Astronomers have discovered a gas cloud on a collision course with the Milky Way galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, set for impact in the summer of 2013.
Germany’s space chief yesterday said he expected big battles in Europe over future funding for ISS and Ariane.
Ariane is a serious problem, as it is expensive and a money-loser, despite dominating the commercial market in recent years. And worse, it will be difficult to make Ariane competitive in the future:
ESA in 2010 hired an outside auditor to review the current Ariane 5 system to look for ways to save money. Its principal conclusion was that very few savings were possible without scrapping the forced geographic distribution of industrial contracts that preserves the political and financial support needed for the Ariane system.
LightSquared expresses outrage at leaked GPS test report.
It is interesting that they don’t seem to be complaining about the results, which showed that their system interferes badly with GPS. With the facts and the law against them, it appears instead they are now pounding the table.
The supernova of a generation.
There will be a slew of stories about this in the next few days. The important takeaways are as follows:
The $600,000 toad statue your tax dollars paid for and you will never see in person.
Standing up for his rights: A University of Denver professor plans to teach the same course next spring that, because of two anonymous complaints, caused him to be suspended for more than 100 days.
“I did not do anything wrong,” Gilbert said. “If I cave in on this, it would be terrible for academic freedom,” he said, explaining the decision to carry on teaching the class despite the trouble it had caused for him.
Another perspective: The Gingrich Gamble.
Yet for the all sloganeering and invective, the truth is that voting for Gingrich or Romney is not so much an ideological as a personal choice, and one that says as much about the psychological make-up of the individual conservative voter as it does about the choices before him. The risk-takers, romantics, and ideologically pure have concluded that Gingrich unleashed is worth the gamble, and that it is better to win big or lose big than to plan on just squeaking by. They welcome the unending contact sport that we could expect from a President Gingrich, who would not just beat Obama, but repudiate Obamism itself. These are the guys who like passing on third down on their own ten-yard line with a seven-point lead; to them, going on fourth-quarter defense is not only not smart, it is a sure way to lose. In contrast, the more calculating know that romance and rhetoric can often disguise reality, and that it is always wiser to down the ball and run the clock out when you’re ahead.
And I must admit, I prefer the gamble. I’ve had enough of “safe” Republican candidates designed to please the moderates who only end up losing because they can’t express what they believe in with any clarity or force.
[W]e have a president who wants us to stay there, who is banal, irritating, humorless, reactionary, self-righteous, and narcissistic all at once. He hasn’t said one interesting thing or proposed one creative idea since being in office.
Unfortunately, the Republican candidates aren’t much better. Romney, Perry, Santorum, Bachmann, Huntsman, even Paul, are no more than critics of a system gone moribund. They do not inspire us. Their ideas, even when worth investigating (flat tax, etc.), are no more than rehashes of proposals we have heard for decades.
Only Newt dances. Only Newt, on occasion, is original. Only Newt — and here is the important part — has the capacity to wake us up. What attracts me about the man is the very thing that Romney criticized, the part that wants to explore the moon and stars, maybe even mine them.
Sure Gingrich has an idea a minute, many of which are bad, but at least he has ideas. At least he is thinking. And — guess what — he says what he thinks. Politicians aren’t supposed to do that.
Read the whole thing.
R.I.P.: Russian space engineer Boris Chertok has died at 99.
Testimony today at a Senate hearing about the MF Global scandal revealed that Jon Corzine, the former Democratic New Jersey governor and a fundraiser for President Obama, was aware of the theft of customer funds, contrary to his own testimony before Congress. More here.
Scientists have built the world’s smallest steam engine, only a few thousandths of a millimeter wide.
An evening pause: Time lapse photography by Mark “Indy” Kochte. At one point the time-lapse sequence shows Seneca Rocks near the end of the day, with the lights of the climbers visible as they rappel off the mountain.
