Just as certain computer scientists and engineers dream of doing better garbage collection in computers (for a dream come true, see Microsoft’s “Fundamentals of Garbage Collection“), scientists and engineers at Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne dream of doing better garbage collection in space. Dead satellites. Detritus from collisions between now-dead satellites and whatever slammed into them. Junk that […]
Tag: space
Getting a LEGO up, on a dime
This video comes from a camera attached to a homebuilt device that rose to great heights. The Guardian describes it in a short paragraph (and also, elsewhere, in more detail): Two teenagers from Toronto sent a Lego man carrying a Canadian flag into the stratosphere. Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, attached four cameras […]
Semiotics Exercise: Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace
This month’s Semiotics Exercise is to write a 50-word semiotic interpretation of the imagery and title of the book Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace. It must be exactly 50 words long, but can be in the language of your choice. Here is a photo of the book cover: [via @KateHarding] BONUS EXERCISE: Write a 55-word semiotic interpretation […]
Happily stuck in time and space
En route from Vancouver to Australia on Dec. 30, 1899, the captain of the S.S. Warrimoo spotted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. At midnight, he stopped the ship at the intersection of the international date line and the equator. At that moment, the ship was straddling two different hemispheres, days, months, years, seasons, and centuries, all at […]