Step one in telescope mirror care: Don't shoot it with a gun.

At the time of the incident, I believe the Harlan Smith Telescope was only two years old and one of the largest telescopes in the world.  Read about it here.

The Exponential Growth Assumption

The NY Times just posted an article stating that a steady-state (no growth) economy is unconscionable and therefore should not be considered when discussing the effects on the environment and climate change.  But this ignores the fact that economic growth has always required additional energy (and other resource) use.  

Some (including me) argue that exponential growth is simply untenable.  If not now, then very soon.  Tom Murphy, a Physics Professor at UCSD has looked at the available energy to us on Earth (or in the Solar System) to determine how much growth we could sustain.  Check it out.

New Visualization of Known Exoplanet Systems

Check it out:

The Search for Another Earth

Here is a fantastic 19-minute video by NASA telling the history of exoplanet discoveries, and inspiring us for the future missions.  It's really well done.

Watch it.  And consider being part of it.

Neptune in Retrograde

The new Kepler mission, K2, happened to point at Neptune for two months earlier this year.  Take a look.  You can see Neptune (first in retrograde),  its moon Triton, and actually the much smaller moon Nereid as well.  I'm not sure, but the fast moving objects that zip across the field of view are likely asteroids in the asteroid belt.

Change the Blackbody Temperature of Your Screen (sort of)

I read this article about how the blue lights of LEDs in our computers and phones is keeping us from sleeping and destroying our retinas.  But it suggested a solution, a free app you can download to change the "temperature" of your device after sunset (or whenever) to have less blue light in the evening.  It's called f.lux and I've been using it for the last two days.  As I'm sitting here on my laptop (during your midterm) the screen slowly got less blue and more yellow because the sun had set.  I think it's great.  You can choose the effective blackbody temperature of your screen before and after sunset.  I'm using 4000 K after sunset and 5900 K during the day.

Though it changes the hue (the wavelength dependence), I'm pretty sure it's not changing the flux per unit area by T^4.  ;-)

JWST - The Transformer Telescope

Check out this video animation of all of the "deployments" that will (hopefully) occur as the James Webb Space Telescope races to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2). It'll ultimately be a million miles from Earth with no possibility of an astronaut going to fix it.  What could go wrong?