Safely Observing the Transit of Venus and Tracking Sunspots

Too easy, this is very cool/

Frog Series - Day 2

Close-up of eggs

Frog Series - Orgy

Over the last week we have had some serious floods here in SE Australia.
The frogs have responded by having an orgy!

Listen to the sounds of a frog orgy:

42

Erik D. Andrulis has published a theory that claims to explain everything.
"Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life"

Red flag: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

The paper invents a lexicon, much like Tolkien, then makes the extraordinary claim that elements in the lexicon explain the world as we know it..... without any evidence.

The paper claims that the theory makes predictions ....(p50) "The aminogyre makes some very profound and testable predictions about the specificity of the genetic code and how proteins behave, lengthen and shorten, and fold and unfold in response to physical and biometabolic changes or changes in genetic information content of RNA."

However these predictions appear to be 'theoretical predictions' (p61) only and are not tested in this paper.

And the claim is made that (p65) "Indeed, this theory not only predicts but also proves that the universe is teeming with life."

Now call me picky, but even my undergraduate biochem and science taught me that a theory can certainly make predictions, but it is in the observations that we find the proof. The theory in itself is not a proof .... perhaps the author has made observations of alien life forms that the rest of us have missed out on.

This diagram doesn't really help:



Nor this one, despite the accompanying text.



By all means read the paper in it's entirety

Or just get out your old 1979 copy of James Lovelock's "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth"

Homoeopathy

A Homoeopathy person recommended their 'International Journal' to me ...
http://t.co/sdosGx31

Went to the latest edition and looked up their latest 'Clinical Research'. Surprise surprise Gomer, the study cited was neither clinical nor research.

Australia Day - Southern Cross

To finish off Australia Day, I spent 15 minutes with the Southern Cross. 50mm f\4.5 iso400



I bet you can easily find the southern Cross and the two pointers.

Under Dark Skies

My daughters, 13 and 15 sometimes take over Mum's DSLR to take some starsnaps.
Recently Ms 15 got this nice shot of Comet Lovejoy. 55mm iso 800 f/5.6 27secs



And Ms 13 got up at 5am last year to capture the June lunar eclipse.
She won the 2011 National Junior Astrophotography Award with this montage.
which she stitched together using PaintshopPro.
Her Photo, along with the other winning astrophotographs are touring Oz,
and they are currently on display at Scienceworks in Melbourne till April.