Cosmic Diary Logo

Meet the astronomers. See where they work. Know what they know.


The Project:

The Cosmic Diary is not just about astronomy. It's more about what it is like to be an astronomer.

The Cosmic Diary aims to put a human face on astronomy: professional scientists will blog in text and images about their lives, families, friends, hobbies and interests, as well as their work, their latest research findings and the challenges that face them. The bloggers represent a vibrant cross-section of female and male working astronomers from around the world, coming from five different continents. Outside the observatories, labs and offices they are musicians, mothers, photographers, athletes, amateur astronomers. At work, they are managers, observers, graduate students, grant proposers, instrument builders and data analysts.

Throughout this project, all the bloggers will be asked to explain one particular aspect of their work to the public. In a true exercise of science communication, these scientists will use easy-to-understand language to translate the nuts and bolts of their scientific research into a popular science article. This will be their challenge.

Task Group:

Mariana Barrosa (Portugal, ESO ePOD)
Nuno Marques (Portugal, Web Developer)
Lee Pullen (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
André Roquette (Portugal, ESO ePOD)

Jack Oughton (UK, Freelance Science Communicator)
Alice Enevoldsen (USA, Pacific Science Center)
Alberto Krone Martins (Brazil, Uni. S. Paulo / Uni. Bordeaux)
Kevin Govender (South Africa, S. A. A. O.)
Avivah Yamani (Indonesia, Rigel Kentaurus)
Henri Boffin (Belgium, ESO ePOD)

Party like it’s 1234567890! (Friday Geek Attack)

Today is 1234567890 Day!

Wait… what?

Unix Time is a system for measuring time by counting the number of seconds since midnight UTC, on January 1st 1970. Today, at 3:31:30 pm PST (around 1:31:30 am my time tomorrow morning) the number of seconds counted will be exactly 1234567890!

(The next cool thing of this sort is in 11 ½ years when the date will be XX:XX:XX X/XX/XX in Roman Numerals.)

I hope you all have appropriate celebrations planned :)  Check out the countdown timer so you know exactly when to pop the champagne, or just watch the seconds tick by here:


 
Thanks to Martin for pointing this out to me, and Claudio for the timer widget!
 

Share/Save/Bookmark

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 9:05 am and is filed under Fun, Geek Attack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1
  1. Stefan
    February 15th, 2009 at 10:33 pm

    Huh, that’s very geek! Thanks for pointing this out to us! I forgot to buy Champagne, by the way. I hope you celebrate Galilei’s birthday, too!?!

    Cheers,
    Stefan