Musings of a Babylon Lurker

New record for Gamma Ray Bursts

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 | astronomy, science | No Comments

On April 23th the most powerful gamma ray burst ever recorded was detected by the Swift telescope. More about can be found here at NASA’s site.

With that type of bursts we look back in time, this time more than 13000 million years, this belongs to the earliest generations of stars in the known Universe. Impressive.

Tags: astronomy, cosmology, gamma ray burst

Doctor Who Easter Special – super short – spoiler free

Saturday, April 11th, 2009 | Doctor Who, film and tv, scifi | No Comments

I have just been watching the first of the 2009 “Doctor Who Specials”.

I enjoyed the story quite a lot, and had some really good laughs at the more comedic elements. hilarity in a nutshell.

This is one of the things I love with Doctor Who : It tells a good story without taking itself too seriously.

Tags: Doctor Who

Science and imagination

Monday, April 6th, 2009 | blog, science | No Comments

I just stumbled over an article in the “Bad Astronomy” blog, a reply to someone claiming that science is devoid of imagination.

I particularly like the “boiled down” version of the reply :

“Without imagination, science is a dictionary”

since without imagination science (and technology would never have brought us anywhere, certainly we would not be discussing the topic on the Internet.

Tags: imagination, science