An evening pause: In tribute to Doc Watson, who died last week at the age of 89. Blind from the age of 1, Watson is widely considered one of America’s best folk guitarists. Watch what he does here in this 1991 live performance.
Due to cost overruns, NASA has cancelled the GEM X-ray telescope.
The shuttle prototype Enterprise was damaged on Sunday while being transported by barge to its New York City museum home.
Astronomers think they have discovered a distant supermassive black hole that is being ejected from its galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour.
Although the ejection of a supermassive black hole from a galaxy by recoil because more gravitational waves are being emitted in one direction than another is likely to be rare, it nevertheless could mean that there are many giant black holes roaming undetected out in the vast spaces between galaxies. “These black holes would be invisible to us,” said co-author Laura Blecha, also of CfA, “because they have consumed all of the gas surrounding them after being thrown out of their home galaxy.”
This conclusion however is not final. The data could also be explained by the spiraling in of two supermassive black holes.
Fifteen picturesque shipwrecks from around the world.
Big news: The military has given NASA two Cold War era spy space telescopes with mirrors comparable to Hubble’s.
They have 2.4-meter (7.9 feet) mirrors, just like the Hubble. They also have an additional feature that the civilian space telescopes lack: A maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more focused images. These telescopes will have 100 times the field of view of the Hubble, according to David Spergel, a Princeton astrophysicist and co-chair of the National Academies advisory panel on astronomy and astrophysics.
Since astronomers have over the past dozen years been remarkably uninterested in launching a replacement for Hubble, they now find themselves in a situation where they might have no optical capabilities at all in space. Hubble is slowing dying from age, and NASA doesn’t have the money to build a new optical space telescope, especially since with any new space telescope proposal the astronomical community has had the annoying habit of demanding more sophistication than NASA can afford.
This announcement however might just save astronomy from becoming blind. Because these spy telescopes are already half built, it will be difficult to add too many bells and whistles. Hire a launch rocket, build the cameras and spectrographs based on the instruments already on Hubble, and get the things in orbit quickly.
Repeal it! More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.
Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance. [emphasis mine]
And if they don’t drop their healthplan?
The State University of New York at Plattsburgh said its 2011-2012 premium was $440 for a plan that covered up to $10,000 for each injury or sickness. Officials said the premium for the coming year would be $1,300 to $1,600 for a plan that meets the new requirements. The school will continue to require students to carry insurance, either through the school or not.
How’s that hope and change working out for you, students?
The soft bigotry of the left: Landlady rejects renting an apartment to a man because he was a veteran who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.
Not only is this intolerant and close-minded, it is also illegal.
Kazakhstan better be worried: Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister paid a call to that country’s under-construction Vostochny spaceport today, enthusing about its possibilities.
Prediction: When Vostochny is completed in 2015, Russia will threaten to abandon its historic launch site in Baikonur. They might do it too, if Kazakhstan refuses to ease its rental terms.
Some details and photos of Sierra Nevada’s captive carry test flight last week of Dream Chaser.
An overview of the transit of Venus tomorrow.
A fascinating look at the space race and what the future held, written in 1959.
The article, reprinted by Forbes, is amazingly detailed, optimistic, yet also cool-headed about the future. For example, consider this quote about the future of manned spaceflight:
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