Benjamin L. Haas

Shared by Mandy_Moon


Pluto was my favorite back when it was a planet. When we did our planets project in third grade, my report was on Pluto.

Exactly 80 years ago today, the onetime ninth and smallest planet, Pluto, was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. In this time, Pluto has gone through a lot of changes, both in space and in its reputation here on Earth. Let’s take a moment to celebrate everyone’s favorite dwarf planet by getting to know it a little better.

Disruptions of Uranus

The driving force that lead to Pluto’s discovery began when late nineteenth century astronomers noticed a strange disruption in the orbit of Uranus. They speculated this disturbance had to be caused by another planet beyond Neptune and in 1906, Percival Lowell started to seek out this so-called “Planet X” in the Flagstaff, Arizona observatory he founded fifteen years earlier. Lowell and his team worked diligently for the next seven years, but when the researcher passed on, the project was forced to temporarily close due to a messy legal battle with Lowell’s widow. Interestingly, during those seven years, the researchers did capture the first ever images of Pluto on March 19, 1915, but the team did not recognize them for what they were.

In 1929, the search started back up again with promising, and young, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh (seen above) at the lead. His job consisted of looking at images of the sky taken weeks apart and then look for any shift in position of the objects imaged. On February 18, 1930, he discovered a moving object seen on photos taken in the past January.

Renaming Planet X

As soon as the news hit the papers, the observatory began receiving suggestions for the new planet’s name. The planet’s future name eventually came from 11 year-old Venetia Burney. She was quite the fan of mythology and thought “Pluto” (another name for the god of the underworld) would be an appropriate title for a cold planet so far away from the sun. Her name was officially selected on March 24 and she was given five pounds as a reward. Part of the reason the title was selected was based on the fact that the initials for the new planet would then share the initials for the man who started the whole project, Percival Lowell.

Sounds Like Hell

People were immediately enchanted with the newest member of our Solar System and quite a few things were named in the planet’s honor, including Disney’s newest character, a certain yellow dog you may be familiar with. A little over a decade later, a newly discovered element was named after the planet as well –you  may know it as plutonium.

While most cultures use the name Pluto, a few languages have interesting translations for the dwarf planet. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean, the name is translated into “underworld king star” and in some Indian languages, the planet is named after Yama, the guardian of Hell in Hinduism.

Image by Gene Duncan of Walt Disney World.

The Myth Of Planet X

Even though the discovery of Pluto occurred while astronomers were searching for a Planet X that would have thrown off the orbit of Uranus, Pluto is not Planet X. It only happened to be in the right place at the right time to get discovered, but its mass is not large enough to disrupt the orbit of Uranus.

Scientists now believe there is actually no Planet X, which makes Pluto’s discovery all the more lucky. In 1992, data from Vogager 2 gave scientists new data on the mass of Neptune, which helped them recalculate its pull on Uranus, which eliminated any remaining suspicions about the existence of Planet X.

Getting to Know You

Eighty years after Pluto’s original discovery, scientists still know very little about the dwarf planet. Because it is so far from the Earth, investigation is difficult, in fact, NASA has compared it to trying to examine details in a soccer ball that sits over 40 miles away.

They still have made some fascinating discoveries about Pluto though, including its composition, its rotation period, its orbit and the existence of three moons around the planet.

One day on Pluto is equal to a little over six days on Earth. The planet rotates on its side, along its orbital plane, which makes for very extreme seasonal variations. During the solstice, one hemisphere remains entirely in the dark, while the other remains in permanent daylight.

Because of these factors, the distance from the sun and Pluto’s chaotic orbit, the dwarf planet is said to be one of the most contrastive objects in the solar system. While it is impossible to directly photograph Pluto’s surface details, scientists have been able to process images using pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. These images show that Pluto’s color seems to change between blue, black, orange, red, brown and white. Even stranger, the images show that it has increased in redness dramatically between 2000 and 2002. The changes are so dramatic, that the astronomer responsible for assembling the pixel-sized images into an actual picture has originally believed he made a mistake.

Knowing What Its Made Of

Using spectroscopic analysis, researchers have been able to discover that Pluto’s surface is made of 98% nitrogen  ice with methane and carbon monoxide. The planet’s strange axis orientation and small size make it always oriented towards the Charon moon with the same face at any given time. Interestingly, the face that is always oriented toward this moon contains more methane ice, while the other side has more of the carbon monoxide ice. The surface is believed to look something like what you see above.

Image via L. Calcada [ESO]

A Chaotic Orbit

The orbit of Pluto cannot be calculated as far into the future as other planets because it has a somewhat chaotic orbit. Scientists can predict its position for the next 10 million years or so, but small changes in the Solar System can throw the orbit off. Despite the chaos though, certain factors ensure that the object will never stray too far or collide into another planet.

Interestingly, Pluto’s wide elliptical orbit appears to put it in line to crash into Neptune, as it periodically crosses Neptune’s orbit and comes closer to the sun than the eighth planet. It stays within Neptune’s orbit for about 20 years and this occurrence happens only once every 248 years, or about once every Plutonian year. The last time Pluto entered Neptune’s orbit was in 1979 and it left this orbit in 1999.

While it looks like Pluto could hit Neptune when the orbits are viewed from above, the dwarf planet is far from the planet in a 3D plane. In fact, it actually comes far closer to Uranus than Neptune.

Size Matters

As the popular shirt in the Neatorama store reminds us, Pluto provides ultimate proof that size matters. The dwarf’s entire mass is about a fifth of our moon’s and one third of its volume. When put up on a map of the Earth, like the one seen at right, the diameter of Pluto is just barely bigger than the length of the U.S. from north to south (Charon, it’s largest moon, is pictured beside it).

From its initial discovery, Pluto has continued to “shrink” as scientific calculations help better estimate its size. Originally, astronomers calculated the size based on its perceived effect on Neptune and Uranus, but once it was proven that Pluto was not Planet X, its size was re-estimated. In 1955, calculations stated that it was around the size of Earth. Then, in 1971, it was estimated to be closer to the size of Mars. In 1976 though, astronomers in the University of Hawaii discovered that the planet contained methane ice, which meant it had to be highly luminous for its size and could not be more than 1% the size of the Earth. In 1978, when Charon was discovered as Pluto’s moon, it allowed scientists to properly estimate the mass of the dwarf planet.

Now that we have a good idea of Pluto’s size, we know it’s smaller than seven of the moons of other planets.

Image by Calvin J. Hamilton [Solar Views]

To Be, Or Not To Be (A Planet)

Here’s the part you all knew was coming, the controversial discussion about the little object’s role in our Solar System. As stated before, Pluto is relatively small. As a result, letting it stand as a planet would mean we would at least also have to add Eris as a planet, as this object also directly orbits the sun and is larger than Pluto.

Pluto’s role as a planet began to come in question in the seventies, once scientists started to figure out just how small it was. It wasn’t long after that lots of objects that were similar to Pluto began to be discovered, including the aforementioned Eris. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) released the first official definition of a planet, which met cutting Pluto from the lineup. Their rules for planethood said:

1. The object must be in orbit around the Sun.
2. The object must be massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium.
3. It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit

While Pluto met the first two requirements, it did not clear the neighborhood around its orbit because it was part of the Kuiper belt of objects orbiting the sun. As a devastating consolation prize, Pluto was added to a newly defined group of objects called “dwarf planets.”

Contrary to popular opinion, Pluto was not the first object to lose its planetary status. That titled belongs to Ceres, which was originally named the eighth planet in the Solar System in the 1800s, but lost its title when it was decided to be an asteroid instead. When Pluto’s planetary status came into question though, Ceres was once again on the table for being reinstated to its former planetary glory.

A Stellar Controversy

Many scientists still argue that the object should keep its status. One of the factors that has kept this argument so strong is the little amount of support, even amongst astronomers, as to the actual definition of a planet. As a matter of fact, only 5% of over 9000 astronomers in the IAU even voted for the definition, and of that number, not all voted in favor of the resolution. To make matters worse, many astronomers say this definition of a planet (particularly the part about clearing its own orbit) cannot not be applied to solar systems outside of our own, making it essentially useless. NASA leader Alan Stern has argued that the definition cannot even work in our own Solar System, as Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune all share their orbits with asteroids.

After the definition, some members of the California state assembly denounced the IAU for “scientific heresy,” while New Mexico and Illinois both passed resolutions declaring that Pluto is still a planet under the states’ skies.

After the reclassification of Pluto, the American Dialect Society chose the word “plutoed” as its word of the year, meaning “to have demoted or devalued someone or something.”

Where Does It Come From?

Pluto’s origin was a subject of many theories since its discovery. One early hypothesis said that it was escaped moon of Neptune, but scientists criticized this idea since Pluto never comes within close contact of the planet.

In 1992, astronomers found a whole population of icy objects beyond Neptune that seemed similar to Pluto. They named this group of objects, the Kuiper Belt (seen in the above image). Pluto is the largest of these objects, but it is believed that Neptune’s moon Triton was originally a part of the belt as well. Scientists now agree that Neptune likely underwent a sudden migration at one point and this helped it grab a moon and knocked some of the objects in the belt (like Pluto) into chaotic orbits.

This theory may also explain Pluto’s unique relationship with its moon, Charon. As stated before, the dwarf planet and its relatively large moon are tidally locked together and always face the same side of one another.

Image by WillyD [Wikipedia]

New Horizons For the Dwarf Planet

Up until recently, there were no serious attempts to explore Pluto more in depth. In 1992, NASA started working on a program called the Pluto Kuiper Express that would allow a closer investigation of the object, but the project was canned in 2000. In 2003 though, a new project started up called New Horizons. The craft was launched in 2006 and some of the ashes of the man who discovered Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh, were included on the spacecraft.

New Horizons will make its closest approach to the planet in 2015, but only time will tell what well will learn of our little dwarf planet, or if it will even hold the same classification by the time the work begins.

Sources: Nasa, Wikipedia, Nine Planets, Solar Views, ZD Net, Wired

Shared by sadotter


This is my friend Louis! He and I have been conspiring to build his web site for a while now - currently it's this fancy thing: http://absmebybitteringco.com/. Anyone want to design it with us?


Brooklynites, these days, have forged a reputation for making just about everything needed for a bar from scratch. Beer, spirits, wine, not to mention the various infusions, potions, sweeteners and such that one finds behind the best bars. The only this missing from the borough-wide, liquor-industrial complex is bitters. Oh, yes, many bars make there own house bitters. But there's no non-bar-owning entrepreneur that specializes in bitters production.

Louis Smeby, a 28-year-old from Minnesota with a newsboy's youthful face, is out to seize that territory. A waiter at The Modern who lives in the South Slope, he has been whipping an alarming number of original bitters in his kitchen, and has managed to place them at such estimable watering holes as Gotham bar & Grill, Braeburn, PDT, The Vanderbuilt, Buttermilk Channel, Quarter bar, White Star, and The Modern, among others.

The bitters are sold under the name A.B. Smeby Bittering Company. Smeby had the interested idea of applying the now-entrenched dining and drinking notion of seasonal menus to the world of bitters. He produces different potions based around the flavors found in each season. So the bitters available from him in the winter may not be the ones available in the spring. "Also important to the concept is the size of the bottle that I sell the product in," he said in a recent interview with Off the Presses. "It is a 2 ounce bottle. Bitters have a shelf life, especially when they are made with all-natural products."

Smeby says that most of the brands of bitters sold commercially are full of adjuncts, additives, and artificial ingredients that help maintain their shelf life, "but also offer a very synthetic tasting product. To add to this, they are all sold in bottle sizes too large for their flavor to be maintained before the product is finished, leading to inferior product at the end of the day."

The bars using Smeby's bitters so far seem to be taking them on a drink-by-drink basis, as they find applications for them. The Modern has used his Spiced Cranberry, Black and White (which actually tasted like a classic New York Black and White cookie), Vanilla and Forbidden Bitters in specialty cocktails. PDT has used only the Lemon Verbena bitters on the menu, but owner Jim Meehan thinks the Hibiscus Rose are great, too.

Some of the flavors Smeby comes up with boggle the brain. Apple Cinnamon with Molasses; Licorice-Nectarine (a favorite of mine, though, as of yet, I have no idea how to use it in a cocktail); Highland Heather; and Cherry Vanilla. Semby puts the most stock behind his Forbidden and Diesel bitters. The latter he promotes as a possible substitution for Angostura. I made an Old-Fashioned with it and found the result striking. It added a certain punch to the drink, familiar yet persuasive in its own way.


Smeby's ingredients are mainly locally sources (Lemon Verbana comes from Long Island), but he does go out of his way for some vitals. His cranberries come from Wisconsin; Buddahs Hand Lemons from California; nectarines from the west coast. Most of his spices and seasonings are bought from very small companies that specialize in only two to six products.
The Modern sent over the following original recipe, which I found equally winning:
Devil in White1.5 oz. Death's Door White Whiskey1.5 oz. Dolin Vermouth Blanc (not the dry!)5 dashes A.B. Smeby Black & White BittersStir all ingredients over ice. Strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with two cherries.
Smeby has recently started filling orders to clients in Eugene, Oregon, and Albuquerque. He hopes to take his bitters to the retail market sometime in the future. In the meantime, you'll have to visit one of the above bars to sample his wears.

Shared by sadotter


Oh man, WANT.
Under the Milky Way - Ross Berens

Mama Drama

It appears to be a fun-filled week o’ Mama Drama so far at STFUP HQ! This round: Jasmine and Breann get in the ring! Talk about a friendship gone awry. Is Destinii really spelled with 2 i’s or did Breann just make a typo? Because she didn’t make any other krazy typos, and Jasmine didn’t correct her. Not that minor details are important in this ‘coochy’ battle, but I like to keep my facts straight.

Regardless, I think we can all agree that Jasmine - Jazz - doesn’t like being told what to do, especially when it comes to Destinii. Got opinions about allowing a tiny infant to watch endless hours of horrible children’s programming on “televition”? Keep ‘em to yourself. If you didn’t sqweeze the baby thru your u-know-wut, Jazz does NOT want to hear what you have to say. So STEP OFF! THIS CONVERSATION IS DONE LIKE NOW!

(submitted by Anonymous)

**UPDATE**
It has been confirmed that Destinii is indeed spelled with 2 i’s.

A great BitTorrent client is all well and good, but you need a great tracker to get the actual torrent files and stoke the bandwidth burning fire in your client of choice. Here's a rundown of five of the most popular options.

A bit of clarification is in order before we share the list of the top five contenders with you. In our call for contenders we asked for you to share your favorite BitTorrent trackers, but we didn't explain the difference between a BitTorrent tracker and a BitTorrent indexer. The difference isn't immediately clear to the end user—nor does the difference even matter to many end users—and because we didn't make the difference crystal clear the votes were a mix of both sites that tracked and indexed and just indexed torrent files.

Since the purpose of the Hive Five is to help readers find tools and the ability to find torrents is more important to the majority of users than whether or not the place they find the torrents is also acting as the tracker for those torrents, we've opted to overlook the confusion in an effort to share a list of where Lifehacker readers go to search and download torrent files. The following list contains both true trackers and indexers. If you're curious about the technical details between a tracker and an indexer you can read up on them here and here.

The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is no longer the full-service tracker it once was thanks to some rough battles with the law, but it remains in service as an indexer. The Pirate Bay has been and remains one of the most publicly recognizable faces of the torrent phenomenon and is still a popular destination for torrent seekers. It no longer indexes its own tracker but instead organizes torrents indexed to other trackers. The Pirate Bay is known for having, even now, a wide selection and a well-organized, easy-to-browse site.

BTJunkie

BTJunkie is one of the largest torrent indexers on the web with over four million torrents and several thousand added daily. BTJunkie amasses such a high number of torrents by employing crawlers that dig through web sites looking for torrent files to index. The quality of torrents is ranked both by an algorithm and by user input which helps filter out low quality or malicious torrents.

isoHunt

Another enormous indexer, isoHunt has nearly two million torrents and a huge user base. In addition to being able to search torrents and sort them by age, number of peers, and other common search factors isoHunt has an additional variable, appropriately called isoHunt Rank, that is a compilation of all the other factors like age, number of comments, user feedback, and more. Sorting by isoHunt Rank allows you to see which torrents are best overall instead of just best in some subcategory like number of seeders or age.

Demonoid

Demonoid is a semi-public tracker. Registration is traditionally closed—it opens a few times a year to let new users in, or you can be invited by an existing member—but the site is still quite functional even without registration. Registration gives you access to the deep archives of Demonoid, but even without it you have access to over a quarter million torrents—the most recently added ones—available for download. Demonoid has built a name for itself by having a low number of bogus torrents and a high level of user participation.

KickAssTorrents

KickAssTorrents is a new kid on the torrent indexing block, but it has quickly built a name for itself by offering a user friendly experience. KickAssTorrents is the only torrent search engine that offers correction of spelling mistakes—search for Unutu for instance and it will ask "Did you mean Ubuntu?"—which is a small thing but highlights the level of detail put into the construction of their search engine. In addition to indexing regular torrents KickAssTorrents also indexes httpTorrents, which allow users who cannot access the BitTorrent cloud due to their location or firewall restrictions to access torrents.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the best places to find new torrents it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which BitTorrent Indexer is Best?(answers)

Have a favorite torrent hangout that didn't make the list? Have a BitTorrent-related tip or trick? Let's hear about it in the comments.

[Sponsored]
NEC

 

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Ever the realist, he built his table for one.

(Dwell magazine, February 2010)

Shared by Buster


Wow that's awesome.

via core77.com

Jinsun Park’s Color Picker concept is just one of those things that hits that sweet spot between practicality and whimsy – a wonderful place to be with your product should you want to capture people’s imagination and have them spend some money on it.

Who wouldn’t want a pen that uses the world around you as a palette?

Update: Thanks to Andrew for pointing out a similar project from MIT from 2005.

Talking beer, bourbon and barbecue with the men behind PDT, Fette Sau and Brooklyn Brewery

Yes, that man is trying to eat a pint glass. Watch out for your uvula!

During my hormone-ravaged youth, I’d often encircle my younger brother with elastic luggage straps then suspend him upside down, like a side of seven-year-old beef. Or I’d lock him in a darkened closet with no company except his racing, panicked thoughts.

“Let me ouwwwwwwt!” Jon would holler, cries drowned by Smashing Pumpkins cranked to 11.Yes, today was the greatest day I’d ever known.

Thankfully, the twin powers of amnesia and family ties—har-har!—restrain Jon from taking revenge and submerging me in the barnyard excrement he investigates as an Ohio EPA employee. We get along swimmingly, sharing passions for beer, dim sum and Japanese flicks such as Machine Girl, in which a bullet-belching gun is attached to a teen’s forearm. You share common ground wherever it’s found.

When Jon swung through Brooklyn a couple months back, I decided to treat him to some microbrews. First, we popped into Washington Commons (748 Washington Ave. betw. Park & Sterling Pls., 718-230- 3666). While the raw, spacious saloon lacks comfy booths, there’s a handsome semi-circle bar, superb happy hour (two bucks off till 8 on weekdays) and 16 finely curated taps. Chief among them were Green Flash’s malty, bitter Hop Head Red and Captain Lawrence’s sweet, tropical-scented Xtra Gold, a potion that transfixed Jon with its alcoholic spell.

“Now that’s a tasty beer,” my brother said rapturously, licking his lips like a Labrador. I beamed: After Gitmo-esque childhood torture, I was finally making reparations! After several more pints, we took our buzzes down the block to

Franklin Park (618 St John’s Pl. betw. Franklin & Classon Aves., 718-975-0196). The indoor-outdoor beer garden equally attracts tight-jeaned twenty-somethings and Caribbean expats— a scene that melts together as well as roomtemp Neapolitan ice cream.

We seized a cozy corner and several pints of Sixpoint’s Righteous Rye. We clinked glasses. I turned quizzical: This tumbler felt too heavy, as if it had piled on some holiday weight. I examined the pint, discovering a solid-glass bottom as thick as a Corner Bistro burger. “Jon,” I said as authoritatively as an older brother should, “we’ve been hornswoggled by a cheater pint.”

Allow me to explain the conspiracy: The sturdy, tapered cylinder from which you sip your suds was originally designed to mix drinks, thus dubbed the “shaker pint.” However, bartenders loved the vessels’ stackability and started using them to serve beer—about 16 ounces, AKA the American pint. Across the Atlantic, the U.K.’s imperial pint is a government-regulated 19.2 ounces. Barkeeps use authorized glasses etched with the word “pint” and European Union’s official “CE” mark. But in the United States, a pint, you see, is not always a pint.

Several years ago, a hop shortage spiked beer costs. Some bar owners raised prices. Others ordered 14-ounce shaker pints, depriving drinkers of several enjoyable sips.

This is perfectly legal—and perfectly misleading. Beer drinkers have been conditioned to believe that a pint glass contains 16 ounces. It’s like shaving several dozen grams of beef off a quarter-pound cheeseburger and keeping its name the same. “Big whoop,” you complain. “You have too much time on your hands, Bernstein. Why not concentrate on a real problem—like why you’re as emotional as an automaton.”

Reader, I’m all hot and bothered because this is petty deceit. It sucks to be a clueless sucker. It was time for this little man to stand up for the little men. “Jon,” I told my brother, “watch me make a fool of myself.” I strode to the bartender. “Excuse me,” I asked, sweet as a schoolgirl, “but are these your normal pint glasses?” He looked at me as if I asked him to lift his shirt and do the Truffle Shuffle. “Uh…yeah, I guess,” he replied. “Why?” “Because these are cheater pints.” I pointed to the thick bottom and explained the loss of two ounces of joy juice. I stood there a few beats, awaiting a response that never came. My cheeks bloomed red and hot. What did I expect to accomplish? Shame a bartender who’s but a pawn? I retreated to my seat, my point proven, my point changing nothing. My brother and I consumed our Righteous Ryes in a snap— too quickly, if you ask me—then placed our empty pints on the bar.

“Do you want another?” the bartender asked, trying to placate his crazy customer.

I shook my head. “I’d like a pint,” I mumbled to Jon as we headed to the door, “but I won’t get one here.”

Read the original story here!

On the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s masterwork, the author visits Kentucky’s Creation Museum, which has been battling science and reason since 2007. Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark: it’s a breathtakingly literal march through Genesis, without any hint of soul. Plus: Paul Bettany photographs the Creation Museum.