mother Nature.

After the earliest snow to hit the capital in 22 years fell on November 1, the capital was again shrouded in white Tuesday with more snow expected in the coming three days, the National Meteorological Centre said.

So, the Chinese claim they can control the weather.  Useful propaganda for them, I suppose.  If you control the weather, then you have one more tool in the toolbox to control the people.

Color me skeptical, to say the least.

The idea of cloud seeding has been around for quite some time, and is a Voodoo science at best.  Perhaps China figured out a new way to seed clouds.  Perhaps not.

But the real question is: should we be messing with the weather?  Shouldn’t there be limits on what we mess with?

I’ve watched enough Sci-Fi (or is it SyFy?) to know that this only ends in Apocalypse.

In the meantime, there are at least some in China who disagree with the government’s plan:

“No one can tell how much weather manipulation will change the sky,” Xiao Gang, a professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the paper.

“We should not depend too much on artificial measures to get rain or snow, because there are too many uncertainties up in the sky.”

And in Future News, Xiao Gang, former professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has graduated from re-education camp.  He will now head the government’s cloud seeding research.  “There is nothing the Chinese people cannot accomplish,” a newly thin Gang said.

h/t CW

So there are apparently things called Sailing Stones, also called Sliding Rocks or Moving Rocks.  But basically it refers to a phenomenon where rocks move along smooth valley floors without human or animal interaction… and no one knows how or why they do it.  But they know they do it because they leave grooves and tracks behind them as they move!

Well, after I read the article, that’s a half truth.  There is a good theory, it’s just not proven.  Basically, some scientists marked several large rocks positions and monitored them.  If any of them moved, it was after winter, so they are pretty sure winter is involved.  Since they are in flat valleys, they are pretty sure stream-line winds are involved.  So the theory basically goes that wind in these flat areas is intensified through some type of icy phenomenon, and these rocks catch blasts of 90+ MPH wind gusts… when they start to slide, it doesn’t take as much sustained wind to keep them moving… like a train that takes a lot of power to start, but not so much to keep moving.

You can read more on the wiki.

30 astronomers think this 2007 picture (that they just finished compiling) shows us 2 colliding galaxies.

Hit the original article for a cool explanation that involves black holes and star-life-cycles.

My best guess as to why these galaxies started fighting?
They’re crabby.




–

Afterthought:

These star clusters may have formed as part of a loop of stretched material associated with the northern tail, or they may have formed from debris falling back onto the nucleus.

We use cardinal directions in space? That seems odd. Do we then add “up” and “down” to describe the 3rd dimension? This may require a follow-up post after reading, if someone can’t answer in the comments.

Ahhh, the self review. The bane of any corporate worker’s existence. You hate writing them, and your manager hates reading them. Trust me. They do.

Turns out, they aren’t even useful. Science says so:

Researchers at Cornell found that the worst performers (in a variety of categories) often rated themselves and their performance, in most cases, far above average. But get this: Top performers rated themselves lower than their performance merited.

Here’s what the researchers reasoned:

The reasoning for these behaviors is fascinating. Poor performers lack the skills to perform–which are the same skills required to evaluate their performance. They don’t understand that they don’t understand, and so believe their abilities compare positively to their peers.

On the other hand, Top performers incorrectly assume that their competence is shared among their peers–leading them to rank themselves lower than they deserve.

My experience finds this to be 100% true. In my last corporate position I had 10 (or was it 11?) direct reports. The losers gave themselves the highest marks, while my superstars were unnecessarily harsh on themselves.

As a manager, the conversation with the superstars was much easier, and way more fun. It’s great when you get to deliver the “significantly exceeding expectations” review to someone who doesn’t expect it.

The other conversations, not so much. When they are starting from an “I’m awesome and exceeding expectations” perspective and you’re coming from a “you suck and I’m doing everything in my power to get your job eliminated so I don’t have to go through the tedious process of firing you” perspective, you will struggle to find common ground.

Not missing that corporate job at all at the moment.

Read the whole report form Cornell here.

This, I believe, falls under the purview of The Irony Czar.

The latest report found that “the Energy Department failed in many cases to use controls on heating, ventilation and air conditioning that are a primary means of conserving energy during non-working hours,” as Dow Jones Newswires put it. That could have cost the DOE more than $11 million.

In May, government inspectors found the Energy Department tended to leave computer monitors on, wasting electricity worth more than $1 million a year. The White House has trouble with energy efficiency as well.

This is old news (from July), but came up today when Obama’s Energy Secretary called us all a bunch of unruly teenagers. No really, he did.

When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” (In that case, the Energy Department has a few renegade teens of its own.)

To paraphrase Moe Lane, this is why you don’t see too many scientists in the government.

via Hot Air