Not good: Another Airbus jumbo jet has been found with cracks in its wings.
Two more global warming scientists, this time in Germany, have become global warming skeptics.
One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Persuaded by Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne [The Cold Sun] cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
[The c]onclusion: climate catastrophe is called off. The science was hyped.
A new first: A 3D printer-created lower jaw has been transplanted into an 83-year-old woman’s face.
Using heat to speed up computer hard drives.
The worldwide Islamic war on Christians.
A fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.
Twenty pictures to help you appreciate the beauty and awesomeness of nature.
A rabbi speaks out in defense of the Catholic Church and against the Obama administration.
Therefore, as a Rabbi, an Orthodox Jew, and an American, I stand with the Catholic Church and its right to freedom of conscience. If President Obama can force Catholics to pay for abortions, then no religious belief is safe in America, and an America in which religious beliefs are not sacrosanct is an America that is unsafe not only for Jews but for all people of conscience — whether people of faith or secularists.
Scientists have identified the oldest living thing on Earth, a patch of seagrass growing underwater in the Mediterranean.
Australian scientists sequenced the DNA of samples of the giant seagrass, Posidonia oceanic, from 40 underwater meadows in an area spanning more than 2,000 miles, from Spain to Cyprus.
The analysis, published in the journal PLos ONE, found the seagrass was between 12,000 and 200,000 years old and was most likely to be at least 100,000 years old. This is far older than the current known oldest species, a Tasmanian plant that is believed to be 43,000 years old.
A rehash of the available data has narrowed the search for the Higgs particle.
Taken together with data from the other detector, ATLAS, Higgs overall signal now unofficially stands at about 4.3σ. In other words, if statistics are to be believed, then this signal has about a 99.996% chance of being right.
It all sounds very convincing, but don’t get too excited, because the fact is that statistical coincidences happen every day. Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll points out that there is a 3.8σ signal in the Super Bowl coin toss.
More bad news for Russian science: A fire has damaged Russia’s most productive heavy ion accelerator in Moscow.
The final Russian investigation has admitted that it was a programming error that doomed Phobos-Grunt, not cosmic radiation or U.S. radar.
Reality trumps science fiction: The Russians have safely left Lake Vostok, but the official word is that it is “too soon” to say whether they successfully drilled into the lake.
All NASA funding for ESA’s unmanned ExoMars mission appears to have been cut by the Obama administration.
A public announcement by Nasa of its withdrawal from the ExoMars programme, as it is known in Europe, will probably come once President Obama’s 2013 Federal Budget Request is submitted. This request, expected in the coming days, will give the US space agency a much clearer view of how much money it has to implement its various projects. “The Americans have indicated that the possibility of them participating is now low – very low. It’s highly unlikely,” said Alvaro Gimenez, Esa’s director of science.
Though this story doesn’t confirm the earlier rumors that the Obama administration was going to eliminate the entire NASA planetary program, it sure lends those rumors further weight. However, the new budget should be released any day now, when we will finally find out.
All the arguments used to convince Israel not to take a preemptive strike against a nuclear Iran are wrong.
We must also add these words by Iran’s “Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution” Ayatollah Khamenei:
The Zionist regime is a real cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut.
Like Hitler, who in Mein Kampf told the world exactly how he intended to exterminate the Jews years before he had power, the Iranians have been quite blunt about what they intend to do once they have atomic weapons. This time, we should take them at their word, and stop them before they can do it. And since the U.S. isn’t likely to do it, the Israelis should.
Unconfirmed reports in the Russian press today claimed that the drilling team in Antarctica has successfully reached Lake Vostok, more than two miles under the icecap.
No results yet. And since the story above spends more time talking about old silly stories about a hidden NAZI hideout in Antarctica than it does the Russian science effort there it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Mars Express has found more evidence that Mars once had oceans.
Two oceans have been proposed: 4 billion years ago, when warmer conditions prevailed, and also 3 billion years ago when subsurface ice melted following a large impact, creating outflow channels that drained the water into areas of low elevation.
“MARSIS penetrates deep into the ground, revealing the first 60–80 metres of the planet’s subsurface,” says Wlodek Kofman, leader of the radar team at IPAG. “Throughout all of this depth, we see the evidence for sedimentary material and ice.” The sediments revealed by MARSIS are areas of low radar reflectivity. Such sediments are typically low-density granular materials that have been eroded away by water and carried to their final destination.
This later ocean would however have been temporary. Within a million years or less, Dr Mouginot estimates, the water would have either frozen back in place and been preserved underground again, or turned into vapour and lifted gradually into the atmosphere. “I don’t think it could have stayed as an ocean long enough for life to form.”
Nine unique and unusual travel destinations.
The universe is a strange and wonderful place. Go out and see it.
Using images taken by its lunar probe Chang’e-2, China today published a high resolution global map of the Moon.
Religious liberty is such an inconvenient thing: Obamacare vs. the Catholics.
And then there’s this: An affront Catholics agree on.
And this: The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America has announced its unanimous support of the Catholic Church and opposition to the Obama Administration over the new Obamacare regulations.
My question is this: if Obama should back down before the election and cancel these odious regulations, will the liberal church leaders forget the whole thing and support him again, or will they finally wake up and see him for what he is: an arrogant power-hungry politician eager to force his will on everyone, regardless of their beliefs?
Behind the Black officially premiered July 1, 2010, and has been up and running now for twenty months. I make it a point to post often and regularly on issues of space, science, technology, politics, and history, subjects that interest me personally. Except for one short period a year ago when family matters kept me away from the computer for several days, I have managed to update the webpage frequently every day during that entire time.
Because of this, traffic to the site has steadily grown. For this I thank you, my readers, especially those who love to add their own two cents to the webpage in the comments. While I certainly do not agree with all those who comment, I very much appreciate the open and intelligent nature of the discussion.
During that time I have resisted begging for contributions. Though I added a tip jar link to the webpage about three months ago (located in the right column below the search box), I have made very little note of it because shilling for dollars seems crass, and I feel that if I am doing a good job people will naturally look for it in order to donate to the webpage to keep it going.
However, today is my birthday, so I feel I have the right to do some self-promotion. Moreover, for the past fifteen years I have made my living as a freelance science writer. The business, however, is changing, and I am finding that I am becoming increasingly reliant on the income I make from at my own website over that earned by selling articles to magazines.
Thus, if you are a regular reader of Behind the Black, please consider giving the website a donation, no matter how small. Not only would I appreciate it greatly, it will help make it possible for this website to continue and grow.
More than 6,000 people submitted their applications to NASA last week to become astronauts, the most since 1978.
Once again, this is strong evidence that Americans want to explore space, and that there is a market out there for private enterprise to cash in on. NASA doesn’t even have a way to put any of these astronauts into space, and yet, people come out in droves to apply.
More and more the Atlas V appears to be “the vehicle of choice for manned missions.” Key quote:
NASA could have gone down this path last decade and possibly shaved years — and billions of dollars — off the development time of a capability to carry astronauts to the space station.
