Interesting Stuff: Late October 2010

Here are some links that you ought to check out:

• The Planet Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder is now published. It’s on my list of books to get for myself before Christmas.
• New theory on the formation of Saturn’s rings.
• Recently I created an account for the Math Puzzle Wiki by Oscar Levin, where I’ve been solving puzzles and contributing my solutions. Here’s my user page. If you like puzzles, consider contributing too. (Alternatively you might create an account just so you can view the answers, but contributing is better.)
• Producing electricity from water: a video.
• Speaking of water, here’s some new science on how it behaves on the molecular level.
• Finally for this installment, plans to build Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.

Instead of constructing planets with the help of a book, you can make them with a click of a mouse. Challenge: can you create an object with a stable secondary object — i.e. a moon orbiting a planet which in turn orbits a star?

[Update 2013: Here’s proof it’s possible.]

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