The first high resolution image from Curiosity.
This image isn’t that different from the first two, showing one of the rover’s wheels and the horizon. This camera is for guiding the rover’s movement and is not one of the cameras that will used for science. Nonetheless, it reconfirms that Curiosity is functioning as expected.
The United States has done it again: Curiosity has landed safely on Mars. Images have already been received, with the first showing one of the rover’s wheels on the ground. NASA has posted those first images. More here.
The competition heats up: India’s government has okayed the launch of an unmanned probe to Mars.
An evening pause: What to do when you don’t have matches and all that is left is the nearest Ikea store.
The uncertainty of science: Archeologists are disputing the age of a jawbone found in a cave in England.
Both sides of the debate agree that there is a lot riding on the outcome. “What is at stake is the entire [prehistory] of Neandertals and early modern humans in Europe,” Pettitt says. Apart from the Kents Cavern fossil and some 43,000- to 45,000-year-old teeth from Italy whose status as modern human or Neandertal is currently also debated, the oldest undisputed human fossils in Europe are about only 40,000 years old and come from a site in Romania. If modern humans really made it all the way to northwest Europe by 41,500 years ago or even earlier, it would mean that they entered Europe much earlier than once thought and also spread across the continent very rapidly. It would also increase the overlap between modern humans and the Neandertals, who already lived in Europe, and who went extinct sometime between 40,000 and 35,000 years ago. What’s more, such an overlap could make it more likely that Neandertals, who made sophisticated ornaments and tools in their last years, copied these techniques from modern humans rather than inventing them on their own.
Launching a beer can into space. With video! More here.
New computer models suggest that the Moon was created when a Mars-sized asteroid hit the Earth in a head-on collision at high speed, not a glancing blow at relatively slow speeds, as previously thought.
Curiosity’s journey and upcoming landing, a summary.
What one supernovae looks like after the boom.
An evening pause: It is fascinating how much, and little, of what was dreamed of in 1957 came true.
How the federal government has persecuted a scientist for whistling at a whale.
A scientific analysis of a database of over a million songs produced since 1955 has found that modern popular music is louder and has less variety or range than the popular music of the past. Key quote:
Lastly, the researchers detected a trend of homogenization of the timbral palette. Timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. It is essentially the difference between different instruments playing the same note at the same loudness. They found that, after peaking in the mid 60s, timbral variety has continued to narrow.
This confirms a suspicion of many fans of modern popular music, that it is less interesting and shows far less creativity than the popular music of the 1960s. This result might also explain why 1960s music remains so popular.
