Pop! Analysis of the images that Stardust took of Comet Tempel 1 strongly suggest that when Deep Impact hit the comet’s surface it broke open several underground cavities that then burst like balloons.
Recent data leaks from particle hunters is now raising questions among physicists about the question of controlling scientific secrecy. To me, the most significant quote from the article was this:
“Should leakers or bloggers be punished for making early findings public?
That this question is even asked by someone in the science field is disturbing. Though the leaks might be annoying and counter to the agreements the scientists signed when they joined these various projects, I wonder how the author expects such punishment to be administrated. And who would do it? And should such punishment apply to everyone, or just to the participating scientists?
An inconvenient truth: New data now shows that since 2003, the rate of sea level rise has stablized, and since 2007, the rate of increase has actually slowed.
An evening pause:
Were Neandertals and modern humans just ships passing in the night? Some scientists are now making this claim.
Deep fractures on Mars, some more than 1500 feet deep.
Every year, as part of its educational and research mission, the Space Telescope and Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland holds a science symposium that focuses one of the big questions of astronomy, inviting over a hundred scientists to come and give their individual perspectives on the state of the field.
This year’s symposium ended yesterday, and the subject was the mysteries of dark matter. Though I wasn’t able to attend the symposium itself, they held a workshop for journalists yesterday, which I did attend. (You can watch the webcast here.)
So, what is dark matter?
First of all, it isn’t dark energy. Dark energy is that mysterious unknown phenomenon that is causing — on vast scales of many billions of light years — the expansion of the universe to accelerate rather than decelerate. It has nothing to do with the question of dark matter.
Second, no one knows. All that scientists do know is that objects in the outer regions of galaxies as well as the galaxies themselves don’t move at the speeds and directions expected if their known mass and gravity were the only forces influencing them. In order to successfully plot their orbits and motions, astronomers have to add a gigantic halo of extra mass, which they have dubbed “dark matter” because it is unseen, undetected, and completely invisible.
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We’re here to help you! U.N. rescue forces from Nepal were the ones who introduced cholera to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
Soon after the start of the outbreak, which has sickened close to 300,000 people and killed nearly 5000, Haitians fingered the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has a camp populated by Nepalese soldiers in Mirebalais in the Centre Department, very close to where the first cholera cases occurred. The camp was also blamed in a leaked epidemiological report by a French cholera expert, Renaud Piarroux of the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, written at the request of the Haitian government. Several genetic studies showed that the Haitian cholera strain strongly resembled others found recently in South Asia—although none pinpointed Nepal specifically.
Yet some cholera scientists—including Rita Colwell, seen by many as a giant in the field—contended that the bacteria had more likely been present in local waters, and that the outbreak had been triggered by a combination of environmental factors.
Rita Colwell is hardly what I’d call a “giant in the field,” at least nowadays. Though her biography lists a lot of research work, the last decade she has spent most of her time playing politics as a political appointee, going from one government agency to another.
Scientists have found evidence that a subsurface ocean of water and ammonia exists within Saturn’s moon Titan.
Dark matter: light or heavy?
Later today I will be attending press conference at a symposium on dark matter that is being held this week at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. I will post more on this subject then.
