News
The Sun, the Moon and the stars at Christmas, and a side-note on exoplanets
We celebrate Christmas this year with additional cosmic excitement as the “ring of fire” solar eclipse was visible across South-East Asia this Boxing Day, captured also in these 2 beautiful shots (above and below) from friends in Singapore. We also celebrate this year’s Nobel physics prize being awarded to exoplanets that are planets that orbit around stars that are outside our solar system (here’s NASA on exoplanets). The discovery was made by 2 physicists Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz in 1995 of the first exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star, showing conclusively that the sun isn't the only star to host...
Thinking of the arts and sciences of the Moon at mid-autumn, aka “mooncake festival”
On the occasion of the mid-autumn festival in this year of the 50th anniversary of mankind’s landing on the Moon, we thought to "fly everyone to the Moon" and share something about the origin, the artistic and the scientific connections to this day and the stories related to these. (For those interested to see the full Moon from a plane, you can track the Moon's position from anywhere at mooncalc.org and use planefinder.net to see flight routes.) Origin: the Moon and harvests The early form of the festival was derived from the custom of moon worship during the Zhou Dynasty over 3,000 years ago. ...
Sharing some of our favourite quotes and writings about the sciences and the arts
“He who posseses science and art, has religion; he who possesses neither science nor art, let him get religion.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “There is time, so much time, for the stars' light to scatter off the eddies of chance, into our minds, there to build ever more perfect loves, invisible cities, our own constellations.” - from The Devil teaches Thermodynamics, Roald Hoffman, Nobel laureate for Chemistry “Study the science...
Man’s landing on the Moon in 11 numbers
0 – As far as we know, no human being has lived on the Moon yet (although there are a number of teams working on achieving that, much fictional accounts, and many poetic and philosophical imaginations)! 1/4 - Diameter of the Moon compared to that of the Earth, so it would have taken less time to walk around the Moon, not that anyone has tried 1/6 – Gravity on the Moon is 1/6 of that on Earth, so it requires less work to walk (and you weigh 6 times less too)! 1 – the Moon is the only satellite orbiting...
Why we called ourselves “when 1+1 equals infinity” ….
We came up with this name because it highlights human creativity, resourcefulness and inventiveness (which also makes us different from machines). If we also take a moment to ponder, we would realise that adding 1 thing in a category to another thing in a different category can result in almost anything. Just some examples … One half-apple + one half-apple = 2 half-apples or one whole-apple Hydrochloric acid + Sodium bicarbonate (i.e. common baking soda) = Sodium chloride (i.e. common salt) + water + carbon dioxide Water + carbon dioxide (absorbed into a leave and under sunlight) = Chlorophill and...