Category: Science

Great news from Hubble, if confirmed, and another reason to work on keeping it in orbit. The Hubble Space Telescope may have discovered as many as 100 new planets orbiting stars in our galaxy.

New Scientist outlines the next couple of days facing the $3 billion Cassini probe. I am looking forward to some amazing images. Here’s hoping she makes it.

The news media has largely forgotten about those two Rovers on Mars, but they are making some huge discoveries, including the above structure. It was noted: Despite detailed inspection with the microscopic imager, “we have not got this thing figured out yet,” Squyres admitted at a press conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena,…

It appears that the first private space flight did not go as smoothly as we thought, but they did go into space afterall. Can’t be perfect firs time round. The flight of the first private astronaut was not as perfect as it first appeared – a number of glitches occurred during the flight, some potentially…

A commission chartered by U.S. President George W. Bush to advise him on implementing a broad new space exploration vision is recommending streamlining the NASA bureaucracy, relying more heavily on the private sector, and maintaining more oversight of the nation’s space program at the White House.

Michael Benson asks the question, and it is a fair enough one. Though my libertarian friends might prefer to see Richard Branson do it all first with Virgin. Two things, I love this quote from the Branson article: Andrew Nahum, the senior curator of aeronautics at the Science Museum and visiting professor in vehicle design…

Evidence has been found for a global winter following the asteroid impact that is thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Rocks in Tunisia reveal microscopic cold-water creatures invaded a warm sea just after the space rock struck Earth. The global winter was probably caused by a pollutant cloud of sulphate…

Astronomers hunting massive stars in a bid to understand the early Universe have set a new record. In April, Gregor Rauw, of the University of Liege in Belgium, and colleagues suggested that an object called WR 20a in the constellation Carina could be two giant stars orbiting each other. That would explain its otherwise puzzling…

Are anti-biotics to blame for the huge rise in the incidences of allergies? Perhaps – New Scientist has the story.

Also from Slashdot is Ray Bradbury’s testimony to the President’s Commission on Implementation on U.S. Space Exploration Policy. He has some interesting ideas on the place and time humanity finds itself in. I like this quote: That’s fascinating to think about – isn’t it? Four hundred years before Kitty Hawk, an Italian lands on an…