Tag: diagram

  • Kepler 452b

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    So this is sort of a recycled post, in the sense that I talked about it back in April of 2013. But it’s worth revisiting in light of last month’s announcement of Kepler 452b. For those unaware, the planet is a little bit larger than Earth, but is believed to be a potentially rocky planet…

  • Pedro Martinez Was Amazing

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    So the Red Sox in 2015 are godawful, terrible, bloody bad baseball. But, go back 11 years and they were amazing, fantastic, great and awesome baseball. 2004 was, of course, the year the curse was broken and that was in no small part due to the pitching efforts of Pedro Martinez, who would head down…

  • Your Guide to the Solar System

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    As New Horizons will soon begin sending back photographs of Pluto, Charon, and the other moons, I figured it would be a good to share a Wall Street Journal piece that looks at the other photographed bodies of the system. Credit for the piece goes to Jon Keegan, Chris Canipe, and Alberto Cervantes.

  • New Horizon’s Flypast

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    A little after 07.30 EDT, New Horizons began its race past Pluto, what your author grew up learning as the ninth planet in the Solar System—the last planet to be explored. I recall thinking that when it launched back in 2006 I had no idea what I would be doing nine years later. Or at…

  • Putting Tatooine to Shame

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    While the title sounds science-fiction-y, it is true. Star Wars has a famous scenece where a landscape is shown with a binary star system in the sky. But we now know of a quintuple-star system that has two separate sets of binary stars. This BBC article takes a look at how the system is structured.…

  • Night Tube

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    Transport for London (TfL), the organisation that runs the London Underground or Tube, has announced a nighttime service called Night Tube. It is not for the entire system, but only a few specific lines. That means that TfL needed a new map. And that means that everyone will want to create their own version of…

  • New Horizons

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    So this is generally a more serious post than usual for a Friday. Because, it is about New Horizons, the probe we launched almost a decade ago to explore Pluto, which at that point was still technically a planet. Anyway, the Washington Post has a nice illustration detailing the various sensors and orbits and trajectories.…

  • The Curviest Tracks on the Northeast Corridor

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    If you remember a little while back, Amtrak No. 188 derailed in North Philadelphia at Frankford Junction. I covered it here and here. Well, the New York Times has analysed the Northeast Corridor to identify the curviest segments of track, excluding entrances and exits from stations. Perhaps as no surprise, Frankford Junction is right among…

  • Aquifers Around the World

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    It has rained quite a bit in the south the last couple of days, thanks to tropical weather systems. But, as some new data from NASA shows us, the world is running out of water. That is largely because we drain large underground water systems called aquifers faster than the natural environment replenishes them. The…

  • Donald Trump is Running for President

    —

    by

    Brendan Barry
    in

    This week saw a few new people officially jump into the 2016 election: Jeb Bush and Donald Trump. Next week I want to at least look at some design-related elements to the forthcoming primaries. But, today is Friday. So let’s get to the important stuff first: Donald Trump’s hair. Thankfully, Time has that covered. (Get…