That celestial wonder is complete. The pale wisp phantasmally disappeared at 6.52pm local time, consumed from left to right for the preceding 20 minutes or so. Then the long shadow held sway for an incredibly long time, with the lunar ghost weakly reappearing 7.13pm thereabouts. Quickly, the recovery was overtaken by cloud ( Read more... )

So, Heather awesomely bought the whole season of California Academy of Sciences "Conversations 2008" tickets, and invited me to join her to listen to Neil DeGrasse Tyson entertainingly follow in Carl Sagan's popularizing footsteps, and pitch sections of his catastrophe-exploring book to the audience. He spent quite a bit of time explaining the ( Read more... )

In disbelief, one collegue mentioned that "now they'll have to rewrite all the textbooks" - to which I replied, "Not really, they can add an insert for now."

Followed up by "Right next to the insert stating that Evolution is Just A Theory (TM)." EDIT: in the news again"It's a fair point actually, Pluto may no longer be a planet, but Kansas ( Read more... )