Supernova Condensate

Glowing Kitteh!

Sat, 26 May 2012 17:13:37 GMT

It's caturday. So here's a picture of a glow in the dark kitten.

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Bliss and darkness

Sat, 26 May 2012 01:14:49 GMT

Chocolate. Take a minute to think about enjoying a delicious piece of your favourite chocolate, won't you? That moment when you bite and it snaps into your mouth with a light crunch, and the rich warm flavour of it starts to diffuse throughout your mouth. As you inhale, the flavours and aromas flood your olfactory senses. Your brain releases a burst of pleasure chemicals in reaction to the sensations your mouth is enjoying. With each bite, it melts more and more, luxuriously coating your tongue, filling each and every tastebud with luxurious sensations and deep, complex flavours.

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Here be Dragons!

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:18:56 GMT

Just a quick post, because I'm supposed to be doing something else right now... But it isn't every day you get to watch history being made, streamed live over the internet.

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Mmmm... peppery!

Thu, 24 May 2012 21:55:15 GMT

Did you know that there's a twitter feed called molecule of the day? So now, courtesy of twitter, I get a text message every day containing one randomly selected interesting molecule. This is now one of my new favourite things on the internets -- I believe the appropriate word would be NERDGASM!

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Sticky post: Sorry about this...

Thu, 24 May 2012 15:10:01 GMT

Well this is a bit embarrassing... My apologies to anyone who's followed a direct link to one of my blog entries at supernovacondensate.net (such as my recent post for the toxic carnival or that graphic showing scale images of spacecraft) and ended up here on my main page, instead of where they wanted to be. Livejournal's inadequate attempts at domain hosting seem to be giving me problems again.

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I don't even

Wed, 23 May 2012 21:06:11 GMT

Ugh... I'm just going to cut this one immediately, so anyone who doesn't want to hear me whining about wavelength calibration can go on about their business!

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The Wisdom in X-rays

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:21:41 GMT

I'm genuinely honoured to have a guest blog post today in Nature's Soapbox Science blog about the repurcussions of the recent plug being pulled on the ATHENA X-ray telescope. I'm quite proud of this one. Please do go over and take a look!

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Space Dragon!

Wed, 23 May 2012 01:31:00 GMT

In other news, SpaceX has officially made history. The Dragon capsule is currently in orbit around planet Earth. The first orbital spacecraft the world has ever known, which was fully developed and launched by a private company.

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Top 10 Toxic Hydrides

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:55:59 GMT

So I wanted to write a post for the Toxic Carnival but found myself not entirely sure what to write about. I mean... I don't know a huge amount about cool biogenic toxins like tetrodotoxin. Or unicorns, for that matter. But, back in my comfort zone, if we're talking about astronomical molecules then I have poisons-a-plenty to choose from. Some of them in unspeakably huge quantities. So I mused on this for a while... And I realised that, at least in some ways, I'm a physical organic chemist. And while organic things (like ethanol and benzene and people) are based on carbon hydrides, well... A lot of hydrides are rather toxic. So I bring you, without further ado, my 10 favourite toxic hydrides!^★

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How to diffract a Cadbury's creme egg...?

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:11:03 GMT

It's quite easy to talk me into doing silly things. Actually, if I'm honest, it's very easy. Especially if those silly things are entertaining and tenuously scientific. For instance, I'm writing this because of a conversation (with certain people) about diffracting Cadbury's creme eggs. There's... not a lot more I can say about that really. (I don't know how these things happen, they just do).

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Eclipsed

Mon, 21 May 2012 22:57:50 GMT

This is perhaps one of the most beautiful eclipse pictures I've ever seen. Seriously. It's just incredible. The detail is breathtaking. The composition is exquisite. It's been circulating the internet for the past day or so with people saying that it's a NASA photograph of yesterday's eclipse, taken from orbit. In a way, it's a pity it's not a real photograph.

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Dark blunder

Mon, 21 May 2012 22:20:08 GMT

So, you know when you accidentally misplace 83% of the mass of the Universe? Wait... what?

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Science Calling

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:47:59 GMT

I'm rather happy to say that I have a guest blog post on Science Calling all about the search for life in the Universe!

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Model spaceships

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:32:23 GMT

This, my friends, is an image showing several of the most notable spacecraft we plucky human beings have created (and are busily creating) to date. The past, the present, and the ones that never quite made it. All spacecraft shown are to scale (assuming my sources were accurate). Because I felt I needed to exercise my graphic design muscles. And because, well, let's face it – space ships are just inherently cool, aren't they?

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lick

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:13:42 GMT

I hope you're having a good caturday!

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Grown, not built

Sat, 19 May 2012 10:38:22 GMT

The International Space Station, usually known as the ISS, is probably the most expensive single structure the human race has ever constructed. The reason being that each new module of it has to be first made here on Earth and then launched into orbit aboard a rocket. The end result is a slightly outlandish looking assemblage of seemingly disjoint pieces. Those modules, however, fit together perfectly and currently form the largest habitable space station in human history.

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"Abort on engine 5. Chamber pressure high."

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:17:00 GMT

Today was to be the launch day for the Dragon capsule. SpaceX's manned space vehicle, and the only manned craft ever to travel into orbit which was completely built by a private company as opposed to a government funded corporation.

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Giga hexagon!

Fri, 18 May 2012 17:11:21 GMT

Well, while I'm on the subject of hexagons, I might as well do what I do best and leap from the imperceptibly tiny to the immensely huge. There's one hexagonal structure which is naturally formed and large enough to easily fit our entire planet inside it. It's been known about for decades, and no one really understands. If you'd like to see it for yourself though, you've going to have to go to Saturn. Simply speaking, there's a gaping hexagonal hole in the cloud cover of Saturn's north pole with around two and a half times the volume of our planet!

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Quite hexagonal

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:20:28 GMT

I'm of the personal opinion that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules, often known as PAHs, are one of the finest proofs that the Universe is beautiful. Carbon, at the molecular level, organises itself into geometrically perfect hexagons. It doesn't even need any energy to do this. It does it all by itself, because this perfect hexagonal geometry is actually the lowest energy state of the atoms themselves. Just beautiful.

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Of myth and wonder

Thu, 17 May 2012 22:01:26 GMT

❝

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet,
in the myth.

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Academia ex machina

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:22:32 GMT

Academia is a harsh mistress. If you're not careful, it has a habit of spitting you out into the real world to fend for yourself when you'd really rather have other plans. So currently, being all out of funding, I'm doing some temping work to get some income. If I'm honest, I'd much rather just focus on thesis writing. But then, I do rather like eating food from time to time too. Sadly until someone invents Star Trek replicators, that means making sure I can afford it.

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Venusian Sunset

Sun, 13 May 2012 20:21:22 GMT

There's something just lovely about the evening. A cool breeze against your skin, the Sun dips slowly below the horizon, as planets blaze brightly in the sky with reflected Sunlight. It's easy to forget entirely that Earth too, is a planet. We wouldn't look so different, seen in the evening sky of another world. So take a moment to consider... What might you see in the evening if you were drifting in the cloud decks of planet Venus?

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Blogging about science about blogging about science...

Sun, 13 May 2012 17:16:35 GMT

So... I'm writing a blog post for ResearchBlogging.org about a paper about blog posts written for ResearchBlogging.org. And that means that if ever anyone else writes a paper about blog posts for ResearchBlogging.org it will be a paper about blog posts for ResearchBlogging.org including at least one blog post about a paper about blog posts for ResearchBlogging.org. Yes.

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There's something on your face

Sat, 12 May 2012 20:43:59 GMT

I really love those moments when I see an image that makes me double take and say out loud "Oh wow". This image caused one of those moments. This photograph is a beautiful beautiful capture of a sunrise over the Basilica di Superga, near Turin, by sky photographer Stefano De Rosa. I wish any of my own photographs looked this good! The image is beautiful enough on it's own, but there's reason to look a little closer...

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Bleach Clouds

Sat, 12 May 2012 19:17:26 GMT

An interesting thing happens to you if you study a particular field of astronomy for long enough. Certain things become familiar to you. Catalogue numbers like HD 44179 or IRC+10216° become commonplace, and the strings of numbers and letters which, at first glance, seem baffling start to become as easily readable as street addresses. Without even setting out to do so, you memorise the most interesting and relevant objects in the sky, and for me one of the most interesting happens to be Rho Ophiuci (ρ Oph).

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