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Dark Energy And The Joy Of Being Wrong
Sometimes nature just throws you a loop. All your carefully laid plans, all your exquisite calculations, all your deeply held beliefs and expectations get blown away in the simple eloquence of real data from the real world. That is how Dark Energy made its appearance into the world of cosmology. Its not just that folks weren’t expecting it. They were, in fact, expecting the very opposite.
Last week I explained how Dark Matter was “discovered” (inferred really), based on observations over decades of the gravitational influence it exerts on matter we can see (the stuff we are made of). Dark Energy was discovered in a similar way, except that it arrived all at once in one big, fat surprise package.
The year was 1998 and two highly competitive groups of astronomers were each rushing toward the same goal: they hoped to hunt down the effects of gravitational braking in the universe. Ever since astronomers had accepted the idea of the Big Bang, they had been out hunting for its subsequent cosmic deceleration.
The idea was simple.
While the Big Bang blows space apart (it literally stretches all points of space-time away from each other), the gravitational pull of matter should, over time, slow down that initial burst of cosmic expansion. The two research groups, (Berkeley vs. Harvard), were racing to find the magnitude of deceleration in the universe. It was a critical project since the rate of cosmic braking is directly related to the total density of mass (and energy) in the universe. It would be a Nobel Prize-worthy result.
Things didn’t go quite as planned. -Adam Frank (Photo credit: WMAP/NASA)
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Jay Nemeth—Red Bull/Getty Images
March 15, 2012. Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria is seen before his jump during the first manned test flight for Red Bull Stratos, based in Roswell, New Mexico.
From the conflict in Afghanistan and a tragic bus accident in Switzerland to Purim celebrations in Israel and the one-year anniversary of the Japanese tsunami, TIME’s photo department presents the best images of the week. See more here.
Too cool -Savy
The ultimate white trash accoutrement, a “KKK Member in Good Standing” badge (National Defense Service Medal is unfortunately next to it).
OWS Invests In Unmanned Surveillance Drone Dubbed The ‘Occucopter’
For years we’ve seen images of the military’s unmanned aerial vehicles aiding soldiers in combat zones, and their evolution from surveillance tools to the heavily weaponized Predator drones. Now, the Guardian reports, Occupy Wall Street livestreamer Tim Pool hopes to use that technology as an additional set of eyes on the police department.
Tim Pool, an Occupy Wall Street protester, has acquired a Parrot AR drone he amusingly calls the “occucopter”. It is a lightweight four-rotor helicopter that you can buy cheaply on Amazon and control with your iPhone. It has an onboard camera so that you can view everything on your phone that it points at. Pool has modified the software to stream live video to the internet so that we can watch the action as it unfolds.
The Occucopter comes in response to police departments, across the country, stepping up efforts to prevent their actions from being recorded. Some have started covering up their names and badge numbers. Others attempt to stand in the way of recording devices, or declare “frozen zones” that are off limits to even the most credentialed reporters. Tim hopes that the Occucopter will allow protesters to monitor the police, and record any cases of brutality that may have otherwise remained undocumented.
In addition to modifying the Parrot’s software for internet livestreaming, Pool is also currently working on modifying the software for multiple controllers. He even hopes to add 3G functionality, so that even protesters and supporters outside of New York could aid in the monitoring process. When asked about his plans by the Guardian, he explained:
We are trying to get a stable live feed so you can have 50 people controlling it in series. If the cops see you controlling it from a computer they can shut you down, but then control could automatically switch to someone else.
Now you, much like myself, might find yourself wondering, “Isn’t he concerned that some officer(s) will just shoot it down?”
No…They can’t just fire a weapon in the air because it could seriously hurt someone. They would have no excuse because the occucopter is strictly not illegal. Their only recourse would be to make it illegal, but it is only a toy
So it would appear that we finally have an answer to a twenty five year old question. Tim Pool is watching the watchmen.
And doing a damn good job of it.
(images courtesy of Time/iPhoneZA/GeekAlerts)
“May this Christmas light your dream” reads the official Christmas Card of Mayor Jorge Santini of San Juan, Puerto Rico, which has gone viral. (Photo: El Nuevo Dia Facebook)It’s the Christmas card that has baffled the Twitterverse and the gift that…
