Space: Curiosity Says Hello to Mars with a Million Watt Nuclear Laser

Not enough attention has been paid to the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars on August 5, 2012. And there really should, because there's a nuclear powered robot on another fucking planet. Head's up, kids, there's some seriously awesome science going on here.

Let's start off with a bit of basics. Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Earth and Mars, can be anywhere from 55 to 400 million kilometers apart. I'm sorry, let me say that again: 400 MILLION KILOMETERS. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. The Curiosity Rover, however, traveled a paltry 350 million km. The landing cycle, as Curiosity dropped it's 1 tonne, 2.5 billion dollar ass on the Red Planet like a nuclear powered sack of awesome, became known as the "7 minutes of terror" because of the 14 minute delay of transmission between the third and fourth rocks from the Sun combined with the seven minute decent; NASA scientists had to wait for seven terrifying minutes to find out if Curiosity landed safely, or in a highly expensive pile of rubble.

After spending a few days stretching its arms and testing it's systems, combined with a four day software update, Curiosity is ready to get down to business, and it's first order of business it to interrogate a rock. With a million fucking watt laser. Stop and let that sink in. It's okay, I'll wait. The Chemistry and Camera instrument (hereby known by its far more impressive name, ChemCam) developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is capable of firing a more than million watt laser in order to figure out the composition of different objects. Over a 10 second period it managed to fire a pulse at the fist-sized Coronation rock 30 times, each pulse applied for five one-billionths of a second each.

"Fucking SCIENCE, bitches!"

The cam part of ChemCam comes into use after the laser has fired. The area of rock hit by the laser becomes a glowing plasma which the camera focuses on using a telescope and analyzes the light given off. Using three spectrometers (one for visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light), ChemCam can determine what elements are contained within the freshly obliterated rock. It's expected that thousands of “targets” will be analyzed in this way over the course of Curiosity’s 24 month mission.

"Fuck you, Johnny 5"

So, if you're interested in finding out more about Curiosity, and you damn well should be, spend some time with our good friend, the Internet. There's a metric shit-tonne of stuff out there about this, and lord knows if you're reading this article, you can find others. Probably with far less colourful language.

Geek Culture: Life at the Googleplex

Ever think you have the wrong job? Even if you have an awesome job, with great pay and fantastic perks, you don't have anything compared to what the folks who work for Google do.

From amazing cafeterias to sleeping pods - yes, sleeping pods - Google employees definitely have it good. But besides being able to ride around the office on scooters, Google’s employees have another thing to be happy about. Google employees are the best-paid in the IT industry. In fact, they make 23% more than the IT industry's market pay average, followed by Amazon at 17%, and both Apple and Microsoft pay around 15% more than the average IT starting salary, according to a PayScale survey. So, if you can't get you can't get yourself a job at Google, there are still plenty of other places where you can get a fat paycheque.



Besides being paid significantly more than the average, Google employees also save money in tons of other ways, making their paychecks last longer. For example, Googlers don’t have to pay for their meals at the office. They have a wide array of chef-prepared choices, some of which come from produce grown right at the office. Employees can eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for free. They even have barbeques during the summer. So, Google employees can save on groceries.

In addition, they also have multiple gyms and trainers at the office, so there’s another major expense to cross off the list. Going to the doctor won’t cost you a dime either and you won’t have to make time to leave the office to visit your doc. Google has its own doctor on hand to help them out. If you don’t have time to do your laundry during the work week, you can just take it with you to work and do it at Google. Yes, you’ll still have to do your own laundry, but it’s free, and you can do it between making your own cappuccinos and espresso. You can also drop your laundry off for dry cleaning, alterations, and also shoe repair, which we assume will cost you something.

Besides saving money on food, coffee, fitness, health, and laundry, the Google office also has other perks, like sleep pods for taking naps, a masseuse on hand that gives you a free massage on your birthday, and use of a fleet of Toyota Prius hybrid cars. We could go on and on about why Google is an awesome place to work, but instead, you can just drool over the video below from the Travel channel.


There's a video on YouTube about life at the Googleplex, but I'll save you the hassle of hunting it down. While you watch it, I'm going to go talk to my boss about some changes that need to be made around here.

 

Entertainment: Viral Videos

The Internet has given a voice to everyone, and it's not always clear that that is a good thing. In fact, at times it is very clearly NOT a good thng. One of the more recent activties out there is a You Tube video that has swept the nation, and is widely regarded as one of the worst songs ever. Don't know what I mean? Just take a look. I warn you though, you may require a drill to get this little nugget out of your head.

What's worse is that it's spawned a series of equally questionable videos, which lead this geek to think that the music industry is definetly grasping at straws now. If my kid ever comes to me with a "check out this cool music, dad!" I will promptly sit her down with the first four Black Sabbath albums, the Ramones and a pile of other great records from when music was still good.