Iceland, located on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, attributes long-period (lp) seismic activity to ice sheets dropping off rather than the volcano buried under the ice.

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html

]]> http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/phys/2009/07/31/feynmans-lectures-online/feed/ 0 http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/phys/2009/07/13/30/ http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/phys/2009/07/13/30/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:56:23 +0000 lilcon http://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/phys/?p=30 Enrico Fermi’s ability to make quick, rough estimates has inspired the University of Maryland’s Physics Education Research Group to compile a set of Fermi Problems.     http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/fermi/fermi.htm.

The U.S. astronomical community will kick off a year-long celebration

of astronomy and its contributions to society and culture by using

400-year-old light from a distant star cluster to trigger a

ribbon-cutting ceremony for the International Year of Astronomy 2009.

The public event will take place at the winter meeting of the American

Astronomical Society (AAS) in Long Beach, California, on January 6,

2009.

The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) commemorates the

400th anniversary of the first scientific use of a telescope by

Galileo Galilei.  More than 135 countries are preparing activities for

IYA2009, which has been endorsed by the United Nations, UNESCO and the

U.S. Congress.

The U.S. IYA2009 opening ceremony will take place at the Long Beach

Convention Center on Tuesday, January 6, in Exhibit Hall B, starting

at 7:45 p.m. PST.  The public is encouraged to attend, and the

ceremony will be broadcast live on the World Wide Web at

www.ustream.tv/channel/us-iya-opening-ceremony.

The ceremony will feature a virtual “ribbon cutting” of the IYA2009

presence in the online community Second Life

(www.secondastronomy.org).   This action will be initiated using light

from the Pleiades star cluster sent over the Web from the Cincinnati

Observatory, via the world’s oldest telescope still in nightly use by

the general public.  Light from this famous star cluster (also known

as the “Seven Sisters”) takes approximately 400 years to reach Earth.

Therefore, the photons of light to be viewed on January 6 were emitted

around the time Galileo first looked through his telescope to

see-among other things-mountains and craters on the Moon, the four

biggest moons of Jupiter, and countless faint stars in the Pleiades

invisible to the unaided eye.

Other highlights of the ceremony include the unveiling of a museum

wall-sized image of a galaxy taken by NASA’s Great Observatories and a

live performance of the official theme song for the IYA2009 “365 Days

of Astronomy” podcast (www.365daysofastronomy.org).   A sample of

beautiful astronomy images from the international IYA2009 cornerstone

exhibit project “From Earth to the Universe”

(www.fromearthtotheuniverse.org) and colorful panels from NASA’s

Visions of the Universe exhibit for libraries will be on display.

The ceremony will conclude with the world premiere of a new

high-definition PBS television documentary by Interstellar Studios,

“400 Years of the Telescope, A Journey of Science, Technology and

Thought,” which was filmed at dozens of the world’s greatest

observatories (www.400years.org).

Celestron (www.celestron.com), a global sponsor of IYA2009, has

generously donated a NexStar(R) 130SLT computerized telescope and a

SkyScout(R) Personal Planetarium(R)/SkyScout Scope bundle to be

raffled off during the opening ceremony.  SkyScout has been declared

an “Official Product” of IYA2009.  Celestron will also provide small

telescopes for public viewing of the Moon and other bright objects

before and after the U.S. opening ceremony, outside the convention

center starting at approximately 6:30 p.m.

The U.S. IYA2009 opening event was made possible in part by a

contribution from Microsoft Research, inventor of the WorldWide

Telescope (www.worldwidetelescope.org).  With well over one million

users to date, WorldWide Telescope has been embraced by the

astronomical and education communities as a compelling astronomical

resource for students and lifelong learners.

 Key elements of the planned U.S. program for IYA2009 include hundreds

of grassroots star parties and local events (including a focus on the

first weekend of April 2009 as the “100 Hours of Astronomy”- see

www.100hoursofastronomy.org), a new high-quality low-cost telescope

kit called the Galileoscope (www.galileoscope.org), a variety of

dark-skies awareness activities (www.darkskiesawareness.org) and

citizen-science campaigns, and IYA2009 Discovery Guides related to

monthly highlighted sky objects

(www.astrosociety.org/iya/guides.html).

Much more information on IYA2009 can be found at www.astronomy2009.us

and www.astronomy2009.org.

The U.S. IYA2009 program is supported by the National Science

Foundation and NASA, and by private donations.  The American

Astronomical Society is the U.S. liaison to the IYA2009 program via

the International Astronomical Union.  Key U.S. partners include the

Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the National Optical Astronomy

Observatory, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the

Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and the National Radio Astronomy

Observatory.