MPJ

Do you know what is one significant difference between Uranus and all the other planets in Solar system? Unlike the other seven planets who, more or less, rotate in "normal" up-down position (or down-up in case of Venus), Uranus is quite abnormal. It's north-south pole rotational axis lies almost in ecliptic because it is tilted by 97.8 degrees and rotates in almost vertical direction toward the orbiting plane. In simple words, Uranus is one giant rolling ball where if you are located on its pole, you would be experiencing only one day and one night during 84 years long orbit while if you are settled near the equator, thanks to ultra-fast rotation time (for a giant planet) of 17 hours you would be experiencing fast switching between day and night and during both solstices the Sun would always be on the horizon. Thanks to this strange position of Uranus axis (probably due to some cosmic collision happened in early Solar system), the weather and climate on Uranus are always

Couple of months ago, in the middle of December last year, just before "Mayan doomsday" on 21st, my favorite text editor asked me to approve its regular update. I clicked the link to see what's in new package and it immediately redirected me to the page describing new features and fixes. My fellow, software developer of great Notepad++, Don Ho*, conveniently named the update "New release (v6.2.3) - End of the World Edition". It brought series of chuckles to my face that simultaneously morphed into big smile when I read description below the title. Referring to Mayans prophecy, he wrote exactly this "Even though I don't believe this bullshit, I'm not against to reset our shitty world". Well, I don't know what exactly he meant with the word "reset", but certainly there are days when I can completely agree with him and describe our world exactly the same way. Viktor and his 6th Earth Day Anyway, today is another edition of

In the last post of the Beth's Q&A we tried to understand four basic forces and their corresponding particle carriers or bosons. With almost certain discovery of the Higgs boson physicist completed the search for this last mystery of the standard model and we now know how larger particles get their mass and how interact with each other. Now is the time to bring this story up one level and write about chemical elements representing basic 'lego' blocks of almost everything in the universe we currently comprehend. Hmm, everything but mysterious dark matter that we still don't have a clue what it's made of. Every now and again in media (mostly internet) we can read about how we all are made out of stars and other violent events in the universe dating back in time even so far in the past to the Big Bang itself. Following some of this articles Beth posted another idea for the thread and I am paraphrasing her thoughts: "I keep reading we are made from the

I didn't really plan to write about Biodiversity in my last post couple of days ago but it conveniently happened just one week before official Earth Day, established by United Nations back in 70s. I was planning to write a post about April 22 from the moment I start blogging but now I feel that I said almost everything about our planet related to species populating it in previous post. However here is my chance to expand the topic with more thoughts and reference more quotes and articles I think it is important and appropriate. Out there in a vast ocean of space many more planets surely exist, even though still waiting for us to develop more advanced technology to detect them, and among them probably vast number are uninhabited and lonely. All of them have their own story to tell, but what differs all of them from those filled with life is truly comparable to abandoned house vs kindergarten full of children. It really is, the Earth wouldn't be much exciting without all the spe

I am surely not one of those doomsday preppers you could encounter on some documentary broadcast networks and I am definitely not digging a large basement underneath my house or buying cans of food and devices to purify water waiting for some apocalypse to arrive. It's not that I didn't give a thought or two on the topic. I even wrote a little about doomsday and apocalypse aftermath back in 2012 when it was all in media with that Mayan date event. However, one thing is for sure and probably the most cruel fact you might conclude from this research. We definitely don't have any influence in order to stop many of potential doomsday scenarios - like hostile alien attack or deadly collision with large asteroid or long nuclear winter. But with some we can deal with. Post-apocalyptic environment caused by bio-hazards are those we might prevent. But only if we start on time. Yesterday would be nice, but tomorrow is still ok. But, before we jump into the term itself and

When I was young, back then in my primary school, when I was more or less 10 years old, I remember my favorite part during working days was special TV program for school kids broadcasted every day in morning hours with mixture of great educational documentaries and movies. After school we rushed home to watch those popular documentaries giving us maybe even better knowledge enriched with colorful multimedia experience than we could learn in school. I will always remember those days back in 70s and later in early 80s when black and white TV era ended and color TV entered the homes in great style, probably comparable to what internet added to home computers decade or so ago. The most memorable and probably the most popular TV show about nature, biology, zoology and science in general was "The World of Survival", British famous documentary of the time narrated by various famous people and promoted by naturalists like David Bellamy. I still remember and quote from time to time

In the past, as a software developer, I was participating in a couple of projects regarding GPS tracking. One was a big project for two companies in Denmark who wanted to have installed "vehicle tracking" system in their cars and trucks along with commercial features, loading, communicating, invoicing etc. One was courier with small handheld GPS capable PDA devices and the other transportation company with large trucks equipped with big PC based cockpit computers. These two projects were very exciting for me, lots of good times with, at the time, new technologies, real time testing, listening people in the field for their wishes, complains and new requests. Anyway, GPS tracking software is now regular part of smartphones and kind of new entertainment for their users. This weekend we wanted to have small breakfast-picnic at the local waterflow resort and I turned it on when Viktor and I stepped out of the house. We were walking about two kilometers on foot and then waited f