Search Challenges Revisited

As you've probably noticed, 

once you've spent some time on a topic--like our Search Challenges--you start to notice these things in your daily life.  

Comet tales:  I know a lot of you have been watching the saga of Rosetta / Philae and the story of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.  As you remember, the lander finally landed on the comet and then fairly quickly went silent.  (Apparently it landed in the shade and couldn't recharge its batteries, so it went into hibernation.  Then, after a number of weeks, the sun came out, it warmed up and got a charge back.  Now it's gone offline again (on July 9, 2015).  With luck it will come back. It's done so before.  Stay tuned.  

But for a while there, it was doing science, sending back data.  Here are a few of the findings about the Comet.  (You can read the blogs about Rosetta, or about Philae and get the latest info.)  

Giant sinkholes seem to have formed by some kind of collapse on the surface.  The pits can be found in just a few regions on the comet. There are small groups of them on both the "head" and "body" of the rubber-duck-shaped comet, but nearly all of them appear in the comet's northern hemisphere.

Cameras on Rosetta's OSIRIS instrument have spotted dust jets shooting out of some of the deeper depressions, but those that are more shallow do not seem to be active.  

Composite slide from ESA.

Mudejar Stars:  I don't know about you, but I keep spotting these everywhere.  Of course, it helps that I live in California, which still has a strong Spanish heritage.  I'm in Pasadena today, and as I was walking to the Cognitive Science conference, I walked past a pretty table... with that star pattern.  I like this not just for the repeated star pattern, but also for the "negative space" between the stars (look at the red plus-sign pattern in between the stars).  

Anode in the street:  Remember our discussion about those things embedded in the street labeled "Anode"?  

I recently found this in my neighborhood: 

And... right next to it... 

And it has THIS on the back of the box, which pretty much confirms what we found in our original research.  

Basically, reading this blog primes you to notice these things.  

And if you notice more about how you search, and learn a few really interesting things about the world, I'm happy--the blog is succeeding!  

Search on!