Raising Boys

First starlight November 8, 2005

Billions of years after they’ve died, we may be seeing their light for the very first time.

Scientists say they may have detected light from the very first stars, back when the universe first came alive after millions of years of pervasive darkness that followed the theorized Bing Bang, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The stars were thought to be a hundred times more massive than our sun, extremely hot, bright, and short-lived. They disappeared billions of years ago but their light is still traveling across the universe. The image below shows what might be the glow of the first stars of the universe after all the existing stars, galaxies and other objects were masked out.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Kashlinsky (GSFC)
Read more of this story.

A mouse’s song November 1, 2005

A team of scientists has discovered that mice can sing, BBC News said in a report. Male mice, in fact, “serenade potential mates with ultrasonic love songs”. The US scientists discovered the male mice’s ability while determining how they respond “to sex pheromones released in the urine of female mice.”

Instead of making the ultrasonic chirps randomly, the mice used several different types of syllables arranged in regular, repeated time signatures resembling birdsong.

Mice now belong to an “exclusive club of mammals that can sing”, which count among its members human beings, bats, and cetaceans.

What’s your ‘brain sex’ ID? October 31, 2005

My Sex ID test result says I may have a balanced female-male brain. Balanced. That seems the safest thing to be. I would have preferred falling in the category of women who “think more like men” as opposed to men with “women’s brains”.

The test, “series of visual challenges and questions used by psychologists in the BBC One television series”, has six categories and each must be answered within a specific time period. A ruler comes in handy because a portion of the test requires measuring the length of the ring and index fingers.

Mars won’t be near this August August 11, 2005

I received an e-mail from a co-worker in Manila about Mars coming so near Earth in an encounter that will supposedly culminate by end of August and have the red planet looking as big and as clear as our Moon to the naked eye.

If you have received this, too, be warned that this is a hoax. The great opposition of these two planets happened in 2003 and peak viewing for Mars this year will be by end of October, not this month.

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Deep Impact July 4, 2005

A probe the size of a washing machine from Nasa’s Deep Impact spacecraft slammed into Comet Tempel 1 today (close to 2 a.m. in New York and around 2 p.m. in Manila). The collision was deliberate and scientists behind the mission are pleased with the result. Read more of the story here.

I wish I could have seen it as it happened.

Loving astronomy May 25, 2005

Of all the sciences, I really love and appreciate astronomy the most and I think this bias has rubbed off on my sons. Dylan loves reading about our solar system and even knows a lot about the sun and the major planets. He simply cannot have enough of Saturn’s beautiful rings and Jupiter’s many moons. He loves finding out about space, the stars, and black holes.

One of Lennon’s favorite things is a picture book on the sun, moon and the planets. Whenever he wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, he’d get that book and look at it. The craters on the moon and the fiery sun fascinate him and he’d point to the pictures again and again.

If there is anything we all agree on, it is looking at all the awesome pictures (such as this one) of newly born stars, nebulas, surfaces of planets, moons, comets, asteroids and other stuff that astromers provide.

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