12.11.07
Posted in astronomy, news, sports at 11:01 pm by danvk
There have been two space-related stories of note in the news recently.
The first was that the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis was delayed until January. The space shuttle has been NASA’s greatest boondoggle in history: its $145 billion cost to date has passed the Apollo program’s inflation-adjusted $135 billion. The worth of the Apollo program is an issue for another time, but at least it had a clear goal which it accomplished. The Space Shuttle has languished into old age. Seriously, does anyone realize how old this program is? Here’s a video from the launch of the first space shuttle, in 1981:
For some context, the commander of this mission was John Young. John Young walked on the moon… on his fourth space flight! Here’s a plot of space shuttle launches over time:
NASA was accelerating launches through the start of 1986, when Challenger was destroyed. The first period represents the hopes and dreams of the shuttle program. Before Challenger, it really might have made space travel routine. The middle segment, from Challenger to Columbia, is the long working life of the shuttle. Expectations were capped, and so were results. The shuttle program should have ended after Columbia. But instead, it gets a third period to die of old age.
Shuttle missions these days primarily service the International Space Station, which exists primarily to give the Space Shuttle somewhere to go. Seriously, try reading the wiki article about the Columbus module being installed on the next shuttle mission and tell me what exactly it does. Hubble Space Telescope maintenance is often pointed to as something worthwhile that the Shuttle does. Fair enough. But how many Hubble’s could we have had for $145 billion?
The second story is genuinely exciting. It comes from the European Space Agency’s CoRoT mission. At $50 million, it’s a featherweight space mission. This telescope was launched last December and has been observing stars for the past year, looking for transits. This week, they reported that “CoRoT is discovering exo-planets at a rate only set by the available resources to follow up the detections”.
This is completely nuts! There are currently 268 known exoplanets. It’s possible that this number will double in the next month as the CoRoT group begins publishing their findings on December 20. Personally, I’d consider that a more significant achievement than anything the Space Shuttle has done in the last 25 years with its $145 billion.
Permalink
10.30.07
Posted in astronomy, personal, science, wikipedia at 11:22 pm by danvk
Ars Technica has the write up of an experiment performed by two University professors. Instead of assigning an ordinary term paper, they had their students create a new Wikipedia article on some topic pertaining to the course. To summarize the summary, it was a rewarding experience for the students but had some issues. In particular, several of the articles were immediately deleted or merged into other articles. The original PowerPoint is worth skimming if you’re interested.
My take: this should absolutely be encouraged. How many term papers ever see the light of day after they’re graded? The paper benefits the student, maybe the professor, but rarely anyone else. Can you imagine how many papers college students have written about Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat? Wikipedia needs you!
I’ve thought about the merits of Wikipedia assignments ever since I started editing back in college. The issue of public exposure wasn’t so important. I’ve had that since I was little. It was mostly the idea of not letting all the research I’d done for a course go to waste. I was so enamored with the idea that I gave it a trial run myself. After writing a term paper on two ancient Greek astronomers in the Fall of 2005, I created articles about their works. It was a good but surprisingly time-consuming experience for me. Putting my work on display for all the world to see forced me to double-check everything I’d written, clarify my reasoning, and introduce explanatory figures and tables. But the finished product was great. Those two articles I wrote are undoubtedly the best online source for their two topics. And they’re unexpectedly deep content for Wikipedia, which is not necessarily known for its coverage of original materials or ancient history.
The main problem with this approach is that Wikipedia may not accept these changes with open arms. The professors made some good points about this in their slides. The Wikipedia way is to start small and rough, and edit your way to a finished product. I did this for my two articles. This is the way papers are written as well, it’s just that the process is less visible. What’s more, it helps to be familiar with Wikipedia culture before making major edits. For the students whose articles were deleted or merged, I’m sure they could have asked whether there articles were appropriate on some talk page or another. For contributors not familiar with Wikipedia’s style, their contributions will be a heaping mass of words in need of copyediting. This would be even more important if the students had been assigned to edit an article, rather than write one from scratch.
All in all, if done well, this use of Wikipedia can be great for both the students and the community. Here’s the money quote from one of the students:
This assignment felt so Real! I had not thought that anything I wrote was worth others reading before, but now I think what I contributed was useful, and I’m glad other people can gain from my research.
Permalink
08.28.07
Posted in astronomy, news, personal, science at 3:05 am by danvk
It’s just entered totality, check it out if you’re awake. It’s shocking how many lights my apartment complex still has on at 3 AM. Although this is an unusually long eclipse, it’s going to be a brief one for me. Lunar eclipses are way cooler when they happen at a more reasonable time.
Permalink