Confessions of a moon rock thief
Confessions of a moon rock thief.
And in a related story: Fish captain fights to keep long-missing moon rock.
Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
The space shuttle docks with ISS, for the last time
The space shuttle docks with ISS, for the last time.
A senator’s flying violation causes him to introduce legislation to change FAA
Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) and pilot, sanctioned by the FAA for landing on a closed runway — the closure of which had not been publicly announced by the FAA — has introduced a bill to change how the agency polices pilots.
Mount Etna eruption closes airports and causes clocks to run 15 minutes fast
Mount Etna had its fifth eruption this year Saturday, closing the local airport and causing local clocks to run 15 minutes fast. With lots of good images.
NASA continues to stall on heavy-lift rocket
It ain’t ever happening: NASA continues to stall on their final design for Congress’s mandated heavy-lift rocket.
No one should be surprised by this. Obama has never wanted NASA to build this rocket, when it was Constellation and now when it is the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Moreover, Congress hasn’t given NASA enough money or time to do it anyway. Better the program die and the money is used for something else, or cut entirely in order to reduce the crushing federal debt.
The government’s war on cameras and free speech
The government’s war on cameras and free speech.
Washington’s Never-Ending Scam of Fake Spending Cuts
Washington’s never-ending scam of fake spending cuts.
The politicians only get away with this because the press has let them. Which is why I always make reference back to past budgets to give some context to the so-called “cuts,” which often are exactly not that.
More evidence dinosaurs were warm-blooded
A new study has found new evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and active, unlike modern reptiles. Even more surprising,
“The dinosaurs appeared to be even more active than the mammals. We certainly didn’t expect to see that. These results provide additional weight to theories that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and highly active creatures, rather than cold-blooded and sluggish.”
Obama’s Stimulus Waste: $7 million per House on Internet Access
Obama’s stimulus bill: $7 million per house to provide seven homes internet access in Montana.
The last space shuttle has reached orbit
After a very short hold at 31 seconds, the space shuttle Atlantis has launched and reached orbit without any obvious hitches.
The Senate canceled its July 4th Break to deal with the debt and literally did nothing
Throw these bums out! The Senate canceled its July 4th break to deal with the debt and literally did nothing.
Where to find life in the Milky Way galaxy
A paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint website has attempted to model the habitable zones within the Milky Way galaxy. From the abstract:
We predict that ~1.2% of all stars host a planet that may have been capable of supporting complex life at some point in the history of the Galaxy. Of those stars with a habitable planet, ~75% of planets are predicted to be in a tidally locked configuration with their host star. The majority of these planets that may support complex life are found towards the inner Galaxy, distributed within, and significantly above and below, the Galactic midplane.[emphasis mine]
They took into consideration the hazard of supernovae for killing off planetary life, as well as other factors such as the where the necessary heavier elements would be available for producing planets.
You can download the paper here [pdf].