2010: A New Space Odyssey Beckons

From The Independent:

The world is on the verge of new manned exploration of the solar system – and, this time, environmentalists are backing it.

This weekend, 40 years after man first landed on the Moon, more human beings than ever before are orbiting on a single spacecraft. In 1969, three men squeezed into Apollo 11's command module, a craft little bigger than a Mini.

Yesterday, the International Space Station, now as large as a four-storey house, yet speeding at 17,239mph, took on board the crew of the shuttle Endeavour: 12 men, one woman – seven Americans, two Russians, two Canadians, one Japanese and a Belgian. During a two-man space-walk, the crew added a four-ton porch – an outdoor shelf for experiments – to the station.

Read more ....

40 Years Later, Moon Still Giant Leap For Mankind

In this July 1969 file photo, Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks by the footpad of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module. (AP/Photo, NASA, file)

From Yahoo News/AP:

WASHINGTON – The measure of what humanity can accomplish is a size 9 1/2 bootprint. It belongs to Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon. It will stay on the moon for millions of years with nothing to wipe it away, serving as an almost eternal testament to a can-do mankind.

Apollo 11 is the glimmering success that failures of society are contrasted against: "If we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ..."

What put man on the moon 40 years ago was an audacious and public effort that the world hasn't seen before or since. It required rocketry that hadn't been built, or even designed, in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy declared the challenge. It needed an advance in computerization that had not happened yet. NASA would have to learn how to dock separate spaceships, how to teach astronauts to walk in space, even how to keep them alive in space — all tasks so difficult experts weren't sure they were possible.

Read more ....

July Eclipse Is Best Chance To Look For Gravity Anomaly

From New Scientist:

From remote observatories on the Tibetan plateau to a cave in a Shanghai suburb, Chinese researchers are poised to conduct an audacious once-in-a-century experiment. The plan is to test a controversial theory: the possibility that gravity drops slightly during a total eclipse.

Geophysicists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences are preparing an unprecedented array of highly sensitive instruments at six sites across the country to take gravity readings during the total eclipse due to pass over southern China on 22 July. The results, which will be analysed in the coming months, could confirm once and for all that anomalous fluctuations observed during past eclipses are real.

Read more ....

Man Who Went To The Moon And Came Back An Artist

A Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum handout photo shows former astronaut Alan Bean in front of his easel at his art studio in Houston, Texas

From Yahoo News/AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Forty years after Alan Bean became the fourth man to walk on the moon, the now 77-year-old former astronaut still likes to share his memories of space flight with a broad audience -- by painting them.

Bean decided to make the switch from astronaut to artist a dozen years after the Apollo 12 mission that took him to the moon in November 1969 and after spending two months in space in 1973 on board Skylab, and his souvenirs from both missions dominate his artwork.

When, at age 49, he dropped a bombshell on his bosses and colleagues at NASA, telling them that he was leaving to become a full-time painter, they wondered if he wasn't in the throes of lunacy.

Read more ....

Ecologist Brings Century-old Eggs To Life To Study Evolution

Daphnia neonate emerge from a dormant egg (Daphnia birth). Approximate size is 300 micrometers. (Credit: Photomicrograph by P. Spaak)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — Suspending a life in time is a theme that normally finds itself in the pages of science fiction, but now such ideas have become a reality in the annals of science.

Cornell ecologist Nelson Hairston Jr. is a pioneer in a field known loosely as "resurrection ecology," in which researchers study the eggs of such creatures as zooplankton -- tiny, free-floating water animals -- that get buried in lake sediments and can remain viable for decades or even centuries. By hatching these eggs, Hairston and others can compare time-suspended hatchlings with their more contemporary counterparts to better understand how a species may have evolved in the meantime.

Read more ....

Arctic Mystery: Identifying The Great Blob of Alaska

An unknown blob floats in the Arctic Ocean off of
Alaska's North Slope. Ccourtesy North Slope Borough

From Time Magazine:

A group of hunters aboard a small boat out of the tiny Alaska village of Wainwright were the first to spot what would eventually be called "the blob." It was a dark, floating mass stretching for miles through the Chukchi Sea, a frigid and relatively shallow expanse of Arctic Ocean water between Alaska's northwest coast and the Russian Far East. The goo was fibrous, hairy. When it touched floating ice, it looked almost black.

But what was it? An oil slick? Some sort of immense, amorphous organism adrift in some of the planet's most remote waters? Maybe a worrisome sign of global climate change? Or, as folks wondered who followed from faraway via the internet, was it something insidious and, perhaps, even carnivorous like the man-eating jello from the old Steve McQueen movie that inspired the Alaska phenomenon's nickname?

Read more ....

'One Small Step For Man,' One Massive Rocket Project For Engineers

The historic flight lifts off July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center. Engines for the massive Saturn V rocket were developed and built in Southern California. AFP / Getty Images

From L.A. Times:

The young scientists who created the Saturn V rocket that powered Aldrin and Armstrong to the moon on Apollo 11 in July 1969 were the unsung heroes in the space race with the Soviet Union.

It wasn't a young president's brash promise that enabled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to take those first halting steps on the lunar surface 40 years ago Monday. Nor was it the courage of the astronauts themselves.

The success of America's big bet in space depended on the ability of young, unheralded engineers to build rocket engines that were both powerful enough and reliable enough to wrench the spacecraft from Earth's jealous grasp and send it winging to the lunar surface.

Read more ....

Space Station Toilet Breaks Down

From The BBC:

The main toilet has broken down on the International Space Station (ISS), currently home to a record 13 astronauts, Nasa said.

Mission Control told the crew to hang an "out of service" sign until the toilet can be fixed.

The crew of the shuttle Endeavour is confined to using the craft's loo. ISS residents are using a back-up toilet in the Russian part of the station.

If repairs fails, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said.

"We don't yet know the extent of the problem," flight director Brian Smith told reporters, adding that the toilet troubles were "not going to be an issue" for now.

Read more ....

Update: Space Station Toilet Troubled -- Space.com

Why Winning Athletes Are Getting Bigger

Pictured are Jordan Charles, left, and Adrian Bejan. (Credit: Duke University Photography)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 19, 2009) — While watching swimmers line up during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, former Olympic swimmer and NBC Sports commentator Rowdy Gaines quipped that swimmers keep getting bigger, with the shortest one in the current race towering over the average spectator.

What may have been seen as an off-hand remark turns out to illustrate a trend in human development -- elite athletes are getting bigger and bigger.

Read more ....

Tough Microbe Has The Right Stuff for Mars

A micrograph of Methanosarcina barkeri cells embedded in an extracellular structure that resembles connective tissue found in bone cartilage. Credit: Kevin Sowers

From Live Science:

Biologists have found microbes that live in the hottest, coldest, driest and most unpleasant places on Earth. Many of these bugs don't adapt well to new surroundings, but one microbe is remarkable for withstanding a wide range of conditions. This quality might make this unique organism suitable for adapting to life on Mars.

This ultimate survivor is called Methanosarcina barkeri. It is found in freshwater and marine sediments, and other places where oxygen is scarce. Because it breathes out methane, researchers are interested to see if it — or some other "methanogen" — could be responsible for the methane that was detected in the martian atmosphere in 2003.

Read more ....

Expiration Dates

From Organize Your Life:

Certain items in your house practically scream “toss me” when their prime has passed. That mysterious extra white layer on the Cheddar? A sure sign it needs to be put out of its misery. Chunky milk? Down the drain it goes.

But what about that jar of olives or Maraschino cherries that has resided in your refrigerator since before the birth of your kindergartner? Or the innumerable nonedibles lurking deep within your cabinets and closets: stockpiled shampoo and toothpaste, seldom-used silver polish? How do you know when their primes have passed?

With help from experts and product manufacturers, Real Simple (http://www.realsimple.com/) has compiled a guide to expiration dates. These dates are offered as a rough guideline. The shelf lives of most products depend upon how you treat them. Edibles, unless otherwise indicated, should be stored in a cool, dry place. (With any food, of course, use common sense.) Household cleaners also do best in a dry place with a stable temperature. After the dates shown, beauty and cleaning products are probably still safe but may be less effective.

Read more ....

Hat Tip: Geek Press

19 Of The Top 20 Supercomputers In The World Are Running Some Form Of Linux

From Pingdom:

Operating systems on supercomputers used to be custom-made affairs, but this has changed. These days, Linux has become a popular choice for supercomputers. But how popular? You may be surprised.

Top500.org maintains a list of the fastest supercomputers in the world. A new list was published yesterday (it happens twice a year), so we took the opportunity to go through the list and find out what OS the top 20 supercomputers are using.

It took some work, but the results are interesting.

Read more ....

10 Stunning (And Useful) Stats About Twitter

From Information Marketing Blog:

Last month a social media analytics provider named Sysomos released a comprehensive report on Twitter usage. The problem with most analysis on Twitter, though, is that it is limited by the minimal amount of data that Twitter collects. So, to fill the gaps, most reports do things like guessing gender based on real names or pulling data from keywords in people's biographic information. This often yields some questionable results - and the Sysomos report is not immune to this (for example, they find that 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25, but base this on only the 0.7% of users who actually disclose their age).

Read more ....

Red Sky At Night: Heavens Turn Crimson Over Britain After Russian Volcano Erupts

(Click Image to Enlarge)
Shepherd's delight: A particularly fiery red sky over fields in Leicestershire last night after an eruption at Sarychev Peak in Russia unleashed a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur. When this 'volcanic aerosol' in the stratosphere mixes with the red light of the setting sun, it produces a vivid crimson hue

From The Daily Mail:

The night skies over Britain will turn a deep shade of crimson this week as the fallout from a Russian volcano blast hits the UK.

Millions of tonnes of dust, ash and sulphur dioxide were thrown up to 30 miles into the air when Sarychev Peak on Matua Island in the Kuril Archipelago erupted last month.

The blast created what experts call a ‘volcanic aerosol’ - a colourful mixture of ash and sulphur compounds - in the stratosphere.

This scatters an invisible blue glow which, when mixed with the red light of the setting sun, produces a ‘volcanic lavender’, or vivid crimson/violet hue.

Read more ....

The Genesis Enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution Of Life 3,000 Years Before Darwin?

Myth or divine inspiration: Was the book of Genesis a gateway into the evolution of life?

From The Daily Mail:

The revalation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force.

'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.'

The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

Read more ....

Mystery Methane Belched Out By Megacities

Photo: Methane was found at surprisingly high levels in the Los Angeles atmosphere (Image: David Iliff)

From New Scientist:

The Los Angeles metropolitan area belches far more methane into its air than scientists had previously realised. If other megacities are equally profligate, urban methane emissions may represent a surprisingly important source of this potent greenhouse gas.

Atmospheric researchers have long had good estimates of global methane emissions, but less is known about exactly where these emissions come from, particularly in urban areas.

Read more ....

Ten Things You Didn't Know About The Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Camera Shy: Neil Armstrong's reflection in Buzz Aldrin's visor is one of the few photos of Armstrong on the moon NASA

From The Popsci.com:

This month marks the 40th anniversary of humankind's first steps on the moon. Auspiciously timed is Craig Nelson's new book, Rocket Men--one of the most detailed accounts of the period leading up to the first manned moon mission. Here, we have ten little-known Apollo 11 facts unearthed by Nelson during his research.

Read more ....

The 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11

On July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong became the first humans to set foot on the moon. In this image from a panorama of the landing site taken by Aldrin, Armstrong stands at the base of the lunar module.

From Scientific American:

Four decades after mankind's giant leap, a look at the harrowing first lunar landing, the Apollo missions that never flew, and how the historic event looked from the Soviet Union

Read more ....

Solar Cycle Linked To Global Climate

Scientists find link between solar cycle and global climate similar to El Nino/La Nina.
(Credit: NCAR)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) — Establishing a key link between the solar cycle and global climate, research led by scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

The research may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.

Read more ....

5 Myths About The Male Body

From Live Science:

From rumors about feet size to sex life, there's a lot of cultural misinformation circulating about men and their physiques. And men themselves offer precious little clarification what with their tendencies toward joshing around and playing things close to the chest. So for the record, here are five classic assumptions about men's bodies that are totally false. -- Robin Nixon

Read more ....