On March 8 an asteroid between 40 and 80 meters in diameter passed with 480,200 kilometres of Earth. No one saw it until four days later. In 1908, something about the same size blasted into the atmosphere above the Tungaska forest in Siberia in 1908 and exploded with force of 15 million tons of TNT, …
Category: Blog
Tinnitus
There are millions of people for whom absolute silence does not exist. When the world grows silent, they still hear a ringing, hissing, roaring, whistling, chirping or clicking. They suffer from tinnitus. I’m one of them. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me, but if I listen, I can always hear a high-pitched …
Drilling on Mars
You hear a lot about space technology being adapted for use on Earth–many of the high-tech marvels in fields as diverse as meteorology and medicine wouldn’t exist if not for the space program–but the Canadian Space Agency is doing the opposite: adapting Earth technology for use in space. The CSA has taken the first steps …
The geological highway map of Saskatchewan
Over the years, various tours around the province, most recently last weekend with the University of Regina Chamber Singers to Swift Current and Yorkton, have given me an appreciation for the varied nature of the Saskatchewan landscape. It might be flat and treeless around Regina, but in the parklands rolling terrain is the norm; out …
21st century dentistry
I had to have my last remaining wisdom tooth pulled on Friday. It was not, I hardly need add, something I enjoyed. But the number of teeth that have to be pulled in the future (from everyone, I mean, not just me) may be lower than the number being pulled today, thanks to new advances …
Nanotech battle suits
In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers (the movie of the same name has almost nothing in common with the book–ignore it!), Robert Heinlein invented the idea of powered battle armor, which gave an infantryman more fighting power than a modern tank, protected him from battlefield hazards, allowed central command to locate him and monitor …
Money
We handle money every day–though perhaps not as much of it as we would like–but we’re more interested in what the coins and bills will buy than how they are made (except, of course, for the new two-dollar coin, which we like to throw, hammer and jump up and down on, on the off chance …
Money, money, money
We handle money every day–though perhaps not as much of it as we would like–but we’re more interested in what the coins and bills will buy than how they are made (except, of course, for the new two-dollar coin, which we like to throw, hammer and jump up and down on, on the off chance …
The Dunlop Art Gallery
Every art gallery has its own personality, its own “feel,” which gallery goers construct inside their own heads through their reaction to the gallery’s physical spaces, the exhibits and how they are arranged, the text that accompanies those exhibits, and the gallery’s various programs. To me, the gallery with the most interesting personality in Regina …
Diamonds (2002)
Few things say “Be My Valentine” more effectively than diamonds–reason enough to devote this week’s science column to these sparkling rocks. Diamonds aren’t anything fancy, chemically: they’re just carbon, like coal. But their molecules close-packed in rigid geometric fashion, and that gives them special characteristics. To begin with, diamond is the hardest substance known: the …
Extremophiles
We humans like to think we’re pretty tough, able, thanks to our technology, to live in the most severe habitats on Earth. But the fact is, there are other forms of life on Earth that have us beat hands down. They not only live all the places we live, they live in searingly hot water …
Insomnia
There’s a song in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Iolanthe that begins, “When you’re lying awake with a dismal headache and repose is taboo’d by anxiety….” and goes on to describe a horrendous night that begins with sleeplessness and ends with a horrible dream. W. S. Gilbert, it seems, was no stranger to insomnia. Nor are roughly …
My latest live walk and vlog
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