Category: Science
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UFO in Google Satellite
Got this one via the Irishblogs yahoo list, what on earth is it? Or is it even from Earth?
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Planet search postponed to fund Hubble rescue
I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this – I have been looking forward to the TPF for years now. Then again, if they can save hubble… But funding the Hubble mission would mean the indefinite postponement of two future missions to search for extrasolar planets – the Space Interferometry Mission, which…
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Delay hits Mars radar deployment
Everything is not going so smoothly, but hopefully this will be ironed out. Deployment of a radar on Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft has been delayed after the antenna boom released on Wednesday did not fully straighten out. Officials said 12 out of 13 segments that comprise the first boom had deployed successfully, but segment 10…
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Creation of Black Hole Detected Today
Fascinating news from the cosmos: A faint visible-light flash moments after a high-energy gamma-ray burst likely heralds the merger of two dense neutron stars to create a relatively low-mass black hole, said Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. It is the first time an optical counterpart to a very short-duration gamma-ray burst has…
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Nuclear Fusion Discovered
I failed to blog this last week, anyway it’s worth mentioning – the Economist have a piece on it. Not read up on fusion? In principle, nuclear fusion is a simple process. All you have to do is push two suitable atomic nuclei close enough together for them to overcome their mutual electrical repulsion (since…
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Mars Express to deploy 'divining rod' at last
I am really looking forward to the results from this: The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) instrument consists of three long fibreglass tubes strung with wires that will bounce radio waves off the planet. Some waves will penetrate the surface – potentially revealing oases of water, in liquid or ice form…
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9/11 babies inherit stress from mothers
It seems that the trauma of September 11 lives on: A study of 38 women who witnessed the World Trade Center attacks was carried out by researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, US, one year after the events. Cortisol levels were lower…
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What a way to go
The Guardian have a good roundup of ways humanity could be wiped out, they use Sir Martin Rees’ stuff as a basis: 1: Climate Change 2: Telomere erosion 3: Viral Pandemic 4: Terrorism 5: Nuclear war 6: Meteorite impact 7: Robots taking over 8: Cosmic ray blast from exploding star 9: Super-volcanos 10: Earth swallowed…
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Alien asteroid belt detected around Sun-like star
An alien asteroid belt may have been spotted circling a mature star nearby. The observations, made by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, reveal a dense ring of dust around the star that might arise from rocks colliding and smashing each other apart. Alternatively, the dust could come from a âsupercometâ? almost the size of Pluto, said…
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Biological Activity on Mars?
Could Mars be biologically active? We might have to wait until humans go there to get a definitive answer.