Year: 2014

Curiosity has reached another area of interesting terrain: rows of layered curvy rocks.

10:18 pm

Curiosity has reached another area of interesting terrain: rows of layered curvy rocks.

The science team has been hunting for tasty rock outcrops suitable for the first drilling campaign since she departed the dried out lakebed at Yellowknife Bay in July 2013 and began her epic trek across the floor of Gale Crater towards the base of Mount Sharp. With each passing Sol, or Martian day, Mount Sharp looms larger and larger and the historical layers with deposits of hydrated minerals potentially indicative of an alien habitable zone come ever clearer into focus.

The panoramas are quite spectacular as the rover continues its journey toward Mt Sharp.

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New geological research suggests that the hydrogen levels that have detected on the moon — which are used to predict the presence of water — might be a false positive and not exist at the levels predicted.

11:17 am

The uncertainty of science: New geological research suggests that the hydrogen levels that have been detected on the moon — which are used to predict the presence of water — might be a false positive and not exist at the levels predicted.

Instead, what scientists thought was hydrogen in water molecules might be calcium as part of a mineral called apatite. If so, this would mean that the Moon has a lot less water than hoped. This data might also explain the lack of water seen in the Apollo samples as compared to what is suggested should be there from more recent orbital data. This also might explain the conflicting results from instruments on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

10:31 am

Will the American Physical Society be the first major scientific institution to reject the global warming “consensus”?

The essentials: The APS has appointed three of the world’s most well known climate skeptics to its public affairs panel, almost guaranteeing that the organization will change its position from supporting the consensus to a more skeptical approach. Note also that this is the same organization that had one important scientist and a Nobel prize winner resign in disgust three years ago because of its insistence that the evidence of human-caused global warming was “incontrovertible.”

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The Michigan union contract that required a school district to discriminiate against Christians and whites as now been amended so that it won’t discriminate against Christians.

10:01 am

Partial victory: The Michigan union contract that required a school district to discriminiate against Christians and whites as now been amended so that it won’t discriminate against Christians.

I am not for favoring whites. I am against anything that considers ethnicity or religion as a factor for employment.

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Using images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a 360 degree zoomable portrait of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

1:40 pm

Using images from the Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have assembled a 360 degree zoomable portrait of the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.

The image is in infrared, which is why it can see parts of the galaxy obscured by dust in visible wavelengths, and you can explore it at your leisure, from home.

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Fifty states of Obamacare victims.

12:39 pm

Fifty states of Obamacare victims.

The video, embedded below the fold, excerpts news stories from all fifty states about the failures of Obamacare. It is short, but worth watching, as it provides a good fast summary of the innumerable stories that have appeared since the law’s failed roll out in October, showing that the failure is not confined to specific areas but is widespread, covers the entire nation, and involves a wide range of issues.

From the link:

Harry Reid thinks that 50 states of Obamacare cancellations, raised premiums, cut workers’ hours, fines and computer headaches are all lies.

» Read more

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This is how the tea party ends.

9:42 am

This is how the tea party ends.

The Tea Party’s success is not gauged by primaries alone. It’s gauged by how much the Tea Party’s priorities become the Republican Party’s priorities.

The Tea Party’s impact in primaries is largely about putting fear into establishment candidates, whether they knock them off or not. It took them two cycles, but the traditional Republican establishment took the right lessons from the Bennett and Lugar losses. Orrin Hatch spent 2011-12 voting lockstep with Mike Lee. Primary threats made Mike Enzi part of the organizing group for the defund push. Pat Roberts is doing his best to don the winger apparel. Lindsey Graham is trying like mad to re-establish his conservative credentials. Thad Cochran is the exception that proves the rule: it’s no accident that a traditional Washington appropriator who hasn’t modified his ways is the most vulnerable GOP Senator this cycle. So if establishment Republicans understand that they are vulnerable in primaries, and have to pretend to be Tea Partiers when they’re in cycle, is that a sign that the Tea Party is dead – or a sign that it’s had a significant political impact?

The tea party movement has won because it is now driving the political debate, in both parties. Republicans want to look like tea partiers, and even Democrats are shaping their election campaigns with tea party issues in mind.

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China’s Yutu rover is still functioning but cannot move.

9:12 am

China’s Yutu rover is still functioning but cannot move.

Last week Yutu and its companion spacecraft, the Chang’e 3 Moon lander, awoke from a period of dormancy after the frigid, two-week lunar night — the third awakening since landing on 14 December, Chinese scientists said this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The probes continue to gather data and send it back to Earth.

But Yutu may never move more than the 100–110 metres it has already travelled from its landing site — in the Mare Imbrium. Mission officials had hoped that Yutu would travel to the rim of a nearby crater and explore it, but a mechanical failure in Yutu’s drive system has stilled the rover since late January.

I wish they would get their story straight. This article suggests that the problem wasn’t in the circuit that controls the storage of equipment during the long lunar night, as reported previously, but in the system that actually moves the rover.

It also appears from the story above that scientists were disappointed by the amount of information released at the Texas conference.

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