Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant
This ain’t good: A nuclear meltdown appears to have occurred at the quake-damaged Japanese power plant.
Year: 2011
Random variations are still too large for climate models
The uncertainty of science: a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters has concluded that the the long term random variations of the climate, sometimes lasting as long as three or four decades, are large enough to hide any actual changes to the climate. In the quote from the abstract below, the term “random walk” is jargon for a long term random fluctuation having nothing to do with climate change.
This result indicates that the shorter records may not totally capture the random variability of climate relevant on the time scale of civilizations, for which the random walk length is likely to be about 30 years. For this random walk length, the observed standard deviations of maximum temperature and minimum temperature yield respective expected maximum excursions on land of 1.4 and 2.3°C and over the ocean of 0.5 and 0.7°C, which are substantial fractions of the global warming signal.
In other words, it might simply be too soon to be making predictions about the climate, based upon the presently available data.
Quake moved Japan coast 8 feet; shifted Earth’s axis
The earthquake moved Japan’s coast eight feet while shifting the Earth’s axis about four inches.
Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water
Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water.
Earthquake update
An earthquake update, with images.
Japan’s Third Disaster
Japanese quake disrupts space station operations
The 8.9 earthquake has shut down the Japanese space station mission control center, forcing NASA to take over monitoring Japanese ISS modules.
Fixing the Webb telescope
NASA has concluded that it will cost an additional $30 million to fix the degradation problem on the James Webb Space Telescope’s scientific instruments.
Two NASA climate missions face one year schedule slip
Continue budget problems at NASA: Two climate missions each face a one year schedule slip.
The table saw that cannot cut fingers
An evening pause: The table saw that cannot cut fingers.
Virgin Galactic surpasses $10 million in ticket sales
Virgin Galactic surpassed $10 million in space tourism sales in 2010.
Space Duct Tape Could Confuse Mars Rover
The kapton tape used on the next Mars rover, Curiosity, releases enough methane of its own that it could mess up the rover’s other science.