Really Rocket Science

This is awesome. McGill University Masters candidate Timothy Blaise produced this video to accompany his thesis.

The lyrics…

Is string theory right?
Is it just fantasy?
Caught in the landscape,
Out of touch with reality
Compactified
On S5 or T*S3

Space is a pure void
Why should it be stringy?
Because it’s quantum not classical
Nonrenormalizable
Any way you quantize
You’ll encounter infinity
You see

Quanta
Must interact
Via paths we understand
Using Feynman diagrams
Often, they will just rebound
But now and then they go another way
A quantum
Loooooop
Infinities will make you cry
Unless you can renormalize your model
Of baryons, fermions
And all other states of matter

Curved space:
The graviton
Can be thought of as a field
But these infinities are real
In a many-body
Loop diagram
Our results diverge no matter what we do…
A Quantum Soup (any way you quantize)
Kiss your fields goodbye
Guess Einstein’s theory wasn’t complete at all!

I see extended 1-D objects with no mass
What’s their use? What’s their use? Can they give us quark plasma?
What to minimize?
What functional describes this
String?
Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto)
Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto)
How to quantize I don’t know
Polyakov!
I’m just a worldsheet, please minimize me
He’s just a worldsheet from a string theory
Reperametrized by a Weyl symmetry!

Fermi, Bose, open, closed, orientable?
Vibrations
Modes! They become particles (particles!)
Vibrations
They become particles (particles!)
Vibrations
They become particles (particles!)
Become particles (particles!)
Become particles (many many many many particle…)
Modes modes modes modes modes modes modes!
Oh mamma mia mamma mia,
Such a sea of particles!
A tachyon, with a dilaton and gravity-vity-VITY

(rock out!)

Now we need ten dimensions and I’ll tell you why
(anomaly cancellation!)
So to get down to 4D we compactify!
Oh, Kahler!
(Kahler manifold)
Manifolds must be Kahler!
(Complex Reimannian symplectic form)
If we wanna preserve
Any of our super-symmetry

(Superstrings of type I, IIa and IIb)
(Heterotic O and Heterotic E)
(All are one through S and T duality)
(Thank you Ed Witten for that superstring revolution and your new M-theory!)

(Maldecena!)
(Super-Yang-Mills!)
(Type IIB String!)
Dual! Dual!
(In the AdS/CFT)
(Holography!)

Molecules and atoms
Light and energy
Time and space and matter
All from one united
Theory

Any way you quantize…

Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science
Original music by Queen

Interesting piece in The Drum on how Netflix does their research…

Vice president of content acquisition for Netflix, Kelly Merryman, revealed this week that the company she works for routinely use piracy sites to determine what television shows the company will buy. By gauging the popularity of shows on sites like The Pirate Bay, the company is able to determine which shows are really popular and help assist in making licensing decisions.

That’s brilliant. And it seems to be working well. The article goes on to cite “BitTorrent traffic in Canada dropped 50% after Netflix started there three years ago.” Their market skews younger, and they’re far more likely to be “cord-cutters” and view their favorite video entertainment online. Pay TV’s base is eroding and they know it.

Surely it won’t be long before pay TV services — cable, satellite and fiber — finally get smart by offering real à la carte service and dispense with the increasingly-annoying table d’hôte way of doing business. Their customers don’t want 15 shopping channels or 12 faith-based networks. They want CNN, The Weather Channel, ESPN and The Food Network — and maybe some locals. Offering packages of 200 channels for a fixed price is getting old.

Watch this video edit (4:55 RT) of actor Kevin Spacey speaking at the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival last month. He concludes content should be served/offered any way the customer wants it — movie theater, TV screen, iPad, streamed, iPhone et. al.

Here’s the full video (46:01 RT). Either one will lead you agree with his conclusion.

UPDATE: this report from Ian King of Bloomberg really gets into the details…

…a generation of technology-savvy, budget-conscious consumers who are taking advantage of the availability of high-speed Internet connections and the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, lower-cost TVs and other gadgets that make it easy to consume downloadable shows in a snap.

The shift in viewing habits is putting pressure on cable, satellite and phone companies by pinching subscriber numbers, which may have a knock-on effect on revenue growth. The impact on the $80 billion pay-TV industry is already being felt, with 2013 on pace to be the first year ever that total U.S. pay-TV subscriptions will decline, falling to 100.8 million from 100.9 million last year, according to researcher IHS.

And while 3.2 million new U.S. households were set up in the last three years, the paid-TV industry only added 250,000 subscriptions in that same period, according to market-researcher SNL Kagan.

Great program for encouraging interest in STEM education: FMA Live! Now with “hip hop” in the press release.

Created by Honeywell and NASA in 2004, FMA Live! is an award-winning, 45-minute, live hip hop science education program targeted at the middle school level. The FMA Live! tour has traveled 99,969 miles to bring science to life for over 323,484 students at 887 middle schools in all 48 contiguous U.S. states, Mexico and Canada.

Pink Floyd has sold more than 40 million copies of the album “Dark Side of the Moon” — the title refers to lunacy, not the actual Moon.

Today’s APOD features something we’ve never seen before: the rotating moon…

No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That’s because the Earth’s moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has now been composed. The above time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24 seconds, the video clearly shows that the Earth side of the Moon contains an abundance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dominated by bright lunar highlands. Two new missions are scheduled to begin exploring the Moon within the year, the first of which is NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). LADEE, which launched just over a week ago, is scheduled to begin orbiting the Moon in October and will explore the thin and unusual atmosphere of the Moon. In a few months, the Chinese Chang’e 3 is scheduled to launch, a mission that includes a soft lander that will dispatch a robotic rover.

Maybe Syd Barrett can see it.

SES declares victory over Eutelsat in dispute over access to 500 MHz of Ku-band broadcast frequencies over the heart of Europe.
[Space News – 09/16/2013]

Satellite Launch – Space News

U.S. to spend almost $44 billion on launches in 2014 – 2018.
[Space News – 09/16/2013]

Hughes, SES and Row 44 sign trans-atlantic broadband agreement.
[Satellite Spotlight – 09/16/2013]

FRANSAT unveils its “FRANSAT Connect” interactive portal using the HbbTV standard at IBC .
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/16/2013]

Blue Origin files formal protest of proposed shuttle pad lease to SpaceX.
[Space News – 09/16/2013]

Newtec signs agreement with Liquid Telecom of Africa to provide a VSAT Broadband Hub and thousands of VSAT terminals.
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/16/2013]

Newtec and Telediffusioin d’Alterie sign multimillion Euro contract to deploy several of Newtec’s interactive satellite terminals running on the ASBU Multimedia Exchange Network over Satellite.
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/16/2013]

Cygnus launch delayed due to weather and an inoperative cable; following system tests launch is expected to be scheduled for September 18.
[SatNews – 09/15/2013]

Launch of Canadian satellite CASSIOPE by SpaceX postponed; new launch date to be determined.
|SatNEws – 09/15/2013]

Rukmini, India’s first exclusive satellite for military applications, expected to be operational by the end of September.
[Financial Express – 09/13/2013]

Inmarsat and Stream Communications partner to deliver ‘machine to machine’ anywhere.
[Space Daily – 09/15/2013]

Inmarsat reports that governments and militaries in more than a dozen countries worldwide have successfully trialed or are evaluating its new L-TAC service for communications-on-the-move.
[Space Daily – 09/15/2013]

ATCi tailors Simulsat transport system for European News Gathering and Content Aggregation market.
[Hispanic Business – 09/14/2013]

The third Lockheed Martin-built Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite is encapsulated into payload fairing for planned September 18 launch.
[Your Communications News – 09/13/2013]

TrustComm’s expansion of its VSAT and engineering service portfolio to include Mobile Satellite Services is latest step in plan to become a single source provider for end-to-end commercial satellite communications.
[Via Satellite – 09/13/2013]

Comtech Telecommunications gets $1.3 million in additional orders for equipment to support mobile network upgrade and expansion in Southeast Asia.
[Hispanic Business – 09/13/2013]

ATCi displays low cost flyaway antenna package for broadcasting video channels at IBC 2013.
[Broadway World – 09/13/2013]

Eutelsat and Samsung announce partnership to promote Ultra HD.
[Sys-Con – 09/13/2013]

Garuda Indonesia takes first two of ten 777-300ER aircraft to be fitted with Panasonic Avionics Corporation’s Global Communications Services.
[Via Satellite – 09/13/2013]

Land remote sensing satellite – Azernews

Azerbaijan plans to expand production capacities to manufacture satellite equipment.
[Azernews – 09/13/2013]

Futron forecast expects market for satellite communications to grow at 6% CAGR through 2021. [Digital Journal – 09/12/2013]

AEHF expands global communications for Allied missions; Netherlands makes call on protected communications satellite.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/12/2013]

According to Carrier ID survey carried out by the Satellite Interference Reduction Group and Newtec, 93% of respondents suffer from satellite interference at least once a year; 17% continuously.
[IT News Online – 09/12/2013]

Earth imagery photo – Space News

Satellite imagery firms in U.S. and Europe push for permission to sell sharper imagery.
[Space News – 09/12/2013]

PSSI Global and Juch-Tech break North American satellite transmission speed record using NS3 technology from NovelSat.
Sacramento Bee – 09/12/2013]

Inmarsat Maritime CEO tells audience at International Shipping Week that satellite communications systems can reduce vessels’ operating costs by as much as 10 percent.
[Ship & Bunker – 09/12/2013]

Northrop Grumman delivers precision pointing unit for highly sophisticated suite of antennas for Air Force’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite.
[PR Newswire – 09/12/2013]

C-COM Satellite Systems gets type approval from Avanti Communications for its iNetVu Ka-98G antenna system.
[SatNews – 09/12/2013]

Panasonic and Intelsat collaborate to offer communications over fastest growing air travel region on the high-performance EpicNG platform.
[Via Satellite – 09/12/2013]

Ericsson, Eutelsat, Globecast, Newtec, and SKY Italia successfully complete series of live tests of an end-to-end satellite-based delivery chain for contribution of live images in 4K (Ultra HD).
[Via Satellite – 09/12/2013]

Broadcom advances Direct Broadcast satellite chips at IBC.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/12/2013]

Calgary-based Blackline GPS partners with Iridium to provide mobile safety monitoring anywhere on earth.
[Calgary Herald – 09/12/2013]

Emerging regions drive transition in satellite industry into new environment with increased competition between satellite operators and grater uncertainty on demand usage and associated pricing conditions – Euroconsult.
[Via Satellite – 09/11/2013]

Goce satellite – BBC

European Space Agency prepares for its Goce gravity-mapping satellite to fall from orbit, burning up as it descends.
[BBC – 09/11/2013]

SiRRAN EXPLORER Mobile Net powers new Cobham range of satellite-optimized portable GSM/3G/LTE kits.
[Hispanic Business – 09/11/2013]

Mexico selects Lockheed Martin and Atlas V launch vehicle for its Morelos-3 communications satellite launch.
[UPI – 09/10/2013]

Smart Communications of the Philippines enters business deal with Thuraya to expand its satellite coverage to two-thirds of the world.
[GMA News – 09/10/2013]

Iridium says it will expand its ongoing Iridium Next modernization with dozens of additional satellites to be built by Thales that will carry only third party hosted payloads for governments and private customers.
[Wall Street Journal – 09/09/2013]

Astrium sells Telesat new South America satellite.
[BN Americas – 09/09/2013]

Hughes expands rotary-wing SATCOM capabilities, increasing data throughput for ISR applications.
[Avionics Intelligence – 09/09/2013]

Hughes Communications India will provide managed tele-education network to the Delhi Academy of Medical Sciences.
[Information Week – 09/09/2013]

Satellite camera installation, Tsavo National Park – NBC

Covert satellite cameras may help catch animal poachers in Africa and eventually other countries where poaching is an issue.
[NBC News – 09/09/2013]

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo completes successful second flight test.
[R&D Magazine – 09/06/2013]

NSR’s Satellite-Based Earth Observation, 5th Edition, provides a complete and detailed analysis of the EO data vertical markets and their evolution over the next 10 years.
[NSR – September 2013}

NSR’s Maritime Satellite Markets focuses exclusively on the maritime satellite communications market – from narrowband MSS to future MEO-HTS deployments.|
[NSR – Septemer 2013]

Ian O’Neill’s piece on a “supermassive peanut” at the center of our galaxy caught my attention.

The central bulge of our galaxy contains around 10,000 million stars and spans thousands of light-years, but due to the obscuring dust and gas intermingled with this stellar hive, the overall shape of the bulge is poorly understood. Previous data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) project suggested the central galactic bulge was X-shaped — in a similar fashion to other galaxies observed in the Universe.

But using high resolution infrared data from VISTA, a better idea of the bulge’s shape has been mapped.

By focusing on 2 million red giant stars whose properties are well understood, very precise distances could be calculated. By doing this, a 3-dimensional model of the galactic bulge could be constructed.

“We find that the inner region of our Galaxy has the shape of a peanut in its shell from the side, and of a highly elongated bar from above”, said Ortwin Gerhard, co-investigator and leader of the Dynamics Group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany. “It is the first time that we can see this clearly in our own Milky Way, and simulations in our group and by others show that this shape is characteristic of a barred galaxy that started out as a pure disc of stars.”

The second team of astronomers led by Sergio Vásquez, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, took a different approach to arrive at a similar conclusion. By comparing images of the central bulge 11 years apart using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, tiny shifts due to the motions of the bulge stars across the sky were measured. This betrayed the shape of the bulge.

“The stars we have observed seem to be streaming along the arms of the X-shaped bulge as their orbits take them up and down and out of the plane of the Milky Way. It all fits very well with predictions from state-of-the-art models!” said Vásquez.

Both groups of astronomers believe that the center of the galaxy started out as a flat disk of stars, but over the aeons became buckled and warped, eventually settling into the modern day “peanut.”

Check out the ESO’s Top 100 images, some of which are available for purchase as HUGE prints here.

Yes, that’s a real frog.

LADEE Frog Photobomb
Date: 6 Sep 2012

A still camera on a sound trigger captured this intriguing photo of an airborne frog as NASA’s LADEE spacecraft lifts off from Pad 0B at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The photo team confirms the frog is real and was captured in a single frame by one of the remote cameras used to photograph the launch. The condition of the frog, however, is uncertain.

Credit: NASA Wallops Flight Facility/Chris Perry

There’s no way you can catch it when watching the video (duh)…

iPhone 5s: 64-bit processor and it comes in “Space Gray.” Awesome.

Falcon 9

Musk says SpaceX is being “extremely Paranoid” as it readies for demonstration flight of an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket in California this month.
[Space News – 09/06/2013]

CubeSats’ communication range may be significantly extended with inflatable antennae.
[R&D Magazine – 09/06/2013]

ViaSat files another patent suit against Space Systems/Loral.
[socaltech – 09/06/2013]

Brazil will attempt to escape the prying eyes of the NSA with a new satellite and fiber optic cables.
[Reuters – 09/05/2013]

French government creates joint government-industry grouping called Cospace to avoid repeat of policy disputes between French industry and CNES in 2012.
[Space News – 09/05/2013]

Pressure mounts on Orbital Sciences; it may be needed for an additional cargo run to the International Space Station as soon as December because SpaceX will likely not be ready to fly.
[Space News – 09/05/2013]

Houston Texas announces that it is pushing forward with plans to build the nation’s latest spaceport.
[Space News – 09/05/2013]

Eutelsat and Samsung partner on world first Ultra HD satellite broadcast direct to Ultra HD TVs.
[The Wall Street Journal – 09/05/2013]

Iridium, Thales Alenia Space, and Harris to announce new hosted payload business initiative at World Satellite Business Week.
[4-traders – 09/05/2013]

European Satellite Day 2013 spotlights key benefits of satellite services for European citizens.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/05/2013]

DISA selects TeleCommunication Systems to provide managed satellite services.
[Satellite Spotlight – 09/05/2013]

Alphasat satellite

Euroconsult report puts growth of MSS terminal base at 10% over past five years, to 2.9 million active MSS terminals worldwide in 2012, and revenue of $1.5 billion in that year.
[Space Daily – 09/05/2013]

French Minister of Higher Education and Research announces that the government is allocating 25 million euros to an upgrade of the Ariane launcher.
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/05/2013]

Gottlieb International Group to present “Battle of the Satellite Services” webinar on the future of Global Xpress, EpicNG, O3b and Viasat in maritime, Oil and Gas and Aviation on September 26, 2013.
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/05/2013]

B-2 Bomber

B-2 bomber to get communications upgrade to use Very Low Frequency signals bounced off the atmosphere to replace Ultra High Frequency system using expiring DISA satellites, while waiting for new satellite systems.

[U.S. Air Force – 09/05/2013]

O3b and Kymeta sign agreement to develop flat panel satellite antenna for ultra-fast and affordable broadband services around the world.
[Fort Mill Times – 09/05/2013]

Comtech EF Data introduces new CDM-625A advanced satellite modem.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/05/2013]

Mano Cruises to further increase scope of communications for guests and crew using existing partner MTN.
[SatNews – 09/05/2013]

Thuraya is set to launch a new edition of its satellite adaptor for the iPhone. [Lync Migration Resource Center – 09/05/2013]

TrustComm expands its portfolio to include mobile satellite services in partnership with Inmarsat, Thuraya, Boeing, and Cobham.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/05/2013]

Eutelsat selects SAT Corporation to upgrade satID system.
[Via Satellite – 09/05/2013]

Doosan selects ORBCOMM to deliver end-to-end telematics solution for Doosan and their customers and dealers for global deployment.
[Satellite Evolution Group – 09/05/2013]

Global VSAT Forum to run a contest on its booth at IBC 2013 in the form of an interactive exercise in broadcast uplink (SNG) skills.
[SatNews – 09/05/2013]

NASA moon satellite to be launched this week will test laser communication back to Earth expected to provide record-breaking 600 megabits-per-second downloads.
[Technology Review – 09/04/2013]

Al Jazeera says it can categorically state that Egyptian authorities are deliberately jamming its satellite signals and forcing it to change frequencies so viewers can tune in.
[Space News – 09/04/2013]

Anatel awards O3b Networks rights to operate in Brazil.
[Via Satellite – 09/04/2013]

Inmarsat and Telespazio join to develop offerings for energy and M2M.
[Via Satellite – 09/04/2013]

C-Com Satellite Systems forms partnership with Vislink to promote, market, sell and support C-Com iNetVu products.
[Satellite Spotlight – 09/04/2013]

Iridium Transceiver Antenna System can communicate outside traditional cellular networks to provide fleet and asset management services worldwide.
[Thomasnet – 09/04/2013]

New NSR report foresees strong satellite operator revenue growth, but the potential for oversupply looms over the industry.
[Yahoo Finance – 09/03/2013]

India’s GSAT-7 satellite is successfully positioned in geosynchronous orbit.
[NetIndian – 09/03/2013]

USGS Landsat 8 Photo

USGS interactive photos show Yosemite National Park before and after the Rim fire devastation.
[USGS 09/03/2013]

Team works to build ferro-liquid ion thruster for nanosatellites.
R&D Magazine – 09/03/2013]

SSL-built multi-mission satellite, EUTELSAT 25B/Es’hail 1, is successfully performing post-launch maneuvers.
[Your Communication News – 09/03/2013]

TeleCommunication Systems wins $58.3 million contract to supply managed satellite services to the U.S. Marine Corps.
[Satellite Spotlight – 09/03/2013]

Harris completes advanced weather-data simulators, part of $740 million program to help build the country’s next-generation weather-satellite network.
[Orlando Sentinel – 09/03/2013]

SatLink is selected by i24 News to distribute international news channels.
[Via Satellite – 09/03/2013]

Russia orbits Israeli communications satellite AMOS-4, the largest and most sophisticated commercial satellite built in Israel to date.
[Space Fellowship – 09/01/2013]

Satellite Executive September 2013 issue includes: “The Danger of Overcapacity” – Jan Grondrup-Vivanco, “4K TV Technology Push or Demand Pull?” – Elisabeth Tweedie, “What’s Behind a Satellite Dish?” – Robert Bell, and Verticals and Horizontals: Satellite’s Expanding Marketplace” – Martin Jarrold.
[Satellite Markets – September 2013]

 WBMSAT satellite communications consulting services

SkyTruth’s view of the Bakken from space. The red stuff at the upper left is rig lighting and flaring from oil and gas drillers working the Bakken Shale. The bright area on the right is the city of Minneapolis.

The folks over at SkyTruth are doing a really good job, using existing observation spacecraft and they’re ready to send up a balloon to document what other ways frackers are polluting.

I missed this coverage over the summer…

Thanks to that and lots of other people, they’ve met their funding goal on indiegogo. The project…

SkyTruth is teaming up with Space for All  for a skytruthing mission over the massive Bakken shale oil and gas fields in western North Dakota.  We’re planning to launch a sensor package from the ground to the edge of space tethered to a high altitude balloon rig, courtesy of Space for All.  We will combine on the ground observations with detections from the balloon rig and measurements we are making from space to measure the amount of natural gas flaring there.  This will help us test the accuracy of our satellite-based flaring detections so we can do a better job of monitoring and reporting on the amount of environmentally damaging (and unnecessary and wasteful) flaringthat happens in the Bakken and elsewhere in the world.  The more good data we can collect on when, where, and how much, the more we can help groups that are working to reduce and eliminate it. This is what we mean by skytruthing – using remote sensing and mapping to understand and change the world.

Read more about the Bakken and oil shale fracking in this great piece by National Geographic: The New Oil Landscape

Watch their video pitch…

Hat tip to Motherboard.