Mercury Fly-By Today

Paul Floyd reports:

At 6.04am Australian Eastern Summer Time Tuesday morning (15/1/2008), NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will become the first in 32 years to fly past the planet Mercury. It will photograph parts of Mercury at high resolution for the first time.

Check the MESSENGER spacecraft site and NASA's site in the hours after the flyby for never before seen images.

[via 666 ABC Canberra]

Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia

erc

Too Much Chewing Gum A Really Bad Idea

Wired Science reports:

Two German doctors presented case studies today suggesting that chewing too much sugar-free gum could lead to extreme weight loss of up to 20% of a person's normal body weight.

The cause? The extreme laxative effects of sorbitol (additive code 420 on the list of ingredients) at high doses. How extreme? In one case study a 21 year old girl had diarrhea four to twelve times a day and lost 11 kilograms of bodyweight after chewing 15 pieces a day.

Fuzzy knows best; consider other ways to keep your breath minty fresh.

Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia

Look to the Stars

Lifehacker Australia recently published a cool little piece on getting into amateur astronomy. Locally, the Canberra Astronomical Society hosts introductory meetings once a month, as well as regular Deep Sky nights. There's also the Canberra Space Dome & Observatory, which has four telescopes and runs public viewing sessions five nights a week.

Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia

Fuzzy Logic in 2008 aka Fuzzy 1.5 (Not Quite 2.0)

In 2008 there's going to be a slight format shift on Fuzzy Logic. In the past, it was radio show first, web second. That's so old-man-from-yesterday-town.

We want to make Fuzzy Logic a whole lot more interactive this year, so we're posting our opinions on science stories here as we find them, and encouraging you to get in on the discussions too by leaving comments. Our regular shows on Sundays will shift to a panel show with discussion of the stories we've found during the week, rather than a straight read of news.

What do you think?

Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia

Capital White-Out

I don't think I've ever experienced a storm quite like it. Even the biggest & baddest storms in Brisbane don't quite compare.

I'd watched it roll in from my balcony in Kingston for about an hour, then thought it was all show when only a few drops spattered down. I even jotted down a note to prompt some research for this weekend's show: "Is there a special name for a storm that's all thunder & lightning but no rain?". I pondered too soon; the wind picked up, there were bolts of lightning every few seconds and it bucketed down (& check out that radar image from the BOM - black!).

Then the eerie calm came...

...but it was not too long before the first twack, thwackthwack, thwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwackthwack
thwackthwackthwackthwackthwack (etc etc) of hail pelted down and blanketed the city.

The Canberra Times online coverage is pretty average, but the ABC Canberra site has a good collection of photos of the aftermath. There were so many pictures flying around on email today; most government email servers would have had their work cut out for them. Most have them had been posted to flickr by lunch time. The most spectacular were these of the storm from Yass.

The ice was still in piles around Civic this afternoon. Apart from the ice in this defoliated courtyard in this picture, I saw the remains of the snowman at The Avenue and hail piled up at least a metre in a stairwell leading to an underground carpark.

Hopefully we'll get to interview Kenn Batt from the BOM on this weekend's Fuzzy Logic.

UPDATE: Chris' office didn't fare well.

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Comet McNaught from Kingston

Comet McNaught from Kingston

Look at the speck! Look at the tail!

I thought I was going to be cursed with night after night of dreaded cloud cover thwarting my plan to get a look at Comet McNaught. A chance visit to my balcony around 9.45pm gave me an unexpected view for about ten minutes. This picture doesn't do it justice by a long shot.

Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia