PHP Rocks

I had a great time at the Vancouver PHP conference last week. Eventually I settled down and tried not to get overwhelmed by the learning experience.

Would be nice to have …

Vancouver PHP 2008
5 minute Flash sessions in the theater
Show me my faults sessions … mentor/newbie gatherings
More hot water.
Women on the expert panel.
Brunch at the beach.

Kudos to all the organizers. I know it ain’t easy. You rocked.

Insanely Detailed Webb Image of the Horsehead Nebula April 30, 2024
Few space images are as iconic as those of the Horsehead Nebula. Its shape makes it instantly recognizable. Over the decades, a number of telescopes have captured its image, turning it into a sort of test case for a telescope’s power. The JWST has them all beat. The Horsehead Nebula is about 1300 light-years away […]
Evan Gough
Binary Stars Form in the Same Nebula But Aren’t Identical. Now We Know Why. April 30, 2024
It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have the same metallicity. That fact underpins some avenues of astronomical research, like the search for the Sun’s siblings. But for some binary stars, it’s not always true. Their composition can be different despite forming from the same reservoir of material, […]
Evan Gough
Earth Had a Magnetosphere 3.7 Billion Years Ago April 30, 2024
We go about our daily lives sheltered under an invisible magnetic field generated deep inside Earth. It forms the magnetosphere, a region dominated by the magnetic field. Without that planetary protection shield, we’d experience harmful cosmic radiation and charged particles from the Sun. Has Earth always had this deflector shield? Probably so, and the evidence […]
Carolyn Collins Petersen
Astronomers Think They’ve Found Examples of the First Stars in the Universe April 30, 2024
When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen and helium from the Big Bang. Astronomers call these original stars Population Three stars, and they were extremely massive, luminous, and hot stars. They’re gone now, and in fact, their existence is hypothetical. But if they did exist, they should’ve […]
Evan Gough
First Light from Einstein Probe: A Supernova Remnant April 30, 2024
On 9 January 2024, the Einstein probe was launched, its mission to study the night sky in X-rays. The first image from the probe that explores the Universe in these energetic wavelengths has just been released. It shows Puppis A, the supernova remnant from a massive star that exploded 4,000 years ago. The image showed […]
Mark Thompson