By Christopher Moore
Previously I pointed out that NASA confirmed the existence of a 10th planet in our solar system. But although slightly bigger than Pluto, it’s still no heavy-weight.
CNN International reports:
Previous estimates by ground-based telescopes suggested the object known as 2003 UB313 was 30 percent bigger than Pluto.
But the latest measurement by the Hubble Space Telescope has a smaller margin of error and is probably a more accurate estimate, said lead researcher Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology.
According to Hubble, UB313’s diameter measures 1,490 miles (2,397 kilometers), give or take 60 miles (100 kilometers). Pluto is about 1,422 miles (2,288 kilometers) across.
There was some discussion in my previous post about how one would determine the size of a planet. Apparently, a rough approximation can be made from the objects brightness.
The new planet was nicknamed “Xena” by Dr. Brown, which should make some people very happy
By Christopher Moore
The longest drive of a golf ball ever in the history of mankind could happen sometime in the near future. Cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, who now commands the International Space Station has plans to hit a gold-plated golf ball into orbit. MSNBC.com has the story:
Because of zero gravity, Vinogradov’s drive will make golf’s long-distance hitters like John Daly look positively feeble. The ball, equipped with a tracking device, is expected to remain in orbit for several years.
The low drive from the space station — which travels at 17,000 mph, 250 miles above Earth — is a publicity stunt for Element 21 Golf Co., a Canadian-based golf club manufacturer.
I’m a golfer, so I think this is kind of neat. Billions of dollars worth of technology … and Russia is hitting golf balls. So I can understand why others think it is not-so-neat.
This isn’t the first time the cash-strapped country has pimped out its space program. PepsiCo paid the space agency $5 million dollars to float a Pepsi can outside of the Mir space station. And Pizza Hut was the first company to deliver a pizza to outer-space, courtesy of the millions they paid the agency.
By Christopher Moore
The other day I wrote about the website face lift. Here is a little update.
Concerning ads: I cut the number of ads served per page in half. And as I predicted, the ad revenue has doubled! It is weird, I know. This doesn’t mean the site is raking in the dough. Double the ad revenue per day buys an extra pack of gum. So I still have my hand out and a sign that says “will do physics problems for food.” At least I do not have to worry about starving my dogs so that I can pay my bandwidth bill.
Integrating the forum: For a few days, if you used most versions of Internet Explorer you would have had a pretty hard time reading the forum. The text was tiny! It looked great in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, but IE just couldn’t handle it. I fixed that. Image upload apparently is still not working for IE though. I will be fixing that. Another reason to Get Firefox.
Writing the tutorials: I have been busy writing physics tutorials. You can of course see what I’ve done so far by clicking the “Tutorials” link above. I will be updating them daily. Feel free to leave comments about what I have up so far. I’ve enabled comments for each page. When I’m all done, I’ll be publishing a print version for those who are interested. If your comments prove to be significantly useful, you’ll get a mention in the acknowledgements.
Other projects in the works: Each section of the tutorials will be accompanied by an online, graded quiz and a video demonstration or two. I’m working on adding many more problems to the Solution Generator. And I’ll get back to writing about common misconceptions in physics real soon.
That’s it.
By Christopher Moore
As you can see ilovephysics.com has gotten a face-lift. I’ve taken a cue from one of the most popular websites in the world: Google.
I love Google’s website because it is so simple. This site was starting to get too cluttered and too slow. So I’ve made it simple. I personally think it is quite elegant. 
I’m still working on the forums. Because punBB and Wordpress use completely different templating systems, I’m going to need to do a little more work to get the forum to look right.
For those interested in net advertising, this site is a good case study in what happens when you display too many ads. A few months ago I began displaying ads by Chitika as well as extra ads served by Google. I more than doubled the ads served on each page of this site. The result? ilovephysics.com’s ad revenue was cut in half! More ads, less ad revenue. Huh?
So I’ve gone back to a few simple Google ads. It makes the site easier to read, it loads faster, and should produce more revenue.
Also, since earlier today when I began re-templating the site, my Google PageRank for the main page went from 4 to 6! Goggle PageRank is a number that symbolizes how important your webpage is to Google and therefore how close to the top it appears in Google searches. You can get a rank from 0 to 10. I didn’t expect such a huge change in PageRank. I’m not quite sure why the ranking even changed, since the content is exactly the same.
For those who are interested in who actually visits ilovephysics.com, here is a list of countries whose citizens have poked around over the last few days:
United States
US Government (hopefully some congresscritters reading my posts about education)
US Military (hmmm?)
Australia
Poland
United Kingdom
Canada
Denmark
Russia
Mexico
France
Finland
Israel
Singapore
New Zealand
India
I hope you enjoy my simple website and my attempts to explain physics simply.
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