The sponge-like Saturn moon. Key quote:
Hyperion measures about 250kms across; it rotates chaotically and has a density so low that it might house a vast system of caverns inside.
R.I.P. Leif J. Robinson, who served as editor of Sky & Telescope for twenty years, passed away Sunday at the age of 71 at his home in Costa Rica.
An evening pause: When the Sun gets active, such as the solar flare of February 15, 2011, the sky in the high latitudes gives us the world’s best light show.
The discovery of new caves on the Moon keep coming. Today I have two new stories. The first is a discovery by professional scientists of a giant lava tube cave in the Oceanus Procellarum or Ocean of Storms. The second is the detection of a plethora of caves and sinks on the floor of the crater Copernicus, found by a NASA engineer who likes to explore the gobs of data being accumulated by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and made available to all on the web.
The image below of the Moon’s near side, taken by India’s Cartosat-2A satellite and taken from the science paper, shows the location of lava tube in Oceanus Procellarum (indicated by the red dot) and the crater Copernicus.
First the professional discovery. Yesterday, the Times of India reported the discovery of lava tube more than a mile long on the Moon. I did not post a link to the article because I didn’t think the news story provided enough information to make it worth passing along. Today however, fellow caver Mark Minton emailed me the link where the actual research paper could be downloaded [pdf]. This I find definitely worth describing.
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Two high-priority climate missions dropped from NASA’s budget by the White House. And what’s most amazing: No one’s squealing!
“Removal of these missions was not what we desired and not what the administration desired, but it was a clear recognition and acknowledgement of the budget issues we face as a nation,” [said Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs at NASA’s Earth Science Division]. “It’s cleaner to be allowed to delete the scope that goes along with the dollars than to have to figure out how to do more with less.”
More problems for the James Webb Space Telescope: The detector arrays for several instruments are deteriorating, even as they sit on the shelf. And remember, the 2014 launch date is probably going to be delayed until 2016. Key quote:
“As you get further and further out with [the launch date], it really raises questions about how far down the [integration and test] process you go for the instruments … and how long you have to store all that before you actually launch,” [Webb program director Rick Howard] told the NASA Advisory Council’s astrophysics subcommittee during a Feb. 16 public meeting here. “And that just makes everybody even more nervous about this problem than anything else.”
The inspector general of the Department of Commerce has just issued a review of NOAA’s response to the climategate emails and has essentially given the agency a clean bill of health. You can download the full report here [pdf].
It’s. just. another. whitewash. Let me quote just one part of the report’s summary, referring to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to NOAA in June 2007 in which the agency responded by saying they had no such documents:
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Scientists have uncovered the oldest cremated human remains ever discovered in northern North America at a dig site in central Alaska. Key quote:
Archaeologists discovered the remains last spring in a fire pit in an abandoned living area from 13,200 years ago and dated the child’s death to about 11,500 years ago.
The cries and squeals are now coming from all sides: A former undersecretary for Science in the Energy Department during the Bush administration, Raymond L. Orbach, has joined the chorus of scientists whining about the House’s proposed cuts. [His full editorial, available here as a pdf, can only be downloaded if you subscribe to Science.]
Like all the other squealers, he admits that “the budget deficit is serious.” Nonetheless, the idea of cutting his pet science programs remains unacceptable.
It is when I read stuff like this that feel the situation is most hopeless. Is there no one willing to accept the reality that if we don’t start gaining some control over the federal budget the country will go bankrupt and we will not be able to afford anything?
Instead, all I hear are cries of “Cut! Cut! But don’t cut my program!”
A new record! On January 19, the Pan-Starrs telescope in Hawaii discovered 19 near-earth asteroids, the most for a single night of asteroid-hunting by anyone.
More launch news: The launch of the climate satellite Glory was postponed again today. No new launch date is set.
More on the New Zealand earthquake: Curfew imposed as death toll climbs to 75.
Glory launch postponed until early Friday.
What could go wrong? Scientists have developed technology allowing someone to steer a car by thought alone. Key quote:
“In our test runs, a driver equipped with EEG sensors was able to control the car with no problem — there was only a slight delay between the envisaged commands and the response of the car,” said Prof. Raúl Rojas, who heads the AutoNOMOS project at Freie Universität Berlin.
A new dinosaur, dubbed “thunder-thighs” because of its powerful leg muscles, has been discovered in Utah.
The uncertainty of science: New evidence suggests that rather than postulate the existence of dark energy and dark matter, scientists need simply to revise their theories of gravity.
Is there a crack in the monolith? A play about the persecution of a scientist who expresses skepticism about global warming is running in London, with favorable reviews!
The death toll from the earthquake yesterday in New Zealand may top 200.
The high priests of science and how they bar the door to skeptics. A paper is published in Nature claiming that Antarctica is warming as predicted by global warming advocates.
The indefatigable Steve McIntyre started to scrutinize [this paper] along with Nicholas Lewis. They found several flaws: Steig et al had used too few data sequences to speak for an entire continent, and had processed the data in a very questionable way. But when they wanted to correct him, in another journal, they quickly ran into an inconvenient truth about global warming: the high priests do not like refutation. To have their critique (initial submission here [pdf], final version here [pdf]) of Steig’s work published, they needed to assuage the many demands of an anonymous ‘Reviewer A’ – whom they later found out to be Steig himself. [emphasis mine]
It is unconscionable for any science journal to have allowed Steig, the author of the paper under attack, to act one of the anonymous reviewers. But hey, what do I know? I’m only a simple science writer.
An evening pause: On February 15, 2011, the Sun emitted its strongest flare in four years. Though the Sun continues to act relatively wimpy as it ramps up towards solar maximum, this flare was spectacular, mostly because we now have some amazing instruments in space to image and study it. This video does an excellent job explaining what was happening, as it happened. Watch, and enjoy.
And note, as powerful as this flare was, and despite the fact that it was pointed right at the Earth, it represented a relatively minor threat to our technological society, despite what some doomsayers might be claiming. A very active Sun can cause us problems, especially with power systems and electrical grids, but based on past experience during previous solar maximums, most power companies have taken careful steps to protect themselves from this risk. And with the Sun as weakly active as it is, the risks are further reduced. The doomsayers are simply shilling for more government research dollars.
Thousands flee as Philippine volcano erupts.
The new colonial movement: China’s first probe to Mars is now set for a November launch.
In today’s listing of new science papers published by the American Geophysical Union, two papers illustrate quite clearly why the certainty of knowledge expressed by Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren in his testimony before Congress on Thursday is both mistaken and dangerous.
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Want to know whose getting what? The journal Science has put together this nice interactive table showing the various proposed budgets for the various science agencies in the federal government.
Though the magazine is undeniably pro-spending for science, the information is useful, as it shows clearly that even if every Republican cut is approved, the amount of money for most of these agencies will not be, on average, much different than what was spent in 2008. And it seems to me that in 2008 there was plenty of money for science in the federal government. Probably too much.
The mysterious swarm of earthquakes in Arkansas keep coming, including a 4.3 quake today.
The uncertainty of science: The discoverers of the possibly habitable exoplanet Gliese 581g defend their work against recent science attacks.
