A Turning Lane As Lovely As A Tree?
The trees are now festooned with signs, banners and a “yarn bomb”, while thousands have joined the Save the Western Springs Pohutukawa group on Facebook and the trees themselves are tweeting. [The Lorax asked who would speak for the trees, but now it seems they can tweet for themselves.]
Fire In The Sky
Bolides are like lotteries – the chances of you winning the big prize are small, but the chances that someone, somewhere will win are pretty good. So if you missed last night’s fireball, you will wait a long time before seeing another one.
The Sand Reckoner
Just as scientists can explain the flocking of birds, we can also model the “flocking” of cars, exploring how patterns in traffic arise and dissipate.
What the Spacecraft Saw In The Night…
The next batch of Planck data was released yesterday (very early in the morning here in New Zealand), and this time the big news is that Planck has accurately measured how long it took for the first stars to light up after the Big Bang. The headline story is that the dark ages – the time before stars – lasted roughly 550 million years, 100 million years longer than Planck’s previous estimate. (This is a long time, but a fraction of the 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang itself.)