That is the title of this posting from Phil Plait, mister Bad Astronomy himself. I have to mention it here because this is exactly the kind of thing comics (and everything else) need more of; support for science and education in the sciences. How are we ever going to get stellar exploration going if we won’t even go back to the Moon, or get ready to go to Mars? Somebody else will be building the future if we don’t get education in the sciences and math fully funded and supported here.
One of the most interesting Apps not included in NASA Apps is 3D Sun. This is a display interface taking the data-stream output of two satellites orbiting Sol which, between them, cover around 87% of the sun’s surface at any given time. The results are generated into a 3D image on your screen, giving you a near-realtime idea of what exactly is going on the Sun. That also gives you some great advance warning about possible disruptive events that might be about to overtake you, your computer systems, your communications networks, and and other non-hardened systems that work on electricity or magnetism. The sun is the origin of most (but not all) disruptive events that might come from space and mess with your systems, and there are factors which can mitigate even its effects on your environment. To refine the results and factor in other influences, the NASA Space Weather App gives you most of the rest of the tool set you need. It includes data sources from NOAA, GOES, and SOHO, among more.
Last time I mentioned NASA’s Swiss Army Knife first App, the NASA App. This time, a few quick links to the modules they broke off from that monster and turned into stand alone quick loading tools. First off is the NASA TV streaming App, for watching in realtime, and comes in both an iPhone and HD iPad version. Then from JPL comes Space Images, with a monster collection of pictures that come in iPhone, iPad, and Android flavors. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent stand alone App for Twitter like there is in the NASA App, but there is a NASA Tweetup page that allows you to sync your mobile tweet interface of choice with other like minded space cases heading for a specific real world event. That gives you some of the functionality of the first App, but there are also some new Apps that do entirely different things: more on them next time.
Online gamers have solved the protein structure of AIDS, doing in 3 weeks what scientists had been trying to accomplish for ten years, according to the Cambridge BlueSci online magazine. That brings scientists a step closer to being able to design an attack vector for the virus and creating a vaccine and cure.
They pulled this off using an online multiplayer game called Foldit, where they attempt to manipulate 3D images of proteins to produce the highest scoring (lowest energy) structure. You are scored by how well you compact the protein, get rid of residues, and avoid spatial clashes. When you complete a puzzle you get a new puzzle as your reward. Human pattern analysis skill sets have yet to be programed into computers (although some projects for that are at the research stage), so this melding of the best skills from humans and computers has a world of potential for solving all kind of medical and organic chemistry problems, which could end up saving a lot of lives. Plus winning a good game is always fun; if you want to play yourself got to the Center for Game Science and download a free copy of the game.
In fact, they wish you would! The International Space Apps Challenge is looking for folks to create Apps for smartphones and tablets based on any aspect of space research and exploration. In fact it goes beyond that, they are looking for practical applications that will take data from space agencies around the planet and use it to resolve real world problems. Early warning of dangerous weather events as seen from satellites, air and noise pollution mapping, using networks of cell phone as a large aperture telescope are just a few of the recommended ideas. The challenge has not kicked off yet but you can sign up and start submitting ideas now.
Starting today and running until October 2nd, the Science Museum in London is running the Player Live Gaming Festival. This event is broken into a couple of pieces, with the first part on September 28th being an adults-only presentation. It includes a smartphone driven scavenger hunt, a “silent disco” in the computing and math area and a round of speed dating in the temporary exhibit section. The Punk Science and Pub Quiz events also look pretty entertaining. The second round, on October 1st and 2nd, will effectively turn the museum (or at least the shipping gallery) into a life size game of Battleship. If more museums did this kind of thing we might find more people interested in learning. The museum is located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London.