Spaaaaace: Cast Your Vote For Mars

 Hopefully Mars isn't like the Doom video game.

It's another great week in space news, with the NuStar telescope launching to study Black holes and methane lakes being spotted on Saturn's moon Titan., I want to focus on another aspect of technology and its benefit to society, which is the current discussion board and voting system implementation for future Mars exploration. From the site:

We’re inviting the Mars exploration community and all interested people, regardless of educational or professional background, to engage in a conversation about the future of Mars exploration ... This dialogue will be open for participation until July 1, 2012. This forum is an experiment that we hope will help us better understand public interest, and specific areas to focus our attention on; so please help us make it worthwhile

There's a great voting system, similiar to sites like Digg and Reddit, that allows readers to vote up or vote down discussions and comments. It's not exactly what you may think - they're not holding Astronaut Idol to vote for who goes and what he or she will do. But this forum, which is linked directly from NASA's main site, offers a rare opportunity for space geeks, NASA personnel, and the average Joe to speak their mind on complex issues such as the realism of terraforming Mars and the possibly of partnership with private companies such as SpaceX. There are some trolls as always that attempt to derail discussion, but the moderation of the site is quite good - I've seen offending posts get voted down quickly.

Check it out!

Twitter Impact: From Academia to the Everyday Citizen

Twitter has made a huge impact among the academic field as well as the everyday citizen. A recent study from UCLA and Hewlett-Packard mentioned that the most well received tweets come from the Twitter accounts of established websites (i.e. New York Times, CNN, etc) discussing popular companies or institutions. The term "social networking" tends to imply that getting news from a friend, regardless of the inclusion of a source, would resonate the same as hearing it from an established site. According to this study, that's not the case.

When I come across a friend mentioning a story, I'll reply or retweet him or her to give proper credit. In addition, I always make sure to retweet the story from a recognized source  It's not because I don't trust the person who originally mentioned the story. It's more that I don't expect my followers to know (or trust) that person. Retweeting the story as reported from a respected source helps to keep my credibility with my followers that or may not know anything about my other followers.

Beyond academia, Twitter has also affected govermnents and its citizens. Sweden has been handing its official @Sweden Twitter account to a different citizen every week. Naturally, some gaffes have occurred. But check out how they've handled it:

From the NY Times on Sunday:

“I wanted to show that I’m often kind of immature and often kind of stupid and so is this country, and I bet you are, too, and so are a lot of people around the world,” Mr. Werner, 23, said in a telephone interview. “It’s much more interesting than saying things like, ‘Look at these fabulous pictures of nature.’ ”

An update to the NY Times story on Tuesday shows that Sweden is not deleting any tweet that may be offensive. Instead, Sweden is using the opportunity as a teachable moment.  After one of the Swedish twitter users, Ms. Abrahamsson, faced backlash for posting a tweet that offended people of Jewish decent, the following exchange occured:

The immediate backlash against her comments prompted Ms. Abrahamsson less than an hour later to write that, being from rural Sweden, she did not know many Jews and she apologized “if some of you find the question offensive.”

“Thats was not my purpose,” she added, appearing to explain herself. “I just don’t get why some people hates jews so much.”

Boom! Now that's how you handle controversy - embrace it head on and try to learn from it.  This is the only way to bring technology forward because controversy is inevitable. Congratulations to Sweden for taking this project on!

Tech Networking: Science Bloggers, Tweeters, and Writers

I'm happy to say that I've been included in Scientific American's list of African American Science Bloggers, Tweeters, and Writers. I'm honored to be included on a list of amazing folk like Dr. Ainissa Ramirez and the Spelman Robotics team. I encourage everyone to use this list as a way to network with different people in the social space that are fighting the good fight to spread news about science throughout the internet. Thank you DNLee and the Urban Scientist blog, and be sure to check out the rest of the folks on the list!

Tech Videos: Mister Rogers & Dr. Tyson

Science is about being amazed and in wonder at the world around you. All of the technical stuff that people usually associate with science takes a back seat to sitting back and saying "Wow, the world is cool!" It doesn't matter if you're an astrophysicist or everyone's favorite neighbor - anyone can represent the qualities behind scientific thought. The two videos included are an excellent example of this.

The above video by Brandon Fibbs features a speech from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.  He spoke to congress about space exploration and its importance for America to be successful. Fibbs does an excellent job creating the visuals to correlate with Tyson's examples of the Civil Rights movement, the Apollo Moon missions, and even Occupy Wall St. As a plus, it uses music from Mass Effect 3, a great video game that involves the consequences the humanity interacting with other worlds and species.

Now, onto Mister Rogers and the "Garden of the Mind" remix video ...

 Doesn't that video capture what we all want to be, and what we want for future generations. It's all about having ideas and believing in yourself enough to push them through. Simply amazing!

#ScienceLooksGood: Shuttle in NYC, Venus Transit

One reason that I blog about science and technology is so that it can be accessible to everyone. Photos are a great way to communicate the complexity of science without dipping too far into the details. Check out these beautiful photos of the Space Shuttle in NYC and Venus overlayed over the Sun!

Shuttle in NYC!

Picture courtesy of https://twitter.com/IntrepidMuseum/

Check out this amazing pic of the Space Shuttle Enterprise near the World Trade Center site.  The Enterprise never actually flew in space, but it was the prototype model that NASA used to run tests and prove the aerodynamics of flight for reentry. It's currently heading on a barge to the Intrepid Museum in midtown NYC.

Venus Transit!

Picture and video courtesy of Universe Today

This photo is a compilation of several photos of the planet Venus as it crosses between Earth and the Sun.  Due to the orbits and rotations of both planets, it is extremely rare for Venus to be visible between Earth and the Sun.  As a matter of fact, this will not occur again until 2116. More photos are available from NASA.

Gizmodo has a great article on the importance of the transit of Venus throughout history.  From the article:

Transits of Venus were scientific gold for early astronomers, who used them to derive an accurate measurement of the size of the solar system. By noting the time each planet took to go around the sun, and then crunching that data via methods developed by 17th century mathematician Johannes Kepler, these telescope-equipped boffins could determine each planet's relative distance from the sun, as measured in terms of astronomical units (the distance from the Earth to the Sun). Collecting such data during a transit was the reason Captain Cook was able to travel halfway around the world from London to Tahiti in 1769.