Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
The boycott by scientists of Elsevier, the publisher of science journals, has paid off.
Life stranger than science fiction: If there is water ice on the Moon, scientists have found that the bombardment from interstellar cosmic rays has likely caused chemical reactions that “can create complex carbon chains similar to those that help form the foundations of biological structures.”
Is Obama’s fundraising this campaign a flop?
Bristol Palin: “Mr. President, when should I expect your call?”
Bring it on! A business in Missouri has become the first secular and private company to bring a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.
Most of the discussion about the Obama administration’s mandate has revolved around whether specific religious organizations, such as the Catholic Church, should be exempted from it. To me, that misses the point. In a free society, anyone who objects to this mandate on the basis of personal belief should have the freedom to ignore it. Or to put it another way, the government has no right to order free citizens to buy contraceptives for others.
A toddler in a wheelchair is stopped by the TSA at ORD (O’Hare Airport in Chicago) and forced to into a sequestered area. On his way to a family vacation in Disney, this 3 year old boy is in a body cast for a broken leg. Despite assurances from his father that “everything is ok”, he is physically trembling with fear while he watches his two siblings, mother, father, grandfather and grandmother pass through along with everyone else…only to be singled out.
Here’s the video. You decide whether this makes any sense in the real world.
A private company has proposed a way to salvage a stranded communications satellite and use it to provide communications to Antarctica.
Now stranded in an elliptical orbit at an inclination of 51 deg., the spacecraft lacks enough fuel to reach its planned geostationary slot at 80 deg. E. Long. But there is enough fuel on board for it to function for as long as 10 years in a new orbit designed to keep it in sight of Antarctica for 14-16 hr./day, according to William Readdy, a co-founder of Polar Broadband Systems Ltd. Set up on the Isle of Man for the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” of salvaging the satellite, Polar Broadband has worked out a way to maneuver Express-AM4 into a 24-hr. elliptical orbit that will remain clear of the crowded geostationary belt for safety.
Isn’t it nice to live in a free country? The FAA has issued a draft environmental impact statement, required before the agency will allow SpaceShipTwo to be launched from the Mohave Air and Space Port.
If the Wright Brothers had had to jump through the modern bureaucratic hoops required by today’s federal government, they probably wouldn’t have gotten their airplane off the ground until after World War I.
Aviation Week looks at the launch challenges facing SpaceX over the next two years.
Though it is very clear SpaceX has a tough schedule of launches coming up, with much of the future of American aerospace riding on their success, this article is strangely hostile to the company. There is no doubt the company has fallen behind schedule, but the list of customers who have been willing to commit to the company is quite impressive, especially considering that SpaceX literally didn’t exist six years ago.
I’ll make several predictions:
Russia has been forced to extend the application period for those who wish to become cosmonauts due to of a lack of response.
Only 151 applicants responded to this first-ever open astronaut application process in Russia’s history. This contrasts badly with NASA’s recent application call, which received the second highest response ever, 6372 applicants.
A different experiment at CERN has found that, in contradiction to the OPERA results last year, neutrinos travel at the speed of light, and no faster.
New budget estimates by the Congressional Budget Office say that the proposed 2013 Obama budget will increase the federal debt by $3.5 trillion.
Environmentalist organizations have once again petitioned the EPA to ban ammunition using lead.
The ban sought by environmental groups would not apply to ammunition used by law enforcement and the military. In addition to bullets and pellets used in hunting and recreational activity like range shooting, the petition seeks to limit the use of the metal in fishing tackle and weights.
Government agencies get a pass, but not private gun ranges, eh? These petty dictators have really only one goal, and it has nothing to do with protecting wildlife. They want to prevent private citizens from having access to ammunition, which in turn will prevent them from having access to guns.
Nine incredible places on Earth. With pictures.
Investment opportunity: Two Sandia National Laboratories researchers are seeking a partnership with a private company to market the self-guided bullet they developed.
The prototype design is a four-inch long bullet with a built-in optical sensor in its nose to detect a laser beam on the target. The sensor directs guidance and control information using an algorithm and a small central processing unit that helps steer tiny built-in fins to guide the bullet. According to the Sandia lab’s computer simulations, an unguided bullet in real world conditions can miss a target that is half a mile away by almost 10 yards. With this guided bullet, however, it could strike within eight inches of a target.
Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, aiming to complete a record-setting 120,000 foot dive from edge of space, successfully completed a 71,581 foot practice dive today.
From launch to touchdown, the entire test flight lasted just over eight minutes, officials said. According to Baumgartner, the toughest part of the leap was the extreme cold he experienced high up in Earth’s atmosphere. “I could hardly move my hands,” the skydiver said in a statement. “We’re going to have to do some work on that aspect.”
Baumgartner is gearing up for an even bigger leap — his so-called “space jump” — from 120,000 feet (36,576 m) this summer. The current record for highest-altitude skydive is 102,800 feet (31,333 m), set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger.
Duck! The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit that will bring it past the Earth again on February 15, 2013 by less than 15,000 miles.
The team use several automated telescopes to scan the sky, and the discovery came somewhat serendipitously after they decided to search areas of the sky where asteroids are not usually seen. “A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than our terrestrial year, and it ‘jumps’ inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year,” says Jaime.
While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid’s next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon’s gravitational effects on it.
Because this newly discovered asteroid passes so close and frequently to both the Earth and Moon, astronomers will need a lot more data before they can pin down its orbit precisely, and thus predict the chances of a collision in the near future.
Thank you Barack! Europe, dumped by Obama administration and NASA, has teamed up with Russia to build its ExoMars orbiter and lander.
Have researchers found Leonardo da Vinca’s lost “The Battle of Anghiari” fresco, hidden for the past six centuries behind a wall?
The painting, considered a masterpiece by contemporaries, had never been finished by da Vinci because he had used an experimental technique to paint it, and that technique had failed. Thus, the painting was painted over fifty years later. The only reason we have a good idea of what the painting looked like is that several artists were so impressed by it that they produced copies while it was still visible.
The research suggests the painting was not painted over, but that a false wall was built in front of it. If so, this would be truly exciting discovery. The painting would probably not be in very good shape, but to actually see it would be wonderful.
A filmmaker has second thoughts on hating Israel.
News you can’t use: All three network nightly news shows last night failed to mention the Congressional Budget Office report that says the cost of Obamacare will be twice what was predicted, and that millions will lose their health plans because of it.
This is a good example of why I’ve said for years that if you depend on television for your news, you are not only uninformed, you are misinformed.
You can’t make this stuff up: It appears that the reason Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Russia’s space agency, was hospitalized last week was because he got into a fight at a party over a woman.
The woman in question was apparently General Popovkin’s press secretary, Anna Vedischeva, 28. Vedischeva was appointed despite criticism when it was revealed that she was an ex-glamour model who, by her own admission, knew nothing about space or public relations. The party where the incident allegedly took place was to celebrate International Woman’s Day on 8 March.
SpaceX has now set April 30 as the target launch date for its Falcon 9/Dragon capsule test flight to ISS.
The judge in the JPL intelligent design lawsuit has ruled against JPL. The press will be allowed to observe and report on the testimony.
David Coppedge, the man JPL fired, testified yesterday, outlining his belief in intelligent design. From the quotes included in the article, he certainly didn’t put forth a convincing case. He also didn’t say anything that justified firing him.
A prototype of a new space junk radar system has successfully demonstrated it can track objects smaller than an inch across.
This resolution is considered ten times better than previous designs. The cost to build the fully operational system is estimated to be $3.5 billion.
I wonder where we will get the money.
“Obamacare: If possible, the news Is getting worse.”
Here’s a new little tidbit:
When the House of Representatives votes next week on repealing Obamacare’s unaccountable, unelected IPAB board, at least some Democrats are likely to support repeal. The IPAB repeal bill, sponsored by Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), received bi-partisan support as it made its way through House committees, showing that Democrats are equally worried about the power of the board to usurp the job of the people’s elected representatives.
Maybe these idiotic Democrats should have read the bill before they passed it. That they obviously didn’t is further proof that they should be fired.
A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit from various environmental groups that was trying to overturn Congressional legislation that removed the wolf from the endangered species list.
The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Congress had the right to intervene when it stripped protections from wolves last spring.
Lawmakers stepped in after court rulings kept wolves on the endangered list for years after they reached recovery goals. [emphasis mine]
I emphasis the last sentence because it once again illustrates how completely irrelevant reality is to these environmental laws and to those who defend them.
This tells us a lot more about the New York Times than either Islam or Catholicism: The New York Times has refused to publish a full page anti-Islam ad, despite publishing a similar anti-Catholic ad less than a week earlier.
