Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

A new image of Vesta from Dawn

2:36 am

Dawn continues to approach the large asteroid Vesta. Below is an image taken July 1st from about 62,000 miles. The image has a resolution of 5.8 miles per pixel.

Despite Vesta’s large size, 330 miles in diameter, it is nonspherical. This fact, combined with data that says it is differentiated with a core and mantle, suggests that it is the remains of a larger object that subsequently broke up.

Vesta from 62,000 miles

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Another Iceland volcano appears about to erupt

4:41 pm

Another Iceland volcano, Hekla, is showing signs that it is about to erupt.

The volcano, dubbed by Icelanders in the Middle Ages as the “Gateway to Hell,” is one of Iceland’s most active, having erupted some 20 times over the past millennium, most recently on Feb. 26, 2000. It measures 4,891-feet (1,491-meters) and is located about 70 miles (110 kilometers) east of Reykjavik, not far from Eyjafjoell.

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House proposes to drop NASA’s budget to 2008 levels, eliminate Webb Telescope

4:25 pm

The House today proposed cutting NASA’s budget back to 2008 levels while eliminating all funds for the James Webb Space Telescope.

As much as I’d hate to see the Webb telescope die, it has cost far more than planned, is way behind schedule, and carries a gigantic risk of failure. However, if I had a choice, I’d rather they cut the $1.95 billion for Congress’s homemade heavy-lift rocket, the program-formerly-called-Constellation. There is a much better chance that Webb will get completed, launched, and work, than there is for this improvised and impossibly costly Congressionally conceived rocket.

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Questions raised about the safety of China’s new bridge

11:53 am

Questions have been raised about the safety of China’s new bridge.

[China Central Television] said that workers were tightening bolts that could easily have been loosened by hand on the bridge, which has seen nearly 18,000 cars cross it every day since it was officially opened on June 30, on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

Why does this remind me of the two shuttle accidents, where managers ignored engineering issues in order to satisfy political concerns?

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Global warming scientists blame coal use increase in China for recent cooling

8:25 pm

Global warming scientists have come up with an explanation for the cooling seen in the past decade: The increase of coal burning in China.

In other words, fossil fuels can cause global warming and global cooling!

Or to put it another way, climate scientists really have no clear understanding yet of the climate, and are merely guessing when they try to predict what’s happening.

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