School For Independent Learners

Imagine accessing 1,600 million pages of text from 4.6 million books and journals at your fingertips.

The HathiTrust Library is a collaboration of 25 universities, including the University of California system and the California Digital Library.

Full-text search is available on public domain and in-copyright material.

Hathi (pronounced hah-tee) is Hindi for elephant.

More information here.   Search here.

Happy Searching!

NASA has confirmed the presence of water on the Moon.  This is exciting news for potential future Lunar colonies and examing the history of the Solar System.  Data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) confirmed water was detected at the south pole from the LCROSS mission.

Maybe I will see a colony on the Moon in my lifetime.

From The Guardian:

The links between the first world war and literature are enshrined in our culture: the war poets are taught in schools, and their descriptions of the horrors of the trenches have entered – and to an extent informed – our national consciousness. But why was it this war, above all others, that found its way into words?

Before 1914, of those who described war, painted it and wrote poetry about it, very few had seen battle themselves. Now a generation of the literary middle class had, and found it by turns mundane, draining and horrific. The first world war was the first time war was seen and understood by writers, by a whole generation of them, who didn’t see it remotely, through chivalrously tinted lenses but in the mud and the blood and the shrapnel. Before the real dawn of cinema and after the birth of literacy, the first world war is the only war that must be read to be understood. Perhaps that’s why modern authors such as Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker are still inspired by it today.

If you think about it, coffee isn’t just a common beverage – it’s quite significant in many different academic fields, including economics, history, biology, health…

[via The Oatmeal]

The concept of a space elevator is to ferry people and supplies between Earth (or the Moon or Mars) and into geostationary orbit.  The use of an orbital space elevator (or beanstalk or skyhook) uses considerably less fuel, energy and money than a traditional rocket (i.e. Space Shuttle or Soyuz launches).

The space elevator concept dates back to 1895 to rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.  Sir Arthur C. Clarke, through his novel The Fountains of Paradise, is credited with introducing the space elevator to a larger audience.

Although we are many years (decades?) away from this becoming reality, NASA has invited scientists, engineers and inventors to try their hands at making a miniature prototype.  Seattle-based LaserMotive won $900,000 from NASA during a three day competition.  The Space Elevator Games were co-sponsored by NASA and The Spaceward Foundation.

We understand the basic physics behind this, but lack the engineering to create a strong enough tether (cable) to use.  Many engineers believe using carbon nanotube is one possible solution.

Personally, I hope to ride in a space elevator in my lifetime.

Letters of Note is a collection of letters, telegrams, and other various forms of written communication that have found their way into a scanner and onto the internet. Typically written by celebrities or historical figures, the correspondences aren’t so much historically important as they are interesting; often times showing a previously undocumented or more intimate side of famous people that never made it into the history books.

The description for the letter shown above:

Here’s a 1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804 (a mere 55,777,566 km), and as such provided desirable conditions in which to receive radio signals from the Red Planet. The man tasked with clearing the airwaves – a Professor David Todd – somehow managed to persuade both the Army and Navy to report any findings for a three day period, but failed to silence the country’s private radio broadcasters for even two days. Needless to say, the three day exercise produced nothing but static.

Visit the Letters of Note blog HERE

November 9th marks 20 years since David Hasselhoff and his magical leather jacket from the future vaporized the Berlin Wall, delivered millions of jelly donuts from communist oppression and single-handedly ended the Cold War…

Okay, so that’s a slightly romanticized summary. As Mary Elise Sarotte shows in The Washington Post, the details of history tend to be much more interesting then the simple narratives that we come to embrace over time:

The “decision” to open the border was not a conscious choice at all. Instead
of a reassuring victory for the forces of freedom, it was a chaotic and potentially violent
mess. One of the most momentous events of the past century was, in fact, an accident, a
semicomical and bureaucratic mistake that owes as much to the Western media as to the
tides of history.

Meanwhile, to get an idea of the dreary world these East Germans were so eager to escape check out the fantastic 2006 film The Lives of Others. The film is set in East Berlin in the eerily appropriate year of 1984 and follows the daily grind of an East German Stasi (secret police) agent assigned to monitor suspected enemies of the communist state.

The immense particle accelerator that will allegedly annihilate the universe continues to experience technical difficulties – first was a coolant leak that destroyed some giant magnets, then some additional safety measures were put in place, then Tom Hanks had to track down the secret organization that stole some antimatter, but all those seem to be flights of trivial fancy when compared to the havoc wreaked by a bird and its tasty baguette lunch. Apparently the bird bit off a more than it could pinch between its toothless beak and dropped some baguette-bits onto external portions of the LHC, causing severe overheating and subsequent shutdown.

An inspired commentator had this to say:

Well, CERN doesn’t consider a small bird to be any threat, or they’d have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the LHC. But the approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The target area is only two meters wide. It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the collider. Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction. The shaft is ray-shielded, so you’ll have to use baguette slices.

[PopSci via The Register]

When you shine a laser perpendicularly through a prism face, it bounces off the inside of the opposite face, coming out perpendicularly to the third face. That much most of us have already seen, but what happens when you attach a second prism to make a rhomboid?

Magic!

This particular video also demonstrates that the idea of “transparency” isn’t just what our eyes can see – it’s whatever allows an electromagnetic wave through, whether it be visible light, gamma rays, or microwaves…

Sixty Symbols is a collection of YouTube videos made by experts at the University of Nottingham about the often-overlooked subtleties of physics and astronomy. Anyone want to let us borrow their microwave gun?