Month: October 2010
Wilders facing prison for speech
Freedom of speech alert! Dutch politician Geert Wilders faces a year in prison, merely because of things he said.
Solar panels return to the White House
Back to the Carter administration: Solar panels are returning to the White House.
Space tourism from the island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles
The space tourism company Xcor today signed a deal to fly suborbital flights as soon as 2014 from the island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles.
NASA technology chief: We’ll decide what rocket we want to build
NASA’s technology chief said today that despite the specific demands Congress included in its authorization bill, NASA will make its own decision on the kind of heavy-lift rocket it wants to build.
The ruins above Machu Picchu
The less well known ruins above Machu Picchu in Peru.
Russian meteorologists predict very cold winter
Global warming? Russian meteorologists are predicting one of the coldest winters in centuries.
Archeologists discover a sealed stone age home
Archeologists have uncovered a stone age dwelling site from 3500 BC, practically intact.
Sputnik
An evening pause: October 4, 1957, the space age began.
It’s okay to kill suffering children says UK journalist
Seems to be a lot of this kind of genocidal thought going around: A columnist for the Independent in Great Britain admitted in an October 4th interview that she considers it a kind act to kill a suffering child. Key quote:
“[I] think that if I were a mother of a suffering child, I would be the first to want I mean a deeply suffering child I would be the first one to put a pillow over its face, as I would with any suffering thing and I think the difference is that my feeling of horror, suffering is many greater than my feeling of getting rid of a couple of cells because suffering can go on for years,” Ironside said.
Lunar X Prize award set at $30 million
The Lunar X Prize award for putting the first privately funded robot on the Moon by 2012 is now set at $30 million.
NASA Confusion Reverberates Throughout Globe
The confusion at NASA is reverberating throughout the globe. Didn’t someone predict this would happen? More than once?
Lutetia covered with deep regolith
Using the data gathered by Rosetta in its fly-by of the asteroid Lutetia in July, scientists have concluded that the 60 mile diameter asteroid is covered with a deep layer of dusty debris, as much as 2000 feet deep.
Liquid on Titan
The Cassini image below, released today at the 42nd meeting of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences, shows light reflecting off a lake on Titan’s northern hemisphere. According to the scientists who took the image, this is the first definitive confirmation of the presence of liquid in those lakes.
The wind-blown dunes of Mars
The HiRise Camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has released some wonderful new pictures, showing what are called barchan dunes on Mars.
Barchans are crescent-shaped, with the horns of the crescents pointing downwind. One barchan is visible in the upper part of the image, with the Southeast (lower right) horns longer than the other. This trend, along with the position of the steep face of the dune on the South side, indicates that the predominant winds which formed the dunes came from the North.
There are a lot more great images on the websites above.
Rocket pieces fall in China
The second Chinese probe to the Moon did more than take off on Friday. It also rained pieces of metal down on a Chinese villages in Suichuan County, Jiangxi, China.
Saudia Arabia and NASA sign two deals
NASA privacy suit to go to Supreme Court
A suit by NASA contractors over what they think is the agency’s over intrusive efforts to do background checks on their private lives goes to the Supreme Court.
Remembering Willie Ley
Remembering Willie Ley. He never flew in space, and died just weeks before the Apollo 11 landing. Yet he probably did as much if not more to make it happen than any other man.
To duck or not to duck
An evening pause: More Loony Tunes! To Duck or Not to Duck.