Category:
Science
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18th March 2016Northern lights 2016[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500"] The red and green northern lights at East Sands in St Andrews, 6th March 2016.[/caption] Since my last post, I’ve been lucky enough to twice see the northern lights. Both times have been in 2016: once in the first hour of the year, and then again in early March. The northern lights at New Year were faint, yet still impressive. As I do every year, I spent Christmas with my family, but afterwards I returned north to celebrate my first New Year in St Andrews. On New Year’s Eve I made gnocchi (thanks for teaching me, Betta!) then ...
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8th March 2014Northern Lights 2014I’ve seen time-lapses from Iceland. I’ve seen videos from space of the colours around the Arctic. I’ve even seen photos of the Aurora Borealis from St Andrews, where I live. I've really wanted to see them myself. So when I checked my Facebook account and saw this post from Ed, you might think I was overwhelmed by excitement. But I wasn't. My first reaction, honestly, was dismissal. I didn't know Ed as someone familiar with astronomy, and I'm well aware of how a little wishful thinking can turn aeroplanes or planets into UFOs, and light pollution or high clouds into astronomical events. I ...
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24th July 2010EarthlingsI was reading an article a week or two ago, and it made me finally realise something for the first time: we are not just born on the Earth, we're born of the Earth. Maybe you've been thinking about what it means to be an Earthling for a while, but I haven't. I think it's so fucking cool that I am part of the Earth. Usually, I off-handedly think of the Earth as something separate from life, something dead. But no, everything that's living ((Everything that's living and is on the Earth. Who knows how many other races there are on ...
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21st June 2010Sun DataI love information like this, and I love to see it manifested in the real world, right above my head. Dundee is just about on the same latitude as Perth ((The only adjustments needed to make this accurate for Perth would be to add a couple of minutes to all the times to accommodate for Perth's more westerly longitude.)), so this table is good enough for me. Check it out, and have a look at the data for where you live at various months. Today (as this is posted) in Perth, we will have 17 hours, 44 minutes and 36 seconds of ...
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10th June 2010MythfuckstersN.B. I could be completely misunderstanding this, and I could be completely wrong. I was drinking, after all. Mythbusters has frustrated me again. A few months ago I pointed out an inaccuracy in a previous episode. If my post was not sufficiently clear, my point was that a single car going 100 mph has double the total energy of 2 cars going at 50 mph, and not the same, as Jamie Hyneman had asserted. In an episode which I watched a few days ago, "Mythssion Control", I was delighted and rather pleased with myself when the program mentioned that 'the fans' had ...
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About Wilf's Blog
I'm a mathematician, but apart from that, I'm a fairly normal guy. I used to write a blog - this blog. I write (wrote) about whatever is on my mind. It can get quite personal sometimes.
