The Troubadour: My First Bike Trek to Work. Do You Suffer from Eye Floaters? Science News. The Imaginarium.

Former Space Center Director Nearly Cashes in His Chips On Bike Trek to Renaissance!

I bought a new bike yesterday. The salesman tracked me down in the junior bike section.
"Can I help you find something?" the pimpled youngster asked. He looked barely old enough to drive.
"I'm looking for a bike," I replied. I had my hand resting on a bike clearly too small for someone of my height and well fed appearance.
"You'll need something bigger than that."He nodded toward the bike. I couldn't tell if his comment was meant to be sarcastic or humorous. "What do you plan on using it for?"
"To ride." I wanted him to know I could give as well as take. He looked puzzled. I could tell the cogs were spinning but not locking into place. I continued, not wanted to drag the purchase to ridiculous lengths. "I'm going to ride it to work."
"Where do you work?"
"I start at Renaissance Academy in August."
"Where is that, how many miles?"
"Lehi and I don't know." The presalesman looked confused, as if his bike recommendation completely depended on the exact number of miles from my home to Renaissance. "Ten miles maybe, oh and comfort is my number one criteria. I'll be on the bike for nearly two hours a day. I need a bike seat designed for someone who has spent ten years driving a Lincoln Town Car."
"No racing seat then."
"No, I need something able to support a pampered backside."

The boy thought for a moment before deciding on a recommendation. He pulled out a nice looking blue bike with a seat wide enough to land a 747.

"That will do," I said. I did the obligatory test ride in the parking lot. I couldn't figure out the multiple gears, so I looked like a real idiot trying to navigate the parking lot with the bike's gears set for climbing Mt. Everest. My legs were pedaling fast enough to cause a mini cyclone. I gave up, got off the bike, pulled up my drooping pants and told him to ring it up.

"Do you need anything else with that?" he asked. I told him that as a young LDS missionary in England in the late 1970's, I quickly learned the importance of bike fenders to keep the rain and mud from painting a mucky stripe down my back. I got the fender upgrade. I was set.

I am the proud owner of a new bike.

I got up at 5:45 this morning to time how long it would take me to ride my new bike from my home, along the canal, to Renaissance Academy in Lehi. I live on the Murdock Canal. Renaissance Academy is on the Murdock Canal. Me, a bike and the new canal trail made a perfect partnership.

I had the gears figured out 30 minutes into the ride. 45 minutes into the ride I was wore out, my backside begged for a pillow. It took one hour to get to Renaissance, several minutes longer than I anticipated. I got lost in the Highland Glenn Park spaghetti junction of roads, trails and parking lots.

The long trek home was difficult. Everyone but the walkers and joggers passed me along the way. I had this vision in my head of what I must have looked like....

I finally gave up and walked the bike up the last long hill up to my house above the canal. I'm determined to make this work, so I'll try it again in the morning. If it doesn't, then I'll trade in the bike for a different model. What do you think?

Mr. W.

Space and Science News

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Do You Have Eye Floaters?

For those who’ve never experienced this phenomenon, eye floaters are little oddly shaped objects that appear in your vision, often when one looks at bright light such as a blue sky. Their shapes vary greatly, but will often appear as spots, cobwebs, or randomly shaped stringy objects. These are not optical illusions, but rather something your eyes are actually perceiving. There are a few different things that can cause this, but in most cases these eye floaters are caused by pieces of the gel-like vitreous breaking off from the back portion of your eye and then floating about in your eye ball.

What would Earth's Former Super Continent Pangaea look like with Current Geopolitical Borders?

What is the Smallest Possible Size for a Star?

What is the smallest possible size for a star? Astronomers finally have an answer to that nagging question that separates a full-blown nuclear life-giving furnace and a much less vibrant “failed star” otherwise known as a brown dwarf.

According to Todd Henry from Georgia State University, while speaking at the American Astronomical Society’s 222nd conference, a star can be no smaller than 8.7 percent the diameter of our Sun as well as having an average brightness no less than 0.00125 percent that of the Sun. In addition, the surface brightness of this slim star should be at least 1,727 degrees Celsius (3,140 Fahrenheit).

To put those numbers in perspective, the Sun has a diameter of about 1,391,000 kilometers – 8.7% of that comes out to be 121,017 kilometers. For those of you who know your planets, you’ll realize that diameter is actually smaller (about 13%) than the diameter of Jupiter. Yes, there are stars out there smaller than Jupiter.
...
In the same way that Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, does that mean Jupiter has now been promoted to a star? As cool as that would be, sadly the answer is no.

In order for a star to be a star, it needs to massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion at its core. That is a property of density, not so much of diameter. Case in point, there are ‘hot Jupiter’s’ orbiting very close to their parent stars. Some of these planets are half as massive as Jupiter and yet have ten times its diameter – naturally, the planet is far less dense than Jupiter for those same reasons. It’s no different than our star conundrum, Jupiter simply isn’t massive or dense enough to be a star – sad but true.

OK, back to these uber small red dwarfs. A red dwarf, which is the smallest classification star we have, is the most abundant type of star in the Milky Way. It’s estimated that about 75% of our galaxy’s stars are re dwarfs. That makes studying them very important, as well as one of the greatest candidates for hosting life-sustaining planets. In a study conducted earlier this year using data from the Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have estimated about 4.5 billion of the Milky Way’s 75 billion red dwarfs host Earthlike planets.

Update on Comet Ison

A remote controlled helicopter has been flown through a series of hoops around a college gymnasium in Minnesota. It sounds like your everyday student project; however, there is one caveat… the helicopter was controlled using just the power of thought.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-helicopter-power-thought-video.html#j

A University Team Flies a Remote Controlled Helicopter with their thoughts

A remote controlled helicopter has been flown through a series of hoops around a college gymnasium in Minnesota. It sounds like your everyday student project; however, there is one caveat… the helicopter was controlled using just the power of thought.

There were five subjects (three female, two male) who took part in the study and each one was able to successfully control the four-blade helicopter, also known as a quadcopter, quickly and accurately for a sustained amount of time. Read More

TRAINSPOTTERS attempt the impossible yesterday — a glimpse of the world’s fastest passenger service as it hits 310mph.

The prototype L0 has a snub “nose” and uses magnets to float above the rail.
It will cut the 90min journey from Tokyo to Nagoya to 40min for 1,000 passengers.
But fans gathered for this test run in Tsuru must wait to ride it — the L0 does not come into service until 2027.
China’s CRH380A was the world’s fastest train at 302mph. Read more