Penrose Life

Recently I was email interviewed by Siobhan Roberts for an article she was writing about Conway’s famous Game of Life.  The article has just been published in the New York Times, and I see I am in good company!

Not only that, but the piece was picked up by Clive Thompson who wrote a post for BoingBoing on the part of the article I was interviewed about: runing the Game of Life on a Penrose tiling.

Here are a couple of the many oscillators my students and I discovered (and named):

period 4 bat

period 9 moustache

You can find out more about the work my students and I have done on this here:

• The Art of Penrose Life (2016)
• The Game of Life Rules on Penrose Tilings: still life and oscillators (2010)
• Penrose Life: ash and oscillators (2005)

sequestering carbon, one Christmas at a time VIII

 His ’n’ hers Christmas presents:

’Twas the night of conjunction

… and it was cloudy, so we couldn’t see anything.  I’m so glad we looked yesterday, which was still pretty fantastic!

Stellarium lets us see how much closer the planets were:

conjunction (same scale as yesterday)

And look how much the moons have moved in a day!

’Twas the night before conjunction

The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is tomorrow.  But that means they are pretty close today, so we had a look. 

I spotted Jupiter immediately, and was looking for the fainter Saturn nearby, but couldn’t see anything.  So I looked through my binoculars at Jupiter, and Saturn popped out, so close, just above Jupiter!  Wow!  

I still couldn't see it with the naked eye, even knowing where to look, because it was so close to Jupiter it was being drowned out.  (My other half could see it, but he has better eyesight than me.)

Here are a couple of (highly cropped, but unenhanced) photos, taken with a Canon EOS 20D and a Canon EF 100-400mm zoom lens. 

17:32 GMT looking west; 400mm focal length; f/5.6; ISO-1600 equivalent;1s exposure

17:35 GMT looking west; 260mm focal length; f/5.6; ISO-1600 equivalent;1s exposure

When we saw these photos, we went, “Wow, are those Jupiter’s moons?”  Then we zoomed in, and saw a very faint dot to the right of Saturn, almost invisible, but in the same place on both photos: “Wow, is that Titan?”

So we went to Stellarium to find out.

17:30 GMT: Jupiter, its four Gallilean moons, and a star in line to the left, below Saturn and Titan.

So, yes! We had indeed seen Jupiter (naked eye), plus very close-by Saturn (binoculars), and then plus Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Titan (photography).

And tomorrow is conjunction, so Jupiter and Saturn will appear even closer together in the sky!

some normality

 It's certainly been an atypical year, but some things don't change.

cheeky devil

I caught some movement on the bird feeder out the cornerof my eye while eating breakfast.  I turned to see what bird was feeding now.

that’s no bird!

I crept closer to the window, to get a better shot.

that position can’t be good for your digestion

I tried for another shot, but I had been seen

time to make a getaway

No wonder we go through bird seed so quickly!

the eyes of the tiger

Back several decades ago, Esso had a TV ad with the most breathtaking pictures of tigers, including a fantastic final shot.

I was desperate for a copy of that pic, so actually wrote to Esso.  They were kind enough to send me a poster (I think they had many requests!), but it was the wrong picture.  It was a poster titled “The Cat’s Whiskers”, and was a lovely picture of a tiger, but wasn’t that picture.

The Cat’s Whiskers

Then yesterday we were watching an episode of Neil Brand’s short TV series on the music of TV; the episode was about adverts.  AND THERE IT WAS...

screen shot

That expression!  Those eyes!  “Look on my Face, ye Puny, and despair.”

I did a Google image search, which matched a few eBay sites that only led through to “The Cat’s Whiskers”.  So this fuzzy screenshot is the best I’ve got for now.  But still better than I had. 

Covid-19 diary: puns galore

We should all remember the name of the first person to get a Covid vaccination (except those in clinical trials): it was 90-year old Margaret Keenan.

We all will remember the name of the second person: it was 81-year old William Shakespeare.

And this, of course, led to so many puns.  My favourite has to be:

So, if Ms Keenan was patient 1A, was Mr Shakespeare “Patient 2B or not 2B”?

 

sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXI

 The latest batch:

snowy morning

 We woke to wintry scenes this morning: