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Saturday, May 04, 2002

Evolution of a Leonid Meteor Debris Trail
This interesting series of photos shows the development of a Leonid meteor's debris trail. It is amazing how long these trails stay visible.
Leonids Meteor Storm 2001
"This meteor left behind a glowing trail that was visible for more than ten minutes as it was re-shaped by the air currents in the upper atmosphere. The rest of the pictures show the trail's evolution as it expanded and moved down towards the horizon. By the time I took the sixth photograph in this series, the trail was twice as long as the original image of the meteor itself, and spanned almost the entire horizontal field of view of the camera."
via SpaceWeather.com:Leonids 2001 Meteor Gallery
posted at 5/4/2002 12:30:54 PM

The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels
This American Scientist article is a very interesting and readable statistical analysis of the causes of war. Unfortunately, the conclusion is that wars appear to be basically random events.
American Scientist - Computing Science
"The residuum of all these noncauses of war is mere randomness—the notion that warring nations bang against one another with no more plan or principle than molecules in an overheated gas. In this respect, Richardson’s data suggest that wars are like hurricanes or earthquakes: We can’t know in advance when or where a specific event will strike, but we do know how many to expect in the long run. We can compute the number of victims; we just can’t say who they’ll be."
"Thus the data offer no reason to believe that wars are anything other than randomly distributed accidents."
via Slashdot
posted at 5/4/2002 12:06:43 PM