We’ve just discovered Planet GJ 1214b, a watery, Earth-like planet in the constellation Ophiucius. I plan to leave for there as soon as Branson lowers his space flight prices. Sarah Palin can stay on Earth. Or maybe we should just ship her there. Or into the sun.

A giant waterworld that is wet to its core has been spotted in orbit around a dim but not too distant star, improving the odds that habitable planets may exist in our cosmic neighbourhood.

The planet is nearly three times as large as Earth and made almost entirely of water, forming a global ocean more than 15,000km deep.

Astronomers detected the alien world as it passed in front of its sun, a red dwarf star 40 light years away in a constellation called Ophiuchus, after the Greek for “snake holder”.

The discovery, made with a network of amateur telescopes, is being hailed as a major step forward in the search for planets beyond our solar system that are hospitable to life as we know it.

(Guardian: Waterworld planet is more Earth-like than any discovered before)

A. C. Grayling at the Barnes and Noble Review contributes an essay about Paul Murdin’s new book Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos. Great capture of the spirit of pre-Enlightenment science and astronomy.

Jeremiah Horrocks and his friend William Crabtree were ecstatic when they observed the transit of Venus on 24 November 1639. Horrocks had predicted the date of the transit by carefully applying Kepler’s Rudolphine Tables of planetary motion, published twelve years before. The two amateur astronomers watched the black dot of Venus inch its way across the burning image of the sun projected onto a card in Crabtree’s attic. Horrocks described his friend as standing ‘rapt in contemplation’ for a long time, unable to move, ‘scarcely trusting his senses, through excess of joy.’ The emotion he and Crabtree felt is one well known to science: the exhilaration of securing empirical proof of theory.

The anecdote is recounted in the first chapter of Paul Murdin’s richly illustrated and even more richly fascinating history of astronomy, Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos. Entitled ‘Discoveries before the telescope,’ the chapter describes the origins of astronomical observation in early mankind’s admiration for the stars and the heavenly ‘wanderers’ (the Greek name gives us our word ‘planets’) which then numbered seven—sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The earliest evidence for systematic astronomy is the 25,000 year old Ishango bone found at the source of the Nile, incised with markings corresponding to the phases of the moon. By the time of Babylon 22,000 years later, star charts were copiously detailed, recording the efforts of many centuries of sky-gazing and careful annotation. The Mesopotamian charts were detailed because they formed the basis of astrological divination, but when Thales and, half a millennium after him, Ptolemy used the information thus acquired, it was for purposes of nascently genuine science, not prophecy.

(The Thinking Read: Secrets of the Universe)

(Secrets of the Universe: How We Discovered the Cosmos)

Great essay from Curt Beckmann at the Appropedia Blog. (Appropedia is a wiki based on appropriate technology and sustainability. Great, important resource.)

It’s true.  For all our faults, we humans have done something amazing at Wikipedia.  Sure, the folks on staff there deserve a bit of credit, but it’s the millions contributors like you and me that built that phenomenal resource.  And fast.  And it ain’t exactly done yet.  I just took a look at the English Wikipedia statistics page again.  Eleven million registered users.  Not bad.  Three million articles.  A whopping 350M page edits.  If the average edit takes a minute (gee, that seems short to me) then that’s at least 6M hours of work!  All done free for the rest of us to make use of.  And of course that’s just in English; I figure we oughta multiply by ten for all the other languages (and yeah, that seems low also). Equally amazing to me is that even the organizing structures and policies were all built organically by volunteers.  The approach has been “let’s try to find policies that will work.”  And, one way or another, 11M registered users (plus a bunch of anonymous users and some bots) managed to figure out how to work together, for free, to build something functional and useful.

So, yes, I marvel at the remarkable edifice that is Wikipedia, and I think it says something about what humans are capable of.  And yet, I’ve only made a few small edits there.  Instead, Wikipedia’s success motivated me to create my own wiki around how we humans can work together in practical ways to make lives better.  ( “WinWinWiki” got as big as 14 pages before I joined Chris and Lonny here at Appropedia, which had more pages,  maybe even 100.)   Appropedia’s hard problem is that much of the information we value often resides nonverbally in people’s heads and not on some web page.  Find the words to describe how to select the best local dirt for your earthen blocks takes some cleverness.  Consider something as “simple” as rainwater harvesting.  Wikipedia has a nice overview page on the topic, but they don’t provide enough information to build your own system.  Appropedia has a portal focused on rainwater harvesting, with lots of links to practical articles on actually doing some rainwater harvesting.  No doubt there are still unanswered questions, or regional variations that could be added.  Some of that info is hiding on the web somewhere, but some might be in your head.  Or in someone’s head who (gasp!) doesn’t spend much time on the internet, or perhaps doesn’‘t have regular access (at least for a couple of years).

(Appropedia: Wikipedia Makes Me Proud to Be Human)

Impressive illuminated manuscript overload from BibliOdyssey. Check out manuscript versions of the destruction of Jerusalem, the geocentric model of the universe and all kind of other goodies. Most excellent.

(BibliOdyssey: Liber Chronicarum)

 
Meet Sean Hannity‘s new BFF, retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West.  He’s running for Congress in Florida next year, but, thanks to this speech, there’s already some growing Fox-centric hype buzz about West running for President in 2012.  I find it amazing—and galling—that, along with Sarah Palin, West is demanding “We Take Back America!”  Back from what, exactly?  The still-developing 300+ days of Obama, or the previous 8 bloody, costly years of Bush rule?!

 
This looks like it was directed by the great South Korean film director, Park Chan-Wook (Thirst, Old Boy, Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance)!

 
thanks Ned Raggett (via Places We Used To Go)
Hold up ! At the root of it all a rather harrowing story.

 
Ah, the holidays: friends, families…booze.  During these celebratory times, Dangerous Minds readers, consider this handy, skull-cracking tip, courtesy forensic pathologist, Stephan Bolliger:

Other scientists had already calculated how much energy it takes to crack the human skull ?

 
The above church billboard showing Joesph and the Virgin Mary in bed after having disappointing sex (or maybe they’re unable to consummate the good kind), is whipping up a shitstorm among Christians in New Zealand:

The large poster depicts a dejected-looking Joseph lying next to Mary, whose eyes are turned heavenwards, under the words: “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow.”  Both figures, painted in classical fresco style, appear to be naked.  Within hours of the billboard being erected outside the Anglican church of St Matthew’s in the City, in central Auckland, it had been attacked by a man who clambered on to the roof of his car to smear brown paint over it.  As a result it was almost obliterated and the church, which describes itself as “progressive,” is seeking a replacement.

Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was intended to lampoon the literal interpretation of the Christmas conception story “and that somehow this male God impregnated Mary.”  “What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about,” he said.

“We actually think God is about the power of love as shown in Jesus, which is something quite different than a literal man up in the sky.”  He said the church had asked an advertising agency to come up with ideas for the poster and the one they had chosen was not the most radical.  “One of the options we turned down had a sperm coming down with the words ‘Joy to the World,’” he said.

Christians Outraged By Poster Showing Mary And Joseph After Sex

 

 

 
Gallery1988, Ronnie Midfew Arts and DamonCarltonAndAPolarBear.com presents The LOST Underground Art Show. DamonCarltonAndAPolarBear.com:

In celebration of LOST’s final season and as a project of fan appreciation, 16 top designers and artists, who are also fans of the show, were commissioned to create artwork celebrating one of the series’ most memorable, and unforgettable, “water cooler” moments. This ultimate “fan art” was then turned into labor intensive, hand-pulled screen prints, limited to an edition of just 300, with less than 200 available to the public through our websites. Each beautiful poster tells its own different story, allowing the fan to relive memorable and influential moments in an artistic manner, as the show’s storied run comes to a close. Once this limited edition print has sold out, they will never be printed again. Celebrate the fandom, community and family created by one of televisions’ greatest shows by hanging a little part of it’s history, inspiration and influence on your wall.

The LOST Underground Art Show
 
Ronnie Midfew Arts and DamonCarltonAndAPolarBear.com Presents…
 
(via Nerdcore)