There is an informal and anecdotal belief among Americans that if you dig a hole deep enough, eventually you would come out in China. This is theoretically possible if the hole is angled in the right way, but if you dig straight down and through the exact center of the earth from anywhere in the 48 contiguous United States, you'd come out in the Indian Ocean. Only in parts of Argentina or Chile would a straight hole emerge in China.

The map on this page allows you to approximately locate the place directly on the other side of the world from anywhere. The complementary red and black outlines are reversed, so that a place in the right place on the black outline map is directly opposite the place on the red outlines. The red outline map is "upside down", with south at the top . . .

I love maps. :)

The Other Side of the World

One of the mathematicians that I met at the NSA crypto conference has a hobby of manipulating palindromic numbers, like squaring them or looking for cases where adding palindromic numbers results in a palindromic sum. This webpage lists some of the things that have been observed.

Palindromic Sums

Are you looking for some help with a science fair project? If so, then you have come to the right place. The IPL will guide you to a variety of web site resources, leading you through the necessary steps to successfully complete a science experiment. If you have never done a science fair project before, it has been a while, or you just want to be sure you do a really great job be sure and look at the following websites for tips on what makes a good project before doing anything else. This way you will know ahead of time what will be expected of you.

I was helping a young friend come up with an idea for a science fair project, and this site looks like a great resource.

Internet Public Library: Science Fair Project Resource Guide

Not quite a live stream, but it does have images that are updated every 5 minutes. According to the webpage, this USGS cam is the closest-operating camera to the volcano, which means about 4 miles away. There were other cameras at the Johnston Ridge Observatory, but since the Level III alert went out earlier today, that facility has been evacuated, leaving only this webcam sending automated images.

Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

] Water owes its intrinsic blueness to selective absorption
] in the red part of its visible spectrum.

An interesting link that was sent to me by someone who was intrigued by my Antarctic webpage on "Why are icebergs blue?"

Why is water blue?

] Engineers deleted files from Spirit's flash memory and
] then reformatted it, ending two-and-a-half weeks of
] "crisis mode." Trosper said the long-distance repair job
] was nerve-racking "but in the end the spacecraft did
] exactly what we wanted it to do, and it performed
] perfectly and it's in great health right now."
]
] The problem was simply an accumulation of computer files
] that kept consuming the spacecraft's random-access memory
] "and eventually we ran out," said Glenn Reeves, the
] flight software architect.
]
] The computer software detected the memory shortfall as "a
] very severe error" and behaved properly in trying to
] solve the problem by resetting itself. However, each time
] the system came back up, it would detect the same severe
] error and reset, triggering a cascade of more than 130
] reboots.

I have to admit a certain amount of awe at this particular tech support job. I have enough trouble getting my own computers and servers to run, even when I'm sitting right there in front of them. The idea of doing this remotely, from millions of miles away, sending tiny bursts of signals to this little robot which is sitting on the freezing cold Martian surface all by itself, just amazes me.

Hats off to tech support!

NASA declares Mars Spirit rover 'healed' after memory repairs

] Spirit and Opportunity also were designed to carry all
] the communications and camera equipment that was split
] between Sojourner and its Pathfinder mothership.
]
] "We have effectively merged the capability of the
] Pathfinder lander and the Sojourner rover into one larger
] rover," said Mishkin, who heads the team that develops
] the instructions that will be sent to the two robots each
] day.

I grew up in Los Angeles, and have known Andy Mishkin for years. We went to elementary school together, and were usually in the same "gifted students" math classes through Junior High and High School.

I am sooooooooooo proud of him. After our high school reunion, he also gave me a tour of JPL, so I got to see firsthand the equipment they use for sending signals to the robots, and the practice courses that they've used for teaching the Rovers how to navigate.

Go Andy! :)

Andy Mishkin - Team Leader for Driving the Mars Rovers

] The International Space Station is experiencing a slow,
] steady drop in air pressure, and American and Russian
] flight controllers are investigating possible causes of
] the leak.

Uh oh. I wonder if this has anything to do with the "thud" that they heard a few weeks ago? They never did figure out where that came from.

Space Station Experiencing Drop In Air Pressure

] 0452 GMT (11:52 p.m. EST)
] SPIRIT IS ALIVE ON MARS! A "very strong signal" is now
] being received from the Spirit rover from the Gusev
] Crater on the surface of the Red Planet!

Excellent! Go NASA!

Yeeeeehaw! We landed one!

Spaceflight Now | Spirit Mission Status Center

] The second wave of a Martian invasion will start Saturday
] night with the arrival of NASA's Spirit rover on the Red
] Planet.

Timeline:

 - 12/25/2003: Europe's Beagle 2 (named after Darwin's
vessel) may or may not have come to a safe landing. The bouncing
landings can send a craft a half-mile away from an intended landing
site, so it may have bounced itself into a crater.

 - 12/25-12/31: NASA's Mars Odyssey tried to pick up
signals from Beagle 2 every time it passed over the landing site,
to no avail.

 - Saturday evening, 1/3: JPL's Mars Rover "Spirit" attempts
to bounce to a landing at 11:35 p.m. ET.

 - Tuesday, 1/6: The European mothership Mars Express
will orbit Mars and attempt to pick up a signal from the AWOL
Beagle 2. This will be the first of four attempts,
scheduled for January 6th, 12th, 13th, and 17th. More info about
the Search for Beagle here:
http://planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2003/beagle2search.html

 - January 24th, a second Mars Rover, Opportunity will
attempt to bounce to its own landing.

Good luck to all!

Elonka :)

Next attempt to land on Mars on Saturday, 1/3/2004