It’s been more than 40 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth, and, in the process, traveled faster than any human before. Today, we continue to send humans into orbit…where they travel at pretty much the same speed. Oh, sure, unmanned spacecraft have traveled much faster, and so did …
Category: Science Columns
Stupid movie physics
The season of the movie blockbuster is upon us, and that means it’s time once again to ask the question: what planet do the people in movies live on? Judging by the physics displayed, it’s not this one. In our world, for example, you cannot outrun the fireball of an exploding bomb down the …
Ratbots
Picture this: there’s been an earthquake and you’re trapped in the rubble. In the dark you hear a scrabbling sound…and feel the long, naked tail of a rat slither across your cheek… Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? But if recent research bears fruit, it may be a dream come true–because that rat could …
Taikonauts
On April 1, a spacecraft capable of carrying three people into orbit returned safely to Earth. That may not sound like news after 40 years of manned spaceflights, but this was a very special spacecraft: it was Chinese. Shenzhou (Heavenly Vessel) 3 carried instrumented mannequins instead of humans, but its success makes it more …
Spring again
Someone recently sent me pictures of the campus of Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas (my alma mater), showing it practically buried in beautiful spring flowers. Yes, spring is creeping northward, and soon multicolored flowers and rich green grass and leaves will replace our landscape’s current predominant shades of gray, white and brown. Exactly when …
Asteroids, again
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, …
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 …
My latest live walk and vlog
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