Today in bizarre American date writing system is 3.14 which makes it Pi Day (3.1416 is a rounding of Pi). It's a day to celebrate it, admire its many graphical representations, write "pi-kus" and "piems". Happy Pi Day ( Read more... )

So today is the Winter Solstice and the days will finally start getting longer. I'm hoping that this is the reason behind me being so sleepy and tired all the time. This and the weather change. The season started with pouring rain and the beginning of heatwave (for winter). It's 10 pm and it's still 16oC (60F) outside and it's only going to get ( Read more... )

The biggest event this summer was the New Horizons flyby Pluto. I never managed to get myself to write about it but I was watching all the photos and reading all about it. And get very excited. But the best is still to come. Because of the speed the New Horizons needed to achieve - fastest thing we ever sent - it was so tiny it could only look at ( Read more... )

So I'm back in US after two extra hours spent in Toronto due to storm delays. Poland was beautiful as this is the time of year when everything is blooming (I went from lilacs and lily of the valley through the whole azalea and rhododendron blooming season all the way to pseudoacacia) and the weather was behaving perfectly. I got new visa. I met ( Read more... )

LHC was supposed to be back in operation after two years of upgrades but it short-circuited during booting so we'll still have to wait for that dark matter explanation a little longer. They need to opposite of vacuum it first by flushing it out with high-pressure helium gas.

For the first time since MIR there will be someone living in space for a ( Read more... )

The last week in life of Philae lander was full of danger and excitement. I was waiting with this post until we know more about its ultimate fate and not as good as we hoped but not as bad as it seemed for a while. It did land, it's still on the comet and it sent a lot of useful data but for now it's in hibernation and it may never wake up.

It all ( Read more... )

Today everyone celebrated the end of a war that started 100 years ago. My family back home is just finishing a 4 day weekend. They saw light show yesterday but today, on the actual holiday, they obviously stayed home. There is nothing like "patriots" celebrating Independence Day by destroying the capitol to want to avoid celebrating.So let's ( Read more... )

One of my favourite subjects is AI growth and how we will treat it and how it will treat us. This is what made me start watching Battlestar Gallactica and why I'm so obsessed with Person of Interest right now. And that's why Neil Blokamp new movie Chappie trailer looks pretty awesome. I just hope the story will be less heavy handed on the message ( Read more... )

Everyone is talking about the Jade Rabbit's goodbye messages. China's first Moon rover is malfunctioning and most likely won't survive the night (they last 2 weeks and temperatures drop to -170oC). Like it is in style for the rovers now it has its own twitter feed where it gets personified so we would care. And now they make us watch it die. I ( Read more... )

The Opportunity rover mission was supposed to last 90 days. It just finished a decade of exploration of Mars and it's still going. Think about 10 years - it's 40 times longer then it was planned to work. Without any repairs and all the engeenirs on a different planet with minutes delay.

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The Spirit rover that landed three weeks earlier stopped ( Read more... )