mathoda.com

You may remember my praise for the speech by Hans Rosling in which he talks about the state of the world and how it’s changed over the last few decades (see my earlier post: http://www.mathoda.com/archives/54).

Professor Rosling used some incredible dynamic graphing software, created specifically to fit his needs, that allowed him to show a tremendous amount of data at the same time, and then show how it changed through time.

That software, called Gapminder, and the data Professor Rosling used is now easily accessible here, for anyone to play with. Definitely worth checking out: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/

Have you ever tried looking at a far away object, but had an annoyingly bright light source nearby? It helps to put your hand up, and block off the nearby light source or reflection. I think I first tried doing this at about age 5.

NASA’s latest telescope does something very similar, but on a more sophisticated level. The James Webb Space Telescope has an eight million-pixel infrared detector (that’s the telescope’s eye). In front of the detector there are 62,000 shutters measures 100 by 200 microns, or roughly the width of three to six human hairs, arranged in four identical grids in a layout of 171 rows by 365 columns. The shutters can close to help the detector only detect weaker sources of far away light.

For more, check out the NASA press release: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/jan/HQ_07014_Webb_microshutters.html

A video of the coolest multi-touch screen, ever: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271543545/bctid422563006