* Posts by MartinC

8 publicly visible posts • joined 1 Oct 2012

NASA plans seven-year trip to Jupiter – can we come with you, please?

MartinC

Is there anything in Earth's Trojan points? Or, closer to home, anything in the moon's Trojan points? Actually, it might not be too hard to find out given a powerful telescope.

Land Rover Defender dies: Production finally halted by EU rules

MartinC

I thought the reason they were stopping production was that it could not be made to meet euro ncap safety ratings, for both occupant and pedestrian impacts. Jlr have plenty of engines to choose from, that have the right sort of power output and emissions.

NZ unfurls proposed new flag

MartinC

Point to note: None of the five options presented for the poll was the existing flag, i.e. the question "do you wish to keep the present flag" was not asked; also none of the five options presented contained a union jack as any component of the proposed new flags.

This is the answer to a a nonsense poll.

Hubble 'scope snaps ENORMO SPACE ERECTION: Pillars of Creation 20 years on

MartinC

Fascinating. It appears to me that a lot of the apparent differences are due to the relative proper motion of our solar system w.r.t. the eagle nebula. This proper motion allows us to see the nebula in 3-D, as our viewpoint has moved enough in 20 years to give us human-viewable parallax.

If you resize the photographs on your monitor (windows photo viewer will do) so that both pictures represent the same solid angle and are the same size, and then position them side-by-side on your monitor, and then go cross-eyed so your left eye is pointing at the RH picture and your right eye at the LH picture, then the 3-d nature of the nebula jumps out at you.

That part at the top, that I call the 'head', the part that is the fox's ear is clearly sticking out toward us, and the part that sticks out at the base of the neck, just above the shoulder, is pointing away from us, its the other arm! There are other 3-D details too, take a look!

We'll probe Pluto's moon cracks for mystery ocean – NASA

MartinC

Probing the crack of the moon.

Hmmmm.

Well I suppose that the aliens did that to some humans during the abductions, if stories are to be believed...

China plans astro-farms on Mars

MartinC

Now we know how Amy Wong's parents got started...

Speaker Bercow's loquacious wife finally silenced - On Twitter

MartinC

A bit daft to delete the account

I mean, she should have let it be hacked a few more times ... then she can claim to the court that <I>someone else</I> put up those offensive tweets about Lord McAlpine with some sort of justification.

Japanese boffins unfurl banner above newly-discovered Element 113

MartinC

So wtf did they call it then?

Sushimium?

Teriyakium?

Or maybe Kamakazium, on account of how it immediately fissioned itself out of existance.