September 2006 - Posts
Engineer/entrepreneur Susmita Mohanty has helped NASA and the European Space Agency think about what they want in space habitats. Heck, she's even lived in a habitat designed for Mars. Now she’s getting ready to return to her native India, to get people thinking about new ways to live on other planets - and live better on our home planet as well.
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Three weeks ago, we took a look at research from University of Western Ontario psychologist J. Philippe Rushton - reporting that 17- to 18-year-old men had an advantage of several IQ points over women, based on an analysis of SAT scores. Virtually everything about the politically incorrect study could spark a controversy: How do you define "g," the measure of general intelligence that Rushton looked for within the SAT tests? Are g scores, or even IQ scores, a valid measure of intelligence? Are there statistical or societal factors that could distort the scientific results? And the questions go on and on....
Anyway, Rushton sent along an e-mail today that could shed more light, as well as heat, on the issue of gender and intelligence. The tone of the correspondence is a bit academic, but feel free to digest it and add your comments:
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Last week, a 13-year-old named Sierra left a comment basically asking for more information about life in space - and in response, I suggested that she look up Robert Heinlein's classic, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress." When Ken Murphy, the co-chairman for next year's big space meeting in Dallas, saw that item, he had a better idea. So much better that I'm passing it along as this month's selection for the Cosmic Log Used Book Club.
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• Houston Chronicle: Apollo 11's most famous syllable found
• Contact Music: Virgin to make 'Astronaut Idol' (via NASA Watch)
• Asteroids, atoms and much, much more on 'Nova ScienceNow'
• The Economist: Looping the quantum loop
• Cosmos: The science of predicting the future (via Daily Grail)
AP |
In space, no one can serve you coffee.
That's just one of the amenities you'll have to do without during a suborbital rocket plane ride. But when you're paying somewhere around $200,000 to zoom to the edge of space, to see the black sky and curving Earth and get that feeling of weightlessness, it's all about safety and the spectacle. Mundane amenities such as beverage service and in-flight restrooms will go by the wayside.
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It's been only a few days since Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Kistler and Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. acknowledged that they had irreconcilable differences over the development of the Kistler K-1 rocket as a system to deliver supplies and even people to the international space station. That meant Rocketplane Kistler was in the market for a new strategic partner to help manage the $207 million that the company won through NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. It turns out that the new partner is one of the companies that competed unsuccessfully for its own share of COTS money: Seattle-based Andrews Space.
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• The Guardian: How Britain hid its UFO hunt
• Nature: Giant telescope offered its choice of homes
• Defense News: China tried to blind U.S. satellites
• Science @ NASA: Strange moonlight
Lewis Geyer / Times-Call |
Once upon a time, back in the 1980s, NASA had a concept for a "lifting body" spaceship known as the HL-20, which could have been used as a smaller-scale backup for the space shuttle.
NASA ended up going in a different direction. But last year, Jim Benson - the founder of a California-based company called SpaceDev - updated the idea and called it the "Dream Chaser." This year, the Dream Chaser was a finalist in NASA's $500 million program to encourage new commercial spaceships capable of reaching the space station.
Unfortunately for SpaceDev, NASA went in a different direction again last month, awarding the money to SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler to demonstrate their own yet-to-be-developed spaceships. Nevertheless, Benson intends to keep chasing his dream, and now he's founded a new venture called Benson Space Co. for that purpose.
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For Iranian-born entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, the first woman to pay her own way into orbit, a weeklong adventure at the international space station is nearing its end. But for the Virginia-based company that organized her $20 million trip, Ansari's flight is only the start of a new chapter in what could be a decades-long space adventure. "This flight has taken it to the next level," said Eric Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Space Adventures.
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• Slashdot: Futurologist on smart yogurt and the $7 PC
• Mediasite: YouTube for brainiacs | Check out a sample
• Hey, kids: Sign up for Toy Challenge 2007
• The Onion: Iranians may be enriching high-grade students
IAA / PSC |
The controversies surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls are still lively, 2,000 years after they were written, and more than half a century after they were found hidden within the caves of the Judean desert. To get a sense of the mysteries surrounding those ancient fragments, there's nothing like seeing them up close - and that's exactly what I did last week at Seattle's Pacific Science Center during the run-up to its big-ticket exhibit, "Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls."
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Orbital Sciences Corp., the company that was supposed to provide guidance (and a few million dollars as well) for Rocketplane Kistler's bid to build a new orbital spaceship for NASA, says it's parting ways with the team. However, Rocketplane Kistler's president, Randy Brinkley, told Space News that his company already has lined up a replacement strategic partner that will serve at least as well. A couple of months ago, the Orbital-Rocketplane relationship looked as if it would serve as the paradigm for bridges between "Old Space" and "New Space." So what happened?
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• BBC: Planets have scientists buzzing
• Discovery.com: New, tough paper won't burn
• Popular Science: The fifth annual Brilliant 10
• Discover Magazine: The final frontier revisited
David Yager / U. of Maryland |
How would you like to get an inside look at a child mummy? Watch the continent-wide "fireworks" of airplane flights at night? Visualize an elk's bugle? Get up close and personal with a Cuban banana cockroach? You can do all this and more online, thanks to the award winners in the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.
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Hypothetically, Iranian-born space passenger Anousheh Ansari might have had a chance of changing the timing for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The start of the month is determined by the first sighting of the lunar crescent after the new-moon phase - and Ansari, a Muslim, would have had a unique perspective on the moon, unimpeded by Earth's atmosphere. There's usually a bit of debate over what constitutes a valid sighting, or whether a sighting is even strictly necessary.
But there was no need to draw Ansari into this year's debate: On her Weblog, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis quotes Ansari as saying that she hadn't had a chance to see the moon during the critical time. So that's at least one religious controversy averted...
• Space.com: Orbital leaves Rocketplane's spaceship team
• New Scientist: The end of wings and wheels? (via Slashdot)
• Science News: Temperamental monsters
• The New Yorker: Unstrung
Bigelow Aerospace |
Billionaire Robert Bigelow has provided more details about his grand plan to put a private-sector space station into orbit in the 2009-2012 time frame, sparking a buzz in the commercial space race. The fact that he's taking that task on isn't new - what is new is the fact that he's working with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin to do it. If the plan unfolds the way Lockheed Martin hopes, it could change the course of the new space race.
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• Anousheh Ansari Space Blog: Space smells like burnt cookies
• NASA: Surprises from the edge of the solar system
• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Mystery of the Megavolcano'
• The Economist: Learning without learning
• Technology Review: How to be human
NASA / ESA / UC-Santa Cruz |
This portion of an image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a sprinkling of
barely detectable reddish galaxies among closer, more discernable galaxies.
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The Hubble Space Telescope has found hundreds of celestial rubies that literally shed new light on how galaxies formed when the universe was young. The discovery of 500 ultra-distant, ultra-active galaxies demonstrates once again what a gem Hubble is - and today's successful conclusion of the Atlantis shuttle mission represents another step toward the space telescope's revival.
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• NOAA: Ocean cooling hints at 'speed bump' in global warming
• Discovery.com: Alpine Iceman bled to death
• The Guardian: Plants grown from 200-year-old seeds
• Wired.com: Take an interactive bionics tour
Two more companies say they are setting aside seats in their yet-to-be-built suborbital craft to give teachers a free ride to the edge of space: The Space Frontier Foundation reports that Masten Space Systems has signed up for its "Teachers in Space" program, and the chairman of the Canadian-American venture PlanetSpace told me he wants to participate as well. It's just the latest small step toward a giant leap in out-of-this-world educational opportunities.
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Organizers of next month's X Prize Cup announced today that their ticket window is officially open for business, with prices ranging from $10 for daily admission ($5 for kids and students) to $250 for a VIP ducat with access to the flight line, food and an open bar. Active military personnel can get in for free (check the Web site for details).
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• Concord Monitor: Aliens made them famous
• Improbable Research: M.C. Escher in Legos
• Astronomy Cast (via Bad Astronomy Blog)
• New Scientist: Space on a shoestring (via Slashdot)
Blue Origin, the secretive spaceship venture backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has won an experimental permit from the Federal Aviation Administration, opening the way for rocket tests to begin at the company's West Texas test site and spaceport-to-be.
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• NASA: Looking for NASA's greatest fan (via HobbySpace Log)
• Science News: Battle of the hermaphrodites
• New Scientist: Antisocial robots go to finishing school
• The New Yorker: Untransformed
Iranian-American space passenger Anousheh Ansari is carrying prayers for peace with her to the international space station this week, but she's also carrying a piece of space history. Packed among her personal belongings is a cutting from the SpaceShipOne rocket plane, the world's first privately developed suborbital spaceship. The craft's designer, Burt Rutan, confirms that he gave Ansari a couple of extra mementos to bring along on the trip.
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The Rocket Racing League - a still-developing aerial racing association that's been compared to "NASCAR with rockets" - has set the stage for actual competition with today's announcement that a second team has entered the fray. The Bridenstine Rocket Racing Team, led by a veteran Navy pilot, will go up against the Leading Edge team and as many as four others in rocket-powered contests due to begin a year from now.
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• Chandra: Stellar remains linked to oldest known supernova
• PSU: Scientists snap images of brown dwarf | More from Spitzer
• JPL: Opportunity rover examines Beagle Crater
• Astrosurf: Spot the spaceships | More from SpaceWeather.com
NASA / ESA / JHU / SwRI |
Planetary scientist Alan Stern, one of the most ardent defenders of Pluto's planethood, has no problem with calling the icy world a "dwarf planet." What he does have a problem with is the idea that a dwarf planet is not a planet. And he's working with colleagues to make sure Pluto and the other dwarfs out there get their proper due, despite last month's smackdown by the International Astronomical Union.
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Religion can be a pretty touchy subject nowadays, and Iranian-American relations are another sore point. So as Anousheh Ansari prepares to become the first Iranian-born Muslim woman to travel to the international space station, there are a lot of political pitfalls to be avoided. At the same time, there are a lot of opportunities for inspiring young people, particularly in Iran. So far, Ansari is doing a good job on pitfall avoidance as well as international inspiration.
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• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Einstein's Big Idea' | Cosmic Log review
• Space.com: Partial solar eclipse for South America, Africa
• The Economist: Solar energy is on the rise
• The New Yorker: Mind games
Reuters |
Next week Anousheh Ansari aims to go where no woman has gone before. To the international space station? Well, women have certainly been there before, although the Iranian-American venture capitalist will be the first woman to pay her own way to the orbital outpost. No, we're talking here about the extraterrestrial blogosphere.
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• Purdue: Rodent's bizarre traits pose genetic puzzles
• Slate: What happens when zoo animals get depressed?
• MIT: Odd desert forest sucks moisture from clouds
• PPARC via EurekAlert: Relativity survives grueling test
CWRU |
The new lunar meteorite is shown here cracked open to reveal a pinkish-tan
interior. The cube, used for calibration, is 1 centimeter (a half-inch) on each side.
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Meteorite hunters have found a rock in Antarctica that they’ve traced to the moon – but it's a type of lunar rock that is virtually a geological terra incognita (or should that be luna incognita)? Experts say there’s only one other sample like it in the world.
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• Science @ NASA: Electric Ice
• New Scientist: Tracing the limits of quantum weirdness
• Nature: Solid red oxygen, useless but delightful
• PhysOrg: Father's scent influences daughter's maturity
• Brown Univ.: Fake cells created for medical research
• The Onion: Majority of Americans unprepared for apocalypse
Protest petitions are still circulating, protest songs are still being written, and kids are still standing up for the littlest planet. But based on the postmortems on Pluto’s “demotion,” the icy world seems destined to remain a second-class solar system citizen.
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• Discovery.com: Yucca Mountain was once a rowdy place
• Discover Magazine: Brains don't lie
• Scientific American: Screening for terrorism
• Popular Mechanics: Debunking 9/11 myths
NASA / JPL |
Who will leave the first footsteps of the 21st century on the moon? Strictly speaking, those not-so-small steps will likely be taken by a "what," not a "who." This week, NASA is testing a six-legged rover that can wheel across lunar terrain at a fast clip or step over obstacles like a giant spider.
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• N.Y. Times (reg. req.): Pluto's exotic playmates
• Science News: Bad-news beauties
• Salisbury Journal: Party like it's 1999 B.C. (via Daily Grail)
• Wired: A star date with Shatner
Here's your chance to chime in on topics relating to space, science, exploration or innovation that haven't gotten their due over the past week. For example, have you heard the one about the machine that could destroy the planet?
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• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Storm That Drowned a City'
• Mosnews: Bronze Age pyramids allegedly found in Ukraine
• National Geographic: Dark matter challenged by ether theory
• BBC: Probe to study the sun's mighty explosions
Newly published research could fuel the fiery debate over whether one gender is innately more intelligent than the other - a controversy that already has featured the resignation of a Harvard president and an academic battle in Denmark. The latest study from Canada reports that 17- to 18-year-old males have a slight edge in IQ, based on an analysis of more than 100,000 SAT scores. But even the researcher behind the study acknowledges that the findings don't represent the final word on gender and intelligence.
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• Daily Mail: Captain Kirk reveals he won't boldly go into space
• The Guardian: Why is everyone going to the moon?
• Times of London: Scientists angered by telephone telepathy study
• Skeptical Inquirer: Why quantum mechanics isn't that weird
• Discovery.com: Cassini sets sights on Titan ... again
CFHT |
This weekend's crash of Europe's SMART-1 probe on the moon wasn't just a flash in the pan. The 4,475-mph (2-kilometer-per-second) smackdown raised enough of a puff of dust to be seen by the same camera that recorded the flash of impact - an infrared imager on the Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Researchers say it represents the first lunar impact and resulting dust cloud ever spotted from Earth.
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• Science a Go Go: Big Bang brouhaha brewing
• Slashdot: Periodic Table Table Poster Post
• Improbable Research: Beethoven's Ninth and astronomy
• The Onion: Caltech physicists successfully split the bill
David Friedman / MSNBC |
As NASA prepares to resume the job of finishing the international space station after an almost four-year gap, a lot of folks have been wondering whether the multibillion-dollar, decade-long effort is really worth the cost and the risk. That was the focus of a trio of stories last month - and if it were merely a question of science, there's no way the space station would ever have been built. At least that's the view of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York's Hayden Planetarium and a member of the NASA Advisory Council.
Tyson acknowledges that space scientists have had to deal with more than their share of frustrations lately, in part because of the debate over NASA's vision for human spaceflight. But he expects the issue to be resolved by 2010 - when the station is due to be completed, the shuttle fleet is due for retirement, and the scientific community is due to come out with a new 10-year roadmap for NASA research.
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• BBC: Telescope wins a landmark vote
• Science News: What apes can teach us about the human mind
• Space.com: Moon crash stirs up ideas for future
• Business Week: Science-fiction pace travel gets real
Mars Society |
The Mars Society is looking for a few good men - and women - to spend four months holed up in an artificial igloo or tromping around the Canadian Arctic in bulky faux spacesuits.
This won't be an extended vacation, or a reality-TV plotline. For rocket scientist Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, next year's exercise on Devon Island will be an experiment in the exploration process - a test that could help smooth the path to Mars.
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What's on your mind during this long weekend, cosmically speaking? Are you jazzed up about NASA's next spaceship? Musing over the tension between science and religion? Or do you just want to throw in your 40th anniversary suggestions for favorite "Star Trek" characters? Consider this posting your "Open Mike Night" to throw in comments on cosmic subjects you've run across over the past week.
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• 'Nova' on PBS: 'Building on Ground Zero'
• The Economist: Life 2.0
• Nature: The mystery gene that makes us human
• Technology Review: Revolutionizing football
