Halloween in the Zoo!

ZooBorns brings you the newest and cutest exotic animal babies from zoos and aquariums around the world. For Halloween, they have put up a spread of pumpkin-based sheninigans from zoos around the world.

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Space Leopard Protects The Cosmos

A Space Leopard has been seen flying throughout the galaxy fighting for justice. Her primary targets are the villains of the Universal Crime League.

OK, not really. But check out this awesome picture (click to embiggen) and others in this gallery of the best wild animal photos of 2008.


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Japanese launch campaign to marry comic book characters

Speaking of living in a William Gibson novel, over 1,000 people have signed an on-line petition to present to the Japanese government to establish a law permitting marriage to comic characters.

Yep.

Okay, then.


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Skywalker-Darklighter '08

See more here


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Renegade Astronomy

Phil Plait points out a couple of awesome images which were taken by amateur astronomers. The one to the left (click to embiggen) is a picture of Jupiter taken with an iPhone! Ladies and gentlemen, we are now living in a William Gibson novel. Let's just hope we stick with Pattern Recognition and don't lapse into Count Zero.

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The Dread Pirate Chihuahua

Pirate Dog

You're Welcome

Click the picture to read about this madness.

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Geekzor with the Lid Off

Lucas |MTV Music

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Hey, Writers! Apex is looking for novels!

Are you a writer? Check out the information below:

Apex Books is open to novel submissions for our book line from November 1st until November 30th.

1. We are looking for dark science fiction novels.
   
2. Submissions must be between 50,000 and 100,000 words.
   
3. Use standard manuscript format
   
4. Please send a query letter in the body of your email, and attach the first three chapters and a 1-page synopsis of the book as .doc or .rtf files. All three chapters should be a single attachment, with the synopsis as a separate attachment. Submissions containing other file types will not be read.
   
5. Email submissions ONLY. Please send to apex.novels@gmail.com
   
6. No multiple submissions (i.e., only send us one query package at a time—don't send the next until you hear back from us on the first).
   
7. Simultaneous submissions are okay.
   
8. Remember to include your contact information--including real name, pseudonym if applicable, email address, and phone number—in both your query letter and the manuscript.
   

Expected response times: We will endeavor to answer all queries within one month. If your full manuscript is requested, it may take up to three months for a decision. Some query letter tips:Keep it brief and to the point. Just introduce yourself, tell us the genre and word count, and sum up the most important aspects of the story in a sentence or two. Previous publishing credits are great, but not having any won't hurt your chances. Compensation terms: We will be paying an advance as well as royalties against the advance. Read more!

Targeted Memory Erasing

Scientists led by neurobiologist Joe Tsien of the Medical College of Georgia reported in the journal Neuron that they have developed a way to erase specific memories in mice while leaving others intact and not damaging the brain.

Read more about Mickey Mnemonic!


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Rocket Car

Rocket car!

ROCKET CAR!!!!!!!

Come on, people! It's powered by a rocket and a jet engine!

Any sentence which ends with "and a jet engine" is on its way to greatness. Read more!

Gamma Ray Telescope Finds Invisible Pulsar

I know I keep just linking to National Geographic Online but they keep posting all these awesome stories. For example, a pulsar that had previously been invisible to orbiting and ground-based observatories has been discovered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.



Photo Credit: Mancer ;) -- Click to embiggen. Read more!

Bio-Computer Created Inside Living Cell

A bio-computer consisting of bits of engineered RNA assembled inside a yeast cell has been developed at Cal Tech. Here's the full story.


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Tiny, Tiny Photos

National Geographic Online has a spread of the winners of the 2008 Small World Photomicrography Competition. Pictured here, carbon nanotubes photographed by Paul Marshall of Canada's Institute for Microstructural Sciences.


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Science Track at Hypericon

I am the vice-chair for a sci-fi/gaming convention in Nashville, TN called Hypericon. We are looking for people to talk about science. Any kind of science. The lovely and talented Rob Knop (Geekzor's own Prospero) gives a couple of talks each year and they are awesome. Come join him in the awesome.

If you would like to come to our con and talk about critical-thinking-type stuff, email me at Gaming AT Hypericon DOT Info and we'll work something out. The con isn't until next June so we've got plenty of time to get you set up.

The picture in this post is the promotional art for Hypericon 2008, painted by my awesome wife!

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Unpublished Zelazny Book on the Way

Hard Case Crime is one of my favorite publishers and they've just announced that they're releasing an unpublished book by Roger Zelazny!

Holy crap!

Zelazny is one of my favorite authors. I play in a MUSH based on his Amber novels and I've read most of his books. I'm a member of Hard Case's book club so I get each new title just before it hits stores. I can't wait for this one!

Also, check out the sensational (in many ways) Chuck Pyle cover. Read more!

From Cognitive Daily: The Spinning Girl Illusion

Cognitive Daily, an awesome blog about brain science, has a post about the spinning-girl illusion and what it means when we can't make it reverse direction. For the record, I'm able to make it change direction (with effort) and can easily see the magic eye paintings.

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Banjo Brain Surgery

Oh, wait. Not that Banjo.

Mind Hacks reports on the surgery Eddie Adcock had to treat an essential tremor. And he played the banjo during the procedure! That's badass!

But it would be pretty cool if the other Banjo. was also a neurosurgeon. He'd be like a fuzzy Buckaroo Banzai.


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Take On Me: Literal Video Version

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in weeks:



Thanks to Francesco Marciuliano for hipping me to this. Daddy-o. Read more!

Shark Jesus

Hey, everybody! National Geographic Online has an article about a shark who fertilized her own egg! ZOMG! Real, live parthenogenesis! This is the second time a shark "virgin birth" has been confirmed. So, when humanity has been wiped out due to the current economic crisis, all that will be left is cockroaches, virgin-birth-capable sharks, and AOL CDs.

There is no need to Read more!

I <3the Inter-tubes...

-Mancer thinks you should just click the image and love Wikipedia. But be warned, it may risk your sanity to cross over to the "discussion" page. Read more!

Have we learned nothing for SciFi?

Mark your calenders folks, because this Sunday the whole ball game changes. Maybe.

It seems the good folks over at the University of Reading are going to try the Turing Test this weekend. (Press Release)

They are using some of the best computers in world, along some of the most sophisticated "conversational programs" so far created. It should be fun to say the least.

And they'll be playing for cash and fabulous prizes. A 18-carat gold medal and $100,000 to anyone who 'wins"

Here's the thing that I find interesting, to 'pass' the test the programs only need to fool 30% of the Testers. Meaning 3 in 10 people would be unable to tell if the 'person' they are talking to is 'real' or not. Not great odds. It means one of the Geekzor contribiturs could in fact be UltraHal.

And now, since I have nothing else on the subject, a random quote:

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. ~Sydney J. Harris

Link the one of the articles on the event.

Mancer is reminded of the 14th commandment "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." Read more!

International Year of Astronomy

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. The International Astronomical Union and UNESCO said so! I think this is a marvelous idea and so do a bunch of podcasters.

365 Days of Astronomy is a project that will publish one podcast per day, 5 to 10 minutes in duration, for all 365 days of 2009. This is awesome! I'm going to volunteer. If you're a podcaster, if you've ever wanted to be a podcaster, or if you just want to talk about the stars for a few minutes, sign up and send something in. Read more!

Monkey Waiters

Amanda from Skepchick mentioned that a restaurant in Tokyo is using monkeys for waiters. Of course it's in Japan:



The Daily Mail has a full article with lots of pictures.


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Links: Explosions, Nobel, Humor, and Noses

Stunning footage of the ESA's Jules Verne unmanned cargo ship exploding on re-entry. The fireworks start at the 30-second mark.




National Geographic Online has a profile of this year's Nobel Physics Laureates.

Also,Artificial Nose Could Sniff Out Bombs, Cancer. Nuff Said.

Mind Hacks collects some good articles on the psychology of humor. Read more!

Earliest Animal Footprints?

Loren Babcock from Ohio State University believes he has found the earliest animal footprints ever. Possibly dating from the Ediacaran period. If this is true, it will push back the advent of walking about 30 million years. Read more!

Sex in Space and other links

China's first spacewalk. You want more pictures? National Geographic's got 'em!

Ever thought about sex in space? Oh, yes you have!

How about Occultation? I bet you've wondered about that. Phil Plait talks about that and more!

Charlie's Playhouse: Games and Toys Inspired By Darwin



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Randall Munroe and the Size of the Observable Universe

Randall Munroe of the fabulous webcomic xkcd has a great logarithmic height poster showing the size of everything from folks all the way up through the edge of the Solar System, on to the radius of the observable Universe. As a logarithmic plot, each gap of the same size vertically on the plot represents a doubling of the distance from the surface of the Earth; this is why he can show things of such vastly different scales as people and the whole Universe in the same plot.

But, wait, I thought you cosmologists kept saying that the Universe was infinite! How can this picture show the whole Universe then?

It doesn't... it shows the observable Universe. Because the Universe is only 14 billion years old, and the speed of light is finite, we can only see things that are as far away as light has had time to reach us from. There is more Universe beyond that, but the light hasn't reached us from it yet; the part of the Universe beyond our horizon is not the observable Universe.

But wait... if the Universe is only 14 billion years old, then, we should only be able to see things that are 14 billion light-years away... yet the xkcd pictures says the top of the Universe is 46 billion years away. What's up with that?


Remember that the Universe has been expanding in the time since the light from distant galaxies (or the distant plasma of the early Universe) was emitted and started its journey on the way to us. During the time the light was making its way towards us, the Universe continued to expand... so the things light from which we are just now seeing for the first time have moved a lot farther away since that light was emitted. They're much farther now than they were then.

OK... but I thought nothing could move faster than the speed of light?

That's right.

Why then isn't the observable Universe at most 28 billion light-years? If something emitted light and it took 14 billion years to reach us, and it was moving the other way as fast as it could, it would only be 28 billion light-years away right now. What's with the 46?

This is the most subtle point. This is the reason why I cringe whenever I hear a popular cosmology talk refer to galaxies as flying away from us. For nearby galaxies (i.e. within a billion light years or so), it's fine to treat them that way... but that treatment doesn't work over universe scales. In fact, it's far better to think of it that galaxies are not flying away from us, but that space itself is expanding. Light from a very distant galaxy was emitted when the galaxy was quite a bit closer than 14 billion light-years away. Then, as the light made its way towards us, the Universe expanded. The space between us and that distant galaxy got bigger. As a result, two things happened. First, the distant galaxy got further away. Second, the photon, always moving at the speed of light, had more and more space to cross making its overall journey. As such, even though the galaxy was initially at a distance of quite a bit less than 14 billion light-years, it still took nearly 14 billion light-years for the light to reach us.

The advantage of thinking about the expansion of the Universe as space itself expanding, rather than as a bunch of galaxies flying apart from each other, is that it's closer to the mathematics of General Relativity when applied to the Universe as a whole. It also is conceptually cleaner. Things really can't go faster than the speed of light... but velocity is a local concept, and only had meaning when measured pretty close to the thing which you're measuring the velocity relative to. Very distant galaxies (more than a billion or so light years away) are far enough away that it's not meaningful to talk about their velocity. (You can talk about the rate at which the distance is increasing, but even though that has the same dimensionality, it isn't the same thing as a velocity.) The rate at which the distance between us and a far-away galaxy is increasing can be greater than the speed of light... but that does not violate Relativity, because of the meaningless of the concept of velocity when compared over such great distances.

If you calculate the proper distance right now to the edge of the observable Universe-- that is, to the bit of matter whose light took 14 billion years to reach us-- you get 46 billion years. Randall Munroe is a smart guy.

That's most of what I wanted to say about it, but for the advanced readers, one more question:

Okay, wise guy, how can you talk about "distance" and Relativity at the same time? Relativity tells us that lengths contract along the direction of motion... in whose frame of reference are you measuring this distance? Huh?

Yes, that's a good point. However, two things about it. First, the frame of reference of any given observer is only good over a relatively small range in space and time. This is for exactly the same reasons that there is no such thing as "velocity" for a very distant galaxy relative to us. (Anywhere where the frame of reference for an observer is valid-- meaning the numbers you get using that frame of reference aren't beyond your acceptable tolerance from the real numbers-- it would be OK to talk about velocity.)

So, since I've just said that there's no single frame of reference, why is it that I can talk about "the" distance at all, especially considering that I've already thrown out velocity? It turns out that for the Universe, there is a natural way to measure distance. Consider the following thought experiment. Lay out in the Universe a huge number of rulers, set up just right so that right now they are all end-to-end between here and the galaxy to which you want to measure distance, and the "time since the Big Bang" clock attached to each ruler has the identical reading. That is, shortly after the Big Bang you set out a bunch of rulers (all probably bunched together and running into each other), and you wait for the Universe to expand (moving the rulers apart from each other) so that they're all end-to-end when they're all the same age. Count up the readings on all of the rulers, and you get that thing that I call "proper distance". Indeed, the calculation you do in General Relativity is pretty much exactly described by this thought experiment.
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AIDS and Autism links

Two interesting Science links:

AIDS has been around at least 30 years longer than we thought.

A 100-word definition of Autism by Borat's first cousin.



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Teaching Kids to Roleplay

Wired's GeekDad section has a good article about Kids and Roleplaying. The Geekzor staff is comprised entirely of gamers and some of us have kids. This is exactly the kind of thing we have observed. Save vs. Puberty!


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