November 2007 - Posts
PlanetSpace / Lockheed Martin / ATK |
An artist's conception shows a Lockheed Martin-built Orbital Transfer Vehicle being
maneuvered at the international space station by a robotic arm.
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The competition to build spaceships for NASA can lead to alliances as strange as anything seen on a "Survivor" episode, as illustrated by PlanetSpace's new partnership with two space heavyweights. Lockheed Martin and ATK are the leading players in NASA's effort to build the multibillion-dollar successor to the space shuttle - but at the same time, they're the junior partners in a bid to build a low-cost alternative to that successor, taking directions from a prime contractor that's never launched anything into outer space.
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NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage |
While some people are still finishing up the Thanksgiving turkey leftovers, the Hubble Heritage Team has already sent out its holiday card for this year: a spiral galaxy festooned with stars like a Christmas wreath. NASA's other "Great Observatories" have also delivered some colorful views this week - and if you're still working on your season's greetings, you'll find some out-of-this-world suggestions on the Web.
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DaimlerChrysler file |
Daimler's NECAR 5 prototype gets a methanol fill-up
during a cross-country test drive in 2002. The
methanol powered a hydrogen fuel cell on the
experimental vehicle.
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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to free America from the grip of high-priced oil imports. Or does it?
Rocket scientist Robert Zubrin lays out the case for an alcohol-based fuel economy in a new book titled "Energy Victory" – and although ethanol is the best-known alcohol replacement for gasoline, Zubrin focuses on a different brew called methanol, also known as wood alcohol.
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Landsat 7, the satellite behind the best orbital survey of Antarctica ever conducted, has documented other wonders around the world over the past eight years. You might even call it a Hubble Space Telescope for planet Earth, pointing downward at land and sea instead of upward at planets and stars.
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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s education policy is causing a stir … but not all in a good way. Advocates for space exploration are noting with dismay that he’d take billions of dollars from NASA to pay for the educational programs he'd like to expand.
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For President Bush and other opponents of human embryonic stem cell research, this week's news that ordinary cells that can be reprogrammed to act like the most versatile stem cells couldn't have come at a better time. And although the news is also welcome to the proponents of embryonic research, who include some Republicans as well as lots of Democrats, they're suddenly facing a more complicated political challenge.
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I'll be taking American Thanksgiving and Black Friday off - but in keeping with the season, here are a couple of links to chew on during the long holiday weekend:
Regular postings to the log will resume on Cyber Monday (which is a myth, by the way).
Jeff Miller / UW-Madison |
If things turn out the way stem cell pioneer James Thomson thinks they will, embryonic stem cells won't turn out to be the therapeutic marvels many expect them to be.
Instead, there will be a different kind of marvel: You'll give the doctor a sampling of your own cells - perhaps scraped from your skin - and science will transform them into microscopic factories for your own replacement tissue.
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You could say that Comet Holmes is the "people's comet" because it's been so widely seen and photographed by regular folks over the past few weeks. Now that the comet is beginning to fade, it's a good time to check out some of the greatest hits, including a FirstPerson time-lapse view.
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Paramount Pictures Classics |
Al Gore for science adviser? He has a great resume, but
the job might call for something other than advocacy.
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As experts issue their latest assessment of global warming, and President Bush’s science adviser finds himself in hot water over the topic, policy wonks are starting to think about how climate change and other scientific issues could be handled better in the next administration.
What would Al Gore do?
The former vice president, Oscar winner and Nobel laureate hasn’t made any noises about getting back into politics … yet. Nevertheless, the idea of having Gore as the country’s science czar is a good way to spark a discussion over mixing science and politics.
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Alan Dyer |
Comet Holmes appears in all its fuzzy glory with a faint tail trailing off to lower right
in a picture taken by Canadian amateur astronomer Alan Dyer on Nov. 1.
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Comet Holmes is turning into the star of the night sky, thanks to a huge cloud of dust that makes it look more like a cosmic fuzzball than a dirty snowball. But all that dust has obscured the things you usually expect to see in a comet, such as a tail and a bright nucleus. Now the Hubble Space Telescope has cut through the clouds to make out the structure of the comet's dusty heart.
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Every year, the publishers of the journal Science recognize the cream of the crop in science journalism - and this year's cream covers a wide stream of scientific subjects, ranging from the TV tale of an African-American researcher who overcame discrimination in the mid-20th century to the 21st-century effects of climate change on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The winners of the year's Science Journalism Awards were announced today by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It's been five years since I won one of the awards for a personal piece on genetic genealogy, and the honor still ranks among my top career highlights. This year's winners will receive their $3,000 prizes (plus the award plaque) at the AAAS annual meeting next February in Boston.
Here are the winning entries for 2007:
- Newspapers with circulation of 100,000 or more: Kenneth Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling of the Los Angeles Times, for "Altered Oceans," a series that describes how industrial society has been ruining the world's oceans by pushing out carbon dioxide, plastic wastes and microbe-promoting nutrients. The series also won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Association of Science Writers' Science in Society Award.
- Newspapers with circulation of less than 100,000: Jennifer Frazer of the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle for a series titled "Getting to the Bottom of Mysterious Elk Deaths." The series explains how scientists determined that a poisonous lichen was behind a rash of elk deaths in 2004, and what authorities are doing about it.
- Magazines: Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman of New York magazine for "How Not to Talk to Your Kids," a cover story that delved into parenting and the psychology of helping children do well.
- Television: Llewellyn Smith and Stephen Lyons of WGBH/"Nova" for "Forgotten Genius," the story of African-American industrial chemist Percy Julian. Check out my review of the show for the full story behind "Forgotten Genius."
- Radio: Keith Seinfeld of KPLU-FM in Seattle/Tacoma for "The Electric Brain." This radio series describes the electrical properties of our brains and the ways those properties can be used for new treatments.
- Online: Katie Alvord of KeweenaNow.com for "Lake Superior Basin Climate Change." This series describes the potential impacts of global warming on a local community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
- Children's science news: Mona Chiang of Scholastic Science World for "A Whale of a Mystery." The story traces how scientists investigated the puzzling death of a North Atlantic right whale that was spotted drifting off the coast of Nova Scotia - leading them to the conclusion that a large, blunt object had hit the whale on one side. Runner-up Sina Loeschke of GEOlino won a special certificate of merit for a story about sea slugs.
USGS |
In some parts of the world, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake like the one experienced today in Chile would be a shatteringly rare occurrence - but not for the home of the most powerful quake ever recorded. "This is a normal earthquake for this part of the world," observed John Bellini, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center.
In fact, the No. 1 quake on USGS' list of most powerful shakers is a magnitude-9.5 monster that hit southern Chile in 1960. About 1,655 were killed in the region, and a resulting tsunami killed scores more when the waves swept over Hawaii and the Philippines.
Because quakes are rated on a logarithmic scale, that 1960 quake was almost 100 times as strong as today's event - and there's no sign so far that the loss of life will come close to that earlier toll. Nevertheless, today's quake demonstrates how location is everything when it comes to powerful quakes.
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Two years after a trial over the teaching of intelligent design, a public-TV documentary retells the courtroom drama in a style that the judge in the case says is "almost like a whodunit, with a science angle and a sprinkling of the law besides." But unlike "Law and Order," the story didn't end when U.S. District Judge John Jones III issued his withering 139-page ruling equating intelligent design with religion. Instead, Darwinism’s detractors are back with a vengeance.
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Dept. of Defense |
The veterans being honored over the past couple of days include modern-day warfighters who are using high-tech tools to fight increasingly tech-savvy foes in Iraq and Afghanistan. And among the most essential tools are the robo-warriors that take on dangerous jobs on the front lines.
How essential, and how dangerous? In the course of a legal case involving rival robot companies, the U.S. military has made clear just how much it has come to rely on battlebots.
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How many of you have a special friend who's known you for decades ... who can recall all your triumphs and foibles ... who knows you so well that he (or she) can tell you what you need to hear when nobody else will do it? That special someone may well be a standard feature in the lives of future generations - and it may well take the form of an ankle-high robotic bunny.
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I'm off to British Columbia to tour the
TRIUMF physics lab and attend a conference on
"Future Directions in Science Journalism." My plan is to go dark on Friday (unless, say,
an asteroid ruins somebody's day) and resume regular postings on Monday.
Ferris Valyn |
A video displayed on a giant screen at the X Prize Cup shows the Rocket Racing
League's X-Racer taking off for a test flight from California's Mojave Airport, with
a bright flame shooting out from the rocket engine at the back.
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If the Rocket Racing League followed the time line it announced when it was created two years ago, we'd be seeing 10 fire-breathing rocket planes competing for prizes like a "NASCAR in the sky." Instead, the league's first X-Racer plane is just now making its first honest-to-goodness test flights, under a veil of secrecy.
Eleven days ago, the Rocket Racing League let that veil slip just a little bit, and since then bloggers and photographers have been tearing away at it right and left. In the months and years to come, we could be hearing about the X-Racer - and about the Xerus, a suborbital spaceship that's likely to take advantage of X-Racer technology as well.
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NASA / JPL-Caltech |
This artist's conception shows four of the five planets that orbit 55 Cancri, a star
much like our own. The most recently discovered planet looms large in the
foreground. The colors of the planets were chosen to resemble those of our own
solar system. Click on the image to watch a video from MSNBC's "Countdown."
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Planet-hunters say they have detected a giant world that is nestled among four others in a planetary system 41 light-years from Earth. This newfound world is in the "Goldilocks zone" - a place that's not too hot, not too cold, but just right for the existence of liquid water and conceivably life.
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GeoEye via NASA |
This view of Indonesia's Anak Krakatao volcano was
captured by the Ikonos satellite in 2005.
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Catching a volcano just before it explodes isn't always as easy as, say, predicting the weather. And that's a problem for scientists as they gauge the current upswing of activity going on within Indonesia's volcanoes.
Mount Kelud is already pushing out magma and thick steam - while an island volcano called Anak Krakatao ("Child of Krakatoa") is reminding experts about a famous blast from the past.
Tens of thousands of people living around the flanks of the Kelud volcano are wondering whether they should heed the evacuation orders - and based on the strong uptick in temperature as well as seismic activity, the big blast could come at any time. Or not. The uncertainty points to gaps in our understanding of how volcanoes work - gaps that could be filled if only scientists had more data.
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In the wake of the X Prize Cup, one reader wrote in to ask why anyone would pay $200,000 for a quick space trip on a rocket plane. "I assume it means much quicker travel time coast to coast, but your story never mentioned anything about why this is the next step in aviation evolution," said Cutter Garcia of Los Angeles.
Point-to-point travel is definitely on the minds of spaceship developers - but before they get to that point, all they can offer are up-and-down sightseeing trips. At least at first, rocketeers will be banking on a luxury market ... the kind of people who are willing to pay $95,000 to go on a North Pole expedition, or buy a cell phone for $20,000. So who better to design the interior of the spaceship than Frank Nuovo, the man behind that $20,000 cell phone?
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NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell |
NASA's Opportunity rover sent back this view of a Martian promontory at Victoria
Crater named Cape Verde. The picture is in soft focus due to the scattering effect
of dust on the camera's front window. Click on the image for a larger version.
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The mysteries from the Red Planet just keep on coming: On the ground, NASA's Opportunity rover is carefully picking its way down a deep crater, sending back a stunning postcard along the way.
Meanwhile, high above, the European Mars Express orbiter has sent back curious evidence of equatorial deposits of material that go more than a mile beneath the Martian surface. Is it water ice? Dust? Volcanic ash? Scientists can’t yet answer that question, but they really want to. If it’s ice, that could help answer questions about Mars' past - and its future.
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