Friday Ephemera
Cheetah expresses dissatisfaction with TV crew. // Via Coudal, King’s College Circle. Le Grand Mobile. // Air Guitar Pro. For those who take air guitar seriously. Only $27.00 // Going to the opera in the year 2000. A vision of things to come. (1882) // Power for Progress. Nuclear power in comic book form. (1971) // The Atomic Revolution. (1957) // Liquid mirrors for lunar telescopes. // The shadow of the Moon. // The lost cosmonauts. Fallen comrades. // The Socialist Worker is thrilled by the “stunning victory” of Hamas. More here and here. // Study reveals support for terrorism correlates strongly with support for political Islam. Summary here. // Ophelia Benson on Inayat Bungawala. “If we were not treated with respect then we were capable of forcing others to respect us.” With book burnings and death threats. // Tim Worstall on the scapegoats of Polly Toynbee. // Mick Hartley on art bollocks. // Peculiar maps. From imaginary places to the Stockholm Metro. (H/T, Chastity Darling) // Animals on the London Underground. Hens, penguins, elephants. // Via Artblog, le beatbox. Part deux. // The mixtape wallet. // Suck your child’s nose clear. (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // A brief history of barbed wire. // When jellyfish attack. // The illustrations of Alexei Vella. Borat, alfalfa, robots. (H/T, Drawn!) // Jack and Dick learn about eyes. (1958) // Via Coudal, Japanese pencil carvings. Honeycombs, spirals and moving parts. // And finally… Minnie, mooching.
Re: Liquid mirrors for lunar telescopes.
Surely it wouldn’t be too hard to heat up the Mercury? Perhaps this would mess up any infrared work but so?
And there’s the issue of payload weight to consider. I’m not sure how much mercury would be needed to make a mirror of sufficient size – possibly up to several metres across – but mercury is much heavier than the “ionic liquids” being worked on. And, of course, much more toxic.
Oh and here’s the welsh alternative to pencil carving!
http://www.carvingpatterns.com/spoons/spoons-1.htm
WRT Mercury mirrors.
a cubic meter of mercury weighs 13,545 (.850)KG
a 6 meter diameter mirror has a surface area of 28.27 meters
so 5 centimeters of depth would need 1.41 cubic meters of mercury weighing in at 19,149.9942 Kgs
OK it might be easier to extract mercury from lunar soil instead!
Thanks for the calculations. I’m guessing 1.41 cubic metres of mercury is not only weighty but expensive too. And it’s a matter of deep personal shame that I was unaware of the existence of Welsh love spoons.