4753023
submission
niktemadur writes:
In light of an Air Comet pilot's report to Air France, Airbus and the Spanish civil aviation authority that, during a Monday flight from Lima to Lisbon "Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds", the Cosmic Variance blog team on the Discover Magazine website muses on the question "What is the probability that, for all flights in history, one or more could have been downed by a meteor?". Taking into account total flight hours and the rate of meteoric activity with the requisite mass to impact on Earth (approximately 3,000 a day), some quick math suggests there may be one in twenty odds of a plane being brought down in the period from 1989 to 2009.
Intriguingly, in the aftermath of TWA flight 800's crash in 1996, the New York Times published a letter by Columbia professors Charles Hailey (physics) and David Helfand (astronomy), in which they stated the odds of a meteor-airplane collision for aviation history up to that point: one in ten.
4538705
submission
niktemadur writes:
In an uncanny case of life-imitates-Monty-Python, the BBC reports of a North Carolina teenager who entered an internet cafe with a banana concealed under his T-shirt, said it was a gun and demanded money. The owner of the shop and its' customers overcame the hapless thief and called for help. When the police arrived, witnesses reported that the teenager had eaten the banana in the interim. In addition to attempted armed robbery, officers joked they may also charge the 17-year old with destroying evidence and took pictures of the banana peel instead.
No mention in the article, however, on how patrons might have defended themselves against a pointed stick.
1327673
submission
niktemadur writes:
The BBC reports that a French team of
stellar seismologists, using the
COROT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits) Space Telescope, have converted stellar oscillations into sound patterns, a relatively new technique that, according to Professor Eric Michel of the Paris Observatory, is already giving researchers new insight into the inner workings of stars. The subtly pulsating, haunting sounds are very similar to artist Aphex Twin's minimalistic nineties album "Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2", only stripping away what little melody it had and leaving just the beat.
These and many more recordings from space can be accessed at the Jodrell Bank Centre (or Center if you prefer) for Astrophysics website, also known as the Jodcast.
