WhiteKnightTwo test flight on Twitter
WhiteKnightTwo was in the air today, doing another test flight, this time without SpaceShipTwo attached.
Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Northern light show
That coronal mass ejection thrown out by the Sun on Sunday is expected to energize the aurora tonight and again on Thursday. Look up at night if you live in the high northern latitudes.
Open water at the North Pole
Steve Goddard notes the state of ice at the North Pole, both then and now, with pictures.
Two predictions of the next solar maximum
Two new predictions of the upcoming solar maximum were published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint webpage. Both call for a weak solar maximum, with one expecting a sunspot number of 92 at maximum while the other predicting a number of 72.
Muslim outreach by NASA
Three citizens of the United Arab Emirates are now the first non-American citizens to train at the NASA Ames Research Center, with more to come, suggesting that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden really meant it when he said his foremost priority was Muslim outreach.
Newsweek sale summary
Ed Driscoll has an excellent summary outlining the sale of Newsweek to the husband of Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-California). Fun quote from headline: Washington Post Unloads Newsweek for $1; Buyer Clearly Overpaid
Repair spacewalk scheduled
The first spacewalk to replace the pump module on ISS and thus fix on of the station’s two cooling system is now scheduled for Friday at 6:55 (EDT).
Frog counts flawed?
Scientists have found that the methods used to measure frog populations in the U.S. might be flawed, producing many more false positives than expected and thereby overestimating the populations.
NASA shuts down website
Talk about stupid: It seems the legal eagles at NASA have shut down a website that featured a variety of webcams, showing NASA missions.
Met office report
The Met Office in the United Kingdom has issued a report on the state of the climate. In it they state unequivocally that the “world is warming”. Unfortunately, the report fails to address the questions that have been raised about much of the existing climate data, following the climategate scandal.
Largest known Roman canal discovered
Archeologists have discovered the largest Roman canal ever built at the mouth of the Tiber river.
Closing out debate on climate
It appears that McCarthyism and the blacklist are both alive and well, thriving happily in the field of climate research. Key quote:
It is disturbing, to say the least, that organisations and persons who would be quick to claim professional status consider that it is their current duty to disparage, or to refuse to debate with, or to muzzle scientists whose views on climate change they apparently disagree with.
Read the whole article.