Category: Behind The Black

Campus administrator shuts down conservative group

3:52 pm

Freedom of speech alert: Despite having gotten permission to be there, campus officials ejected students and members of the Young American’s for Freedom from the Palm Beach State College campus during club rush, apparantly because the officials disagreed with the students’ literature. Key quote:

On the day of club rush, officials approached the group and after seeing information about the organization and its ideals criticizing Barack Obama’s economic policy, Ms. Ford-Morris was visibly disturbed by the material presented, published by the Heritage Foundation, criticizing President Obama’s administration. College officials then called the campus police to assure the group left campus. Ms. Ford-Morris denied having ever talked to Ms. Beattie about giving permission to the organization to be a part of PBSC club rush.

Update: The name for Young American’s for Freedom has been corrected. Thank you, readers!

One comment

Opportunity’s journey continues

12:28 pm

On August 18, 2010, the Mars rover Opportunity took this panorama image of the Martian terrain. Up close, patches of bedrock can be seen where the sand had blown clear. In the far distance the rim of Endeavour Crater, the rover’s long term destination, pokes up over the horizon.

Endeavour Crater on the horizon

Update: A press notice from JPL today notes that Opportunity has now traveled about half of the 11.8 mile distance to Endeavour Crater. As it took two years to go this far, the journey still has two years to go, assuming the rover survives that long.

Leave a comment

The September monthly sunspot graph

12:15 pm

The Sun continues to show a reluctance to come out of its solar minimum. Today NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center published its monthly graph, showing the sun’s developing sunspot cycle in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009. As you can see below, actual sunspot activity remains far below what was predicted by the red line.

September 7, 2010 Solar Cycle progression

As I noted when I posted the July and August graphs, the Sun’s ramp up to solar maximum continues to be far slower and weaker than predicted. After two hundred years of watching a vibrant and strong solar cycle, it appears increasingly likely that we are heading towards some quiet time on the Sun.

Leave a comment

Ares I first stage test firing

8:03 pm

An evening pause: One week ago today the rocket company ATK test fired the first stage solid rocket motor of the Ares I rocket. At the moment, no one knows if this rocket will even be built, as the Obama administration opposes it while Congress argues a variety of options. Regardless, watch this video of the test and you will understand why it is fun ito build rockets.

Leave a comment

Natural Bridge, on the Moon

4:43 pm

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has released another lunar cave image, this time showing a double pit entrance with a natural bridge between them. [Thanks to reader James Fincannon for the tip.]

Natural bridge

From the caption: “The bridge is approximately 7 meters wide on top and perhaps 9 meters on the bottom side, and is a 20 meter walk for an astronaut to cross from one side to the other.”

Leave a comment

More evidence that the solar cycle is changing

9:04 am

A preprint paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph website shows further evidence of the decline in the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field over the past ten years. Extrapolated into the future, this data also suggests that the next solar maximum will be the weakest in 200 years, and that the solar maximum after that will have no sunspots at all. You can download the paper here [pdf].

Leave a comment

Bart Gordon responds to Nobel laureates

7:30 pm

The space war continues: On Friday the chairman of the House committee of Science and Technology responded negatively to the letter by 30 Nobel laureates demanding the House revise its budget authorization for NASA and accept the Obama administration’s plans for the agency. Two key quotes from Gordon’s response:

The hard reality is that the Administration has sent an unexecutable budget request to Congress, and now we have to make tough choise to the nation can have a sustainable and balance [sic] NASA program.

Reluctantly, the Committee came to the conclusion that the president’s new human space flight program, much like the current Constellation program, was unexecutable under the current budget projections and other NASA priorities we all agree must be addressed.

One comment

Life on Mars?

3:33 pm

New research now suggests that it was premature to conclude that Mars has no life, based on the data from the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s. This is vindication for Gilbert Levin, one of the chief scientists for those missions, who had said so then and was subsequently pilloried for it.

Leave a comment
1 … 1,037 1,038 1,039 1,040 1,041 … 1,054