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More retro action from DC

DC Universe Retro-Action Mego Batman Figure
Batman




He's whats for dinner
Twilight Zone Kanamit Bobble Head
Kanamit




Don't look!
Clash of the Titans Medusa Bobble Head
Medusa




More Shock
BioShock 2 Big Daddy Bouncer Plush Doll
Big Daddy Bouncer Plush




More Funko Force!
Shadow Trooper Bobble Head
Shadow Trooper




She'll tell you what she told Telly
BBP05005sm.jpg
Tawky Tina




Uncloaked and Ready to Ship!
Bird of Prey
Bird of Prey




The Doctor is In
Dr McCoy Bobble Head
Bones




Fire Retros!
Star Trek Lunch Box
Lunch Box




Stargate SG-1
QMSG1001med.jpg
Event Horizon Coaster Set




He is Leonard Nimoy
Spock Bobble Head
Spock




She Gives He Takes
Captain Kirk Bobble Head
James Kirk




Identified Flying Objects
Star Trek Key Chains
ST Key Chain Set




Bioshock 2 in Stock too!
Bioshock 2 Eve Hypo Replica
Hypo Syringe




Don't be a Fool
Tricorder Replica
Science Tricorder




NASA gives him Gasa
Robby the Robot Bobble Head
Robby Bobble





Star Trek Fan Letter to Gene Roddenberry

Note to Joe from Gene

BroadBarn acquired this document from the Profiles in History auction house. It is a letter to Gene Roddenberry from a fan of the original Star Trek series. Gene thought enough of this letter to send it to Joe Jennings, Art Director of Star Trek, The Movie. For what may be the first time ever, the entire fan letter along with the note to Joe are being displayed to the public.

The Note to Joe from Gene is regarding a letter from an astute Star Trek fan. There appears to be enough clues in the fan's letter to Gene to pinpoint the time it was written. If anyone can decipher those clues, please suggest the date it was authored. The note to Joe Jennings may have been sent sometime prior to the production of the first Star Trek Movie, for which Joe was the Art Director. The fan letter could have been written several years earlier.






New Star Trek Convention Video goes viral!

The Star Trek Chicago '75 film premiered on YouTube, Feb 19 2010. Since then, It has been picked up by many Sci-fi related sites around the globe. "This convention was attended by the entire cast and may the reason for the video's popularity", says Rich Portnoy who filmed the event. "The fan response has been incredible", noting the barrage of comments on YouTube and personal emails, "One pointed out that David Gerrold, author of The Trouble with Tribbles, is the one kissing Nichelle Nichols". "I was also contacted by members of the The Dorsai Irregulars", Rich referring to the ones dressed like Klingons, "Turns out, they're a hardworking band of SciFi fans who [still to this day] provide operation support and crowd control for similar events." The number of views have now exceeded 22,000.

We wish to thank the following sites for making this video a success:


Pics from Star Trek Chicago '75

William Shatner pic 1 Deforest Kelley William Shatner pic 3 William Shatner pic 4 Arlene Martel William Shatner pic 5
Leonard Nimoy George Takei Nichelle Nichols William Shatner pic 2 Walter Koenig James Doohan


OpenMinds UFO Headlines

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:12:59 +0000 21:07:13 EDT -0400
Daily UFO Headlines 7/29/10
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:58:43 +0000 21:07:13 EDT -0400
Daily UFO Headlines 7/28/10
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:05:14 +0000 21:07:13 EDT -0400
Daily UFO Headlines 7/27/10
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:03:10 +0000 21:07:13 EDT -0400
Daily UFO Headlines 7/26/10
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:41:04 +0000 21:07:13 EDT -0400
Daily UFO Headlines 7/23/10


U.S. LHC Blog

July 31st, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400
End of Another Great 25×25 run

I’m on pixel shift in the ATLAS control room at the moment. We’ve had a very successful run, with stable LHC beams for about the past 12 hours. The luminosity of the detector is another step forward, because the past two nights have seen more bunches per beam than ever before. The lifetime of the beam is also excellent. You can see below that the luminosity of the beam has only been decaying very slowly for the past 9 or 10 hours.

The LHC reports that, after the dump, they will fill the LHC for another physics run. I’m actually not sure why they’re dumping so soon, given that it will likely take a few hours to dump and refill, and the beam still has a lot of oomph in it. Some ideas off the top of my head: maybe the LHC experts think it’s best to do the dump and refill during the day shift; maybe they think that the luminosity in the next run can be made even better; or maybe they want to get more practice and collect more data about the start of physics fills in this configuration. But the bottom line, for me and for ATLAS, is that when they dump the beam, we reset our detector and get ready for the next physics run.

Ok, gotta go, it’s time for the beam dump!

LHC Status from July 31, 2010 at 11:49 AM

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July 29th, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400
Right now: Trying to collide 25×25 bunches

As we speak there are 25 bunches of protons in both proton beams in the LHC.  See all those steps in the graph (red and blue lines)?  Each little step is one bunch being added, and each “big” step is 4 bunches being added.  So if you count the steps yourself you should get a total bunch count of 25 in each beam.  The red and blue lines correspond to the left-hand y-axis showing “Intensity”.

The energy of the proton beams is in black and goes with the right-hand y-axis, “Energy (GeV)”.  As I write this the protons are around 500-some GeV and being ramped up to 3500 GeV which should take about half an hour.

Once both beams are at 3500 GeV and they declare stable beams, it’s time to record some data with the most bunches in the LHC to date!

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July 27th, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400
ICHEP’s Biggest Day

Yesterday was, I suppose, the biggest and most formal day here at the 35th International Conference of High Energy Physics. I wore my suit, and took some ribbing from some of my colleagues for dressing up so much, but I’ve worn it for far less excuse and am not sorry in the slightest. It’s not every day, or even every ICHEP, that one hears an address from the President of the French Republic!

Mr. Sarkozy’s speech was great to hear. He is a very emotive, enthusiastic, and informal speaker, which made him relatively easy to understand for those in the audience (like me) with limited French. He didn’t claim to know the details of our work, and seemed to think we’re all a little weird, but spoke mostly about the importance of fundamental questions about the universe and his support for basic research. This was very well received indeed. He also talked a bit about the contributions of the French labs to the LHC and other projects, which is fair: France plays one of the central roles at CERN, and the French particle physics community has made significant contributions throughout the field. This is reflected in the excellent and informative conference that they’re hosting here in Paris.

ICHEP BanquetIf there was one thing I would ask to be improved for the next ICHEP, however, I wish there had been a bit more food at the banquet! You can see the banquet, which was held in the National Natural History Museum, at right. It was a very impressive museum — the main hall reminds me of the ATLAS cavern, and seems to be just about the same size — and the food was certainly varied and interesting. But the lines were long to get even a little of it, and we had to go out to dinner afterwards to be full.

Yesterday was also the final talk on the combined Tevatron Higgs results. Fermilab sent out the press release while we were still on coffee break, so I saw the excluded mass range on Twitter before going into the talk. (I overcame the temptation to shout out the answer at the start.) It was still a very entertaining talk, and obviously the details of how the measurement was done were as important to see as the final numbers. Of course, we all wish there had been more to see than mass limits in the expected range and a few possible tantalizing hints. We also had talks from the CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology on the LHC and from the spokespeople of the LHC experiments. Although we haven’t seen anything really new at the LHC yet, it’s clear that the accelerator and experiments are all making great progress in getting ready to make the exciting discoveries that we’ll see at future conferences!

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July 23rd, 2010 06:09:03 EDT -0400
Particles and Searches

Lots of us bloggers have been talking about ICHEP which is going on this week. I’m not attending the conference, although some of the work I’ve been doing is :) .
Now I’ve been turning my attention back to my physics analysis.  As of about a week ago we have 200 nb-1 (now closer to 300 nb-1) of data – which is about 1/50th of what I hope to get for an analysis.

I briefly mentioned that I’ll be doing a search in a previous post. Now I’d like to share a bit what this particle beast is. A leptoquark carries quantum numbers for both quarks and leptons. It would decay by generation such that it mixes families of quarks and leptons. So why do we think it exists? In a word: Symmetry.

Physicists love symmetry (and symmetry breaking :) ). Symmetry in forces (like electricity and magnetism), symmetry in families and generations of particles, symmetries everywhere. Since the quarks and leptons in the Standard Model have the same family structure it seems like there should be something that ties them together, like leptoquarks.

Granted this is a bit of an oversimplification, theorists have put in lots of work into understanding how these particles work. And now I’m going to be looking for them.

I’ll be giving updates over the next few months explaining more about these particles over the coming weeks.

-Regina

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USGS Earthquake Log

July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 2.5, Central California
36.438°N 120.228°W

Sunday, August 1, 2010 00:48:23 UTC
Saturday, July 31, 2010 05:48:23 PM at epicenter

Depth: 6.00 km (3.73 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 4.7, Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan
36.483°N 70.362°E

Saturday, July 31, 2010 23:34:56 UTC
Sunday, August 1, 2010 04:04:56 AM at epicenter

Depth: 208.50 km (129.56 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 5.1, New Britain region, Papua New Guinea
7.099°S 150.675°E

Saturday, July 31, 2010 23:12:59 UTC
Sunday, August 1, 2010 09:12:59 AM at epicenter

Depth: 69.60 km (43.25 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 2.6, Baja California, Mexico
32.447°N 116.018°W

Saturday, July 31, 2010 20:11:58 UTC
Saturday, July 31, 2010 01:11:58 PM at epicenter

Depth: 0.00 km (0.00 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 4.1, Fox Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska
52.698°N 169.682°W

Saturday, July 31, 2010 18:20:06 UTC
Saturday, July 31, 2010 10:20:06 AM at epicenter

Depth: 4.80 km (2.98 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 4.0, Fox Islands, Aleutian Islands, Alaska
52.668°N 169.642°W

Saturday, July 31, 2010 18:17:18 UTC
Saturday, July 31, 2010 10:17:18 AM at epicenter

Depth: 4.80 km (2.98 mi)


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July 31st, 2010 21:07:27 EDT -0400
M 5.4, north of Ascension Island
0.727°S 15.977°W

Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:36:56 UTC
Saturday, July 31, 2010 10:36:56 AM at epicenter

Depth: 10.40 km (6.46 mi)


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NASA Hurricane Update

July 21st, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
Supercomputer Reproduces a Cyclone's Birth, May Boost Forecasting


NASA's Pleiades supercomputer has helped develop a simulation of tropical cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar in 2008. The result is the first model to replicate the formation of the tropical cyclone five days in advance.
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July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
2 Atlantic Lows (Atlantic Ocean)


This weekend, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center will be using satellite data to watch two low pressure areas in the Atlantic Ocean Basin for possible tropical development.
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July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
Guatemala Low (Eastern Pacific Ocean)


NASA Satellite imagery has indicated that the low pressure area in the eastern Pacific Ocean that forecasters are watching for possible development is slow to grow.
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July 31st, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA Hurricane Updates on Twitter


Check NASA's Hurricane Twitter feed for a daily behind the scenes look at storms in the tropics.
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NASA News

July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA's First Robotic Crew Member To Tweet From Space Station, Available For Interviews
NASA's Robonaut 2 has no voice but is ready to tell you its story -- in 140 characters or less. The prototype robot will travel to space this fall to give NASA a deeper understanding of human-robotic interaction.
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July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA Awards Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility Support Contract
Nasa Awards Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, Space Vehicle Mockup Facility Support Contract
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July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA Awards Electrical Systems Engineering Services Contract
NASA has awarded a sole-source interim contract for electrical systems engineering services to MEI Technologies in Houston.
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July 30th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA's Hibernating Mars Rover May Not Call Home
NASA mission controllers have not heard from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit since March 22, and the rover is facing its toughest challenge yet – trying to survive the harsh Martian winter.
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July 28th, 2010 22:27:37 EDT -0400
NASA Selects Sounding Rockets Operations Contractor
NASA selected Orbital Sciences Corp.'s, Technical Services Division in Greenbelt, Md., for the agency's Sounding Rockets Operations contract.
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NASA pic of the day

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT
Tweetup at HQ

NASA astronaut TJ Creamer talks about his experience in space during a "Tweetup" at NASA Headquarters, Thursday, July 29, 2010, in Washington. Creamer, who spent 161 days living aboard the International Space Station as part of the Expedition 22/23 crew, set up the orbiting outpost's live Internet connection and posted updates about the mission to his Twitter account, sending the first live tweet from orbit. Image Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers





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July-Aug, 2010,

1.5%

of our gross revenue from the Barn will be donated to:

The Rod Serling Memorial Foundation