More questions about today’s alien fossil story.
The questions this article raises jive well with my own doubts. However I find the level of hatred expressed in the comments to be quite disgusting and vile.
The second X-37b is in orbit. Key quote:
Similar to [Orbital Test Vehicle-1] , [Orbital Test Vehicle-2]’s actual mission duration will depend on the vehicle achieving its test objectives, but he expects it to remain on orbit for approximately 270 days. “We may extend the mission to enhance our understanding of the OTV capabilities,” Colonel Giese said, “especially since the performance data from the first flight suggest that the vehicle could have gone beyond the 270-day requirement.”
The Obama administration has appealed a judge’s ruling that the law requires them to issue oil drilling permits.
Union civility: An Ohio Republican state senator has received threats from police union officials and members, both on Facebook and in person.
Two drill companies will temporarily cease work in Arkansas to see if this action will cause the recent swarms of earthquakes there to ease.
A Los Angeles suburb has laid off almost half its government workforce in an effort to stave off bankruptcy.
Very very intriguing: A NASA scientist has claimed in a peer reviewed paper the discovery of alien fossils in several meteorites recovered on Earth. From the paper’s last paragraph:
The absence of nitrogen in the cyanobacterial filaments detected in the CI1 carbonaceous meteorites indicates that the filaments represent the remains of extraterrestrial life forms that grew on the parent bodies of the meteorites when liquid water was present, long before the meteorites entered the Earth’s atmosphere.
The news article describing this discovery is a bit more breathless in style than I would like, and makes me suspicious about these results. Moreover, that NASA held no press release or press conference for a result of this significance gives me pause. (Though NASA might have felt burned from the reactions they got from the arsenic-based-biology press conference and decided therefore to take a low profile here.)
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Go Texas! Legislators there have proposed making it a felony for TSA agents to perform full-body patdowns without cause. They have also introduced legislation that would make the body scan equipment illegal.
Walker notifies unions of layoffs, but gives Democrats 15 days to reverse move. This article is a nice summary of the present situation in Wisconsin.
Due to the budget situation, it appears that planetary scientists have scaled back their plans for future NASA missions to other planets.
We will know more on Monday, when the planetary community releases its much awaited decadal survey, outlining their recommendations for the next decade.
More science cheating: A former MIT researcher has been convicted of fraud.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden revealed at House hearings this week that NASA will announce the future museum homes for the retiring shuttles on April 12.
There is something terribly sad and ironic about having this announcement occur on the 50th anniversary of the first manned flight into space by Yuri Gagarin.
