Musings and Mutterings

Galileo's notebooks may reveal secrets of new planet

A recent study of Galileo's notebooks indicates that he discovered the planet we now know to be Neptune in 1613, more than 234 years before its official discovery. The notebooks don"t state directly that he knew it was a planet, but was included records of multiple observations of a "star" near Jupiter, which he was studying at the time. It is possible that he recognized it as a planet, but he was in the habit of announcing his discoveries as anagrams sent to his colleagues. A copy of the possible and as-yet-undecoded anagram may still be in his notes.

A new study finds, yet again, that driving while talking on a cellphone, even a hands-free, is far more unsafe that talking with a passenger. There may be three intuitive reasons for this: 1) with a passenger you have a second person who can alert you to hazards you miss, 2) a passenger can see and evaluate your driving ability so it is in the driver's best interest to be seen to be driving safely, and 3)  when you are talking on a cell phone you are mentally with the listener, not in the car.

Carleton University has decided to reverse their decision to pull out of the Shinerama fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis. They had originally voted to drop Shinerama because they believed it to be an illness that strikes primarily male Caucasians. The disease, in fact strike men and women in equal proportion and afflicts people of Indian and Middle Eastern descent as well as Caucasians. Bob MacDonald, host of CBC's Quirks and Quarks, referred to the decision as emerging from "an information rich, knowledge poor" culture that plagues our modern world.

A Quebec car dealer is offering a deal of one free Dodge Calibre with every purchase of a luxury Chrysler 300C. The dealer says that the promotion will generate neither profit not loss for them, but will clear space for next year's models so they hope to come out ahead in the end.

Recent research has discovered that people diagnosed as being autistic react 1/20th of a second slower to sounds than those not diagnosed as autistic based on MEG scans. The researchers believe that this may be linked to post-mortem studies that have noticed fewer connections among neurons in the brains of people who had been diagnosed a autistic. They hope that this research will lead to a classification system for degree of autism, pending the results of studies using young children.

NASA has officially stopped listening for messages from the Phoenix Lander.

Those of you wanting something to look at in the sky might be interested to know that the "ISS Toolbag", dropped recently by an astronaut doing repairs outside the ISS, can be seen using a pair of 10x50 binoculars. The bag is expected to burn up on re-entry in June.

A University of California researcher has demonstrated a logic gate that based on the interference of spin waves. Spin wave-based gates can, theoretically, be made even smaller than traditional logic gates, and don't involve the movement of electrons so require far less power and generate far less waste heat. A number of significant challenges remain before this approach can be used to build spin-based chips.

US researchers have developed a "cyborg leaf" that is able to convert light to electricity, albeit far less efficiently than contemporary photovoltaics. The photosynthetic system consists of a protein complex harvested from spinach and deposited on a gold leaf substrate. Significant work is required to make the system commercially viable, but the materials and construction process is relatively cheap so it promising.

For those of you interested in astronomy (I know at least one is), the comet McNaught is visible even in daylight (if, of course, you block out the direct glare of the sun). You in the US may have a chance to see the brightest comet in over 40 years.

http://www.space.com/spacewatch/070114_comet_mcnaught.html
http://www.livescience.com/blogs/author/robbritt
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070108/full/070108-12.html