Blogs

Thanksgiving Weekend SciSchmooze

One thousand galaxies belonging to the Perseus Cluster with more than 100,000 additional galaxies visible farther away. Each can contain up to hundreds of billions of stars. Credit...European Space Agency/Euclid Consortium/NASA; image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi

Hello again Science fans! I hope you all had enough turkey (or whatever you chose to eat)! When I was in school, we were told that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by Native Americans and European settlers to give thanks for the harvest. While that celebration did happen, that isn’t really the origin of the Thanksgiving holiday. It was about Union progress in the Civil War! Historian Heather Cox Richardson explains.

It is about time to ta


Celebrate Thankscience with the SciSchmooze

In the 1920's, Edwin Hubble recognized that our universe is expanding. The Hubble Space Telescope is names for him.
Researchers prepare to deploy buoys below the frozen surface of Siberia’s Lake Baikal as part of a telescope to detect neutrinos from space.

Hello Science Lovers and Shoppers, and Happy Birthday Ed.

I have not paid much attention to what is coming up on the calendar for awhile. Needless to say I had no idea t


Drifting along with the SciSchmooze

Storm Ciarán flooding, Dorset, England - Courtesy Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Dear science fans,

Storm Ciarán bashed England and left many thousands without power across Western Europe last week. 

The Panama Canal is restricting shipping since a drought left the region without enough fresh water to operate the locks for normal ship traffic. Some container ships had to off-load enough containers to meet weight restrictions. The container


SciSchmoozing There & Back

LIGO Quantum Squeeze Apparatus - Credit: Georgia Mansell/LIGO Hanford Observatory

Dear science fan,

The above Quantum Squeeze Apparatus made me laugh. It looks like a far more complex version of one of my goofy grammar school inventions that i assembled from bottles, cans, defunct car parts, light bulbs, wires, and batteries. My inventions didn’t ever do anything - but i always hoped they would lead to some major discovery. The above apparatus actually does something - so they say - that allows greater sensitivity in detecting gravity waves at higher frequencies and at lower frequencies - but not both at the same time. If you believe you can get me to understan


Perusing the Universe with the SciSchmooze

Bob Siederer
OCT 23
Mosaic of 42 galaxies from the Siena Galaxy Atlas (Credit:CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA/J. Moustakas)

Hello again, Fans of Science!

There are lots of things around us that we take for granted, yet are scientific marvels. Take, for instance, glass. We look through it. It shelters us from the elements in windows. We drink from vessels made from it. But what is it, really? Is it a solid? Liquid? The answer to both may be yes, as glass is a bit of a scientific mystery! This article will get you thinking!

Shaking with the SciSchmooze

San Francisco 18 April 1906

Dear SciSchmoozers,

A 6.1 earthquake topped off my birthday this month in Oaxaca, Mexico (and abruptly terminated a huge outdoor rock concert). Since the quake was located 108 kilometers below the terrain, there was almost no damage - except to nerves.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 was a 6.9 magnitude event. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 was a 7.9 magnitude event. Because the magnitude scale is logarithmic, the San Francisco quake was 10 times “bigger” than the Loma Prieta event. In terms of energy, however, the San Francisco quake released over 30 times the energy of the 1989 quake.

¿Is our Bay Area threatened by another 7.9 quake? Well, yes, but not for a while. The g


Mooning the Sun with the SciSchmooze

10.9.23

Hello SciSchmoozers,

Well it has been a crazy week and I am going to have to just tease you with some various links that have provided some distraction from the news and life. It has been a challenging year and most people seem to want to get on to 2024. I love it when someone says they can’t wait until something completely out of there control happens! It’s not as if a new year will make any difference!!

These are pretty crazy times with people be


Down to Earth with the SciSchmooze

Frank Rubio, Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and friends

Dear reader,
I’ve assembled some ideas and information you might enjoy.


SPACE

On Tuesday, go outside at 1938 hrs (that’s nerd-notation for 7:38 PM) to watch the ISS make a 6-minute pass over the Bay Area. (NW horizon to directly overhead (86°) to SE horizon)

Astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin returned to Earth from


Syndicate content