Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:
Are those a bunch of men just relaxing on the edge of the carrier deck, there?

neufer wrote:

geckzilla wrote:
Are those a bunch of men just relaxing on the edge of the carrier deck, there?

I assumed that they were doing unspeakable acts.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/07/19/worlds-slowest-moving-drop-caught-on-camera/ wrote:

[b][size=125]The second-longest running science experiment in history has just yielded its strange result: a sticky, black drop of pitch.[/size][/b]

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World’s slowest moving drop caught on camera
FoxNews.com, July 19, 2013

<<Set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin, the experiment is meant to reveal the strange properties of bitumen -- pitch, or asphalt -- which appears solid at room temperature but is in fact flowing very, very slowly.

At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon on July 11, physicist Shane Bergin and colleagues recorded what Nature described as one of the most eagerly anticipated and exhilarating drips in science.

“We were all so excited,” Bergin told Nature. “It’s been such a great talking point, with colleagues eager to investigate the mechanics of the break, and the viscosity of the pitch.”

The Trinity College team estimates the pitch to be about 2 million times more viscous than honey, or 20 billion times the viscosity of water.

The origin of the experiment is lost in history, although a similar experiment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, set up in 1927, is tagged by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest running lab experiment.>>

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[i]Google Doodle honoring pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell.[/i]

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Today’s Doodle is in honor of Maria Mitchell, a 19th century astronomer; it’s her 195th birthday. I’m not much of an astronomy historian, but it’s hard not to know something about her. She was an avid observer, and in October 1847 she discovered a comet. This was a rare feat in those days, and she won a gold medal from the King of Denmark—at the time, countries were proud of their scientific achievements, and prizes for new work were common.

She went on to become a professor at Vassar—the first—and taught astronomy for many years. She’s received many posthumous honors: There’s an observatory in Nantucket named after her, and a crater on the Moon.

When she was coming up in the world, in the early to mid-1800s, women were not in positions of prominence in the scientific community. This means her achievements are commonly tagged with the word “first”, as in “first woman”. But reading the short bio of her on Wikipedia was most eye-opening, because there were many things about her I didn’t know. She found out her salary at Vassar was lower than her male colleagues, and she demanded a raise. At first the University tried to evade the issue, and she continued to fight back. Eventually, she won the day. ...

You know that science communication has reached a whole new level when someone names a pair of women's pants after an astronomer

Today, internet-based retailer Who Made Your Pants? launches a line of women's pants called Cecilia, named after Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the pioneering 20th century astronomer who explained the composition of the stars.

The 'woman who understood Newton'

In this month's edition of Physics World, Paula Findlen from Stanford University profiles Laura Bassi -- an emblematic and influential physicist from the 18th century who can be regarded as the first ever woman to forge a professional scientific career.

Once described as the "woman who understood Newton", Laura Bassi -- born in the city of Bologna in 1711 -- rose to celebrity status in Italy and all across the globe, gaining a reputation as being the best physics teacher of her generation and helping to develop the discipline of experimental physics.

Bassi held numerous professorships and academy memberships throughout her life, starting as a professor of universal philosophy at the University of Bologna in 1732, where she may have been the first woman to have embarked upon a fully fledged scientific career. Shortly before that, Bassi became only the second woman, for whom there is documentary evidence, to have ever received a university degree.

Her professorship at the University of Bologna was created solely for her, beyond the normal number of faculty positions, as was her admission to the Academy of Sciences of Bologna Institute -- an equivalent of the Royal Society -- which was the vehicle that propelled Bassi into the public eye.

Like most celebrity figures, Bassi's career was not without controversy. Pressure from older male colleagues, who considered it indecent for a young woman to be discussing ideas of nature with them, resulted in the archbishop of Bologna making an explicit injunction on her university professorship -- she was only allowed to lecture occasionally when she was specifically asked.

Bassi was extremely passionate about her teaching and, when her request to have this injunction lifted was declined, she chose to raise her scientific value instead through an additional programme of private study. She also shocked some observers by reading books that were prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church, including works by Protestant scientists such as Galileo and Descartes.

After marrying fellow professor Giuseppe Veratti in 1738, Bassi was able to invite guests to her house to discuss physics without violating her teaching restrictions. In 1749 Bassi officially opened her domestic school, bringing renewed and more lasting fame.

In 1764 physician John Morgan -- a friend of Benjamin Franklin -- visited the Bassi–Veratti home laboratory and watched Bassi perform Newton's prism experiments, promising to tell his famous American friend that he had met her.

Alessandro Volta -- who later became the inventor of the battery -- sent Bassi his earliest publications, hoping to gain approval for his work. The culmination of this appreciation came in 1776 -- two years before her death -- when Bassi was appointed Bologna Institute professor of experimental physics. "The Bologna academicians, in the end, had learned to live with the century's most famous female scientist as their colleague for almost 45 years," writes Findlen.

One reason for Bassi's relative obscurity today is that only four of her papers appeared in print during or after her lifetime. Many of Bassi's unpublished papers went missing during the Napoleonic era. However, Findlen concludes that Bassi's outstanding contributions were made through conversation, demonstration, experimentation and explanation.

"She produced the kinds of incremental results that tend to accrue with far more ordinary research that -- although not worthy of a Nobel prize -- is essential to the daily pursuit of science. She reminds us of the importance of the kind of person who can reveal dimensions of science other than a singularly great discovery or insight," writes Findlen.