Knife’s Edge trail on Mount Katahdin
An evening pause: How about some more hiking on the edge of the world? This is the Knife’s Edge trail on Mount Katahdin, Baxter State Park, Maine.
Year: 2010
Government high speed railroad and elections
The federal government’s very expensive and probably unnecessary project to build a high speed railroad line between two cities in Wisconsin — using stimulus money — is having a significant influence on the elections there. Key quote:
With the U.S. economy in shambles and our national debt strangling the country, it doesn’t bode well for Feingold that he supported the wildly unpopular health-care bill, which [challenger] Johnson wants repealed, as well as last year’s big clunker, the stimulus bill. Feingold’s support for the unfunded and bottomless money pit of [high speed rail] doesn’t appear to be working for him either. If an entrenched insider like Feingold loses, it could have serious ramifications for the future of high-speed rail across the country. [emphasis mine]
Water that smells bad might be toxic
Science discovers the obvious! The US Geological Survey has learned that if water looks and smells bad, you probably shouldn’t drink it.
Space Makes Polymers Hard
The harsh environment of space, normally hostile to most materials, acts beneficially to cure certain epoxy resins. Key quote:
“You don’t have to take it up there in the shape that you eventually want,” said University of Sydney physicist Marcela Bilek, a co-author of the new study. “You can take something in a packaged form, all folded up, and then inflate it in space and have it cure into a mechanically solid structure.”
Read the research paper here.
UCLA backs off firing politically incorrect professor
Good news for science: UCLA has backed off from its plan to fire a politically incorrect professor, giving Dr. James Enstrom an eight month reprieve as it reviews his case.
Scientists predict when the first Earthlike planet will be discovered
Don’t bet the bank on this: In a preprint paper posted tonight on the astro-ph website, scientists predict the discovery of the first Earthlike extrasolar planet — using statistical analysis alone! Fun quote:
Using a bootstrap analysis of currently discovered exoplanets, we predict the discovery of the first Earth-like planet to be announced in the first half of 2011, with the likeliest date being early May 2011.
More data suggests ocean conveyor belt more complex than expected
Back to the climate-theory drawing board: A paper published today in Nature Geoscience suggests that the ocean conveyor belt that brings warm water to the northern Atlantic is far more complex than the original theories proposed. These results strengthen earlier reports that also questioned the conveyor belt theory.
The pain of spacesuit gloves
The number one injury reported by astronauts appears to be fingernail and hand injuries resulting from the use of spacesuit gloves. Key quote:
A previous study of astronaut injuries sustained during spacewalks had found that about 47 percent of 352 reported symptoms between 2002 and 2004 were hand related. More than half of these hand injuries were due to fingertips and nails making contact with the hard “thimbles” inside the glove fingertips. In several cases, sustained pressure on the fingertips during EVAs caused intense pain and led to the astronauts’ nails detaching from their nailbeds, a condition called fingernail delamination.
14 objects discovered beyond Neptune
Using archival Hubble Space Telescope images astronomers have discovered 14 objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. Key quote:
The newfound objects range from 25 to 60 miles across (40 to 100 kilometers), said the researchers.
The Argument Clinic
An evening pause: The argument clinic sketch from Monty Python.
Saturn from above
This breath-taking image of Saturn and its rings was taken by Cassini on July 19, 2009 and posted on the Cassini image gallery on August 27, 2010.
Dawn’s status as it heads to Vesta
All systems go! The project engineer of the Dawn mission has posted a very detailed update (as of August 30), describing the spacecraft’s status in its journey to the asteroid Vesta.