January 2008 - Posts
NASA |
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's William Pickering, University of Iowa physicist
James Van Allen and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun hold up a model of
Explorer 1 at a news conference after hearing the satellite had reached orbit on
Jan. 31, 1958. Click on the image to watch a newsreel report on the launch.
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Carl Raggio still remembers how tense he felt exactly 50 years ago, on the night America entered the Space Age.
He and his fellow engineers were playing gin rummy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. - but their minds weren't fully on the game. They were waiting for the beep-beep-beep that would tell them the satellite they had slaved over for months had actually reached orbit. "That's an anxious time," he told me this week. "That's the gut time."
Then the definitive signal came. It came later than expected, but nevertheless it came, at 9:45 p.m. PT on Jan. 31, 1958. Explorer 1 was circling Earth for the first time - and proving that America could match the Soviets on the Cold War's orbital frontier.
At a Washington news conference, the rocket pioneer who came to America from Nazi Germany rejoiced. "We have firmly established our foothold in space," Wernher von Braun declared. "We will never give it up again."
Meanwhile, back in Pasadena, Raggio could finally tell his wife about the project he had to keep secret. "I called her up at about 11 o'clock at night and asked her, 'Guess what we're doing?'" he recalled.
What Raggio and his co-workers were doing was getting America into the space game.
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Klaus Dolag / ESO |
Ten years after supernovae provided the first evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a survey of more than 10,000 galaixies has provided independent confirmation that the cosmic speed-up factor known as dark energy is for real.
Scientists say the resolution of the data isn't yet good enough to determine exactly what's behind dark energy, but they say a finer-scale survey could tell whether it's an exotic characteristic of the space-time continuum – or whether it's just that everything we know about gravity is wrong.
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Tim Sloan / AFP - Getty Images |
President Bush delivers his State of the Union
address at the U.S. Capitol on Monday night.
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President Bush's final State of the Union address broke new rhetorical ground on the scientific front, marking the first time he uttered the words "stem cells" and "carbon emissions" in his annual summing-up speech. He also received a standing ovation when he called on Congress to double the funding for basic research – and that applause should come as music to the ears of physicists facing layoffs.
But rhetoric doesn’t dictate reality: The key indicators will be what happens to federal spending on research and development once Congress gets its hands on the budget proposal due for release Monday – and what the next president will do to restore America’s scientific and technological leadership.
On that latter point, there just might be some progress: Organizers of an effort aimed at drawing out the presidential candidates on science and technology issues say they’re planning for a bipartisan forum in mid-April.
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Thierry Boccon-Gibod / Virgin Galactic |
With SpaceShipTwo in the background, aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan (second from
left) chats with design team leaders Luke Colby, Jim Tighe and Matt Stinemetze.
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When it comes to visions of future spaceships, Virgin Galactic certainly knows how to pour on the glitz – as evidenced by last week’s gossip-worthy unveiling of the design for the SpaceShipTwo launch system. But there’s a lot of hard work to be done behind the scenes, and far more people are involved in the effort besides British billionaire Richard Branson and aerospace guru Burt Rutan, the stars of last week’s show. Some of the unsung rocketeers in the commercial space race are just now getting their shot at the spotlight - while others stay out of the spotlight entirely.
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NASA / JHUAPL / CIW |
An enhanced-color view of Mercury brings out subtle hues. Click on the image for a bigger version.
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It’s been a big week for interplanetary vistas: We've already dealt with the flap over the "Mermaid on Mars," of course, but NASA has also put out a new panorama of the Opportunity rover's surroundings to mark this week's fourth anniversary of its landing. We have the first color image from the Messenger mission to Mercury, the first radar image of an asteroid heading for a close encounter with Earth next week, and the first "high-definition" view of Pluto (sorry, it still looks like a dot). The next week should bring even more cool stuff, including the first full-scale science briefing following the Mercury flyby. Here's a quick look at the latest from our solar system:
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NASA via MSNBC |
CLICK FOR VIDEO
MSNBC's Willie Geist
reports on the latest
enigma from Mars.
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Now there's a "Mermaid on Mars" to go along with the time-honored Face on Mars: Some Red Planet fans see the sculpture of a seated woman in one of the panoramas sent back to Earth by NASA's Spirit rover.
Is this suppressed evidence of alien artistry? Does the picture actually show a creature of some sort? Based on analysis of the stereo imagery, the best explanation is that the feature was indeed sculpted - not by a Martian hand, but by the Martian wind.
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Chip East / Reuters |
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SpaceShipTwo designer Burt Rutan meets the press.
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One big question was left hanging over today's fresh revelations about Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo design: Exactly when will the company begin commercial passenger service?
The answer seems hazier today than it was a year ago - primarily because of last July's fatal accident during early tests of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane's propulsion system.
"We don't know yet exactly what caused it," the craft's designer, Burt Rutan, told me.
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Virgin Galactic |
Artwork shows Virgin Galactic' SpaceShipTwo with wings in the "feathered" position.
Click on the image to see a slide show of concepts and the construction process.
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The new designs for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and WhiteKnightTwo mothership were unveiled in New York today, and they include some new twists. In fact, you could be excused if you think you're seeing double, or even triple.
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Genetic researchers in China, Britain and the United States are teaming up to unravel the full genetic code of at least 1,000 people around the world - an unprecedented scientific project that could cost tens of millions of dollars and eventually reveal the roots of hundreds of diseases.
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It's been almost 40 years since a great man lost his life, essentially because he had a dream of racial equality. As America celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, there's been a resurgence of interest in the issue of race - not only because a black man is a serious contender for the presidency, but also because scientific trends have raised new questions about the concept of race.
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KXAS-TV |
CLICK FOR VIDEO
KXAS-TV's Scott Gordon
reports on the UFO frenzy
in Stephenville, Texas.
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Ten days after the first sightings of lights in the sky over Texas, tales of UFOs are still sparking speculation. One of the witnesses, Steve Allen, is offering $5,000 for a good picture of the flying object - but he hasn’t bought any of the photos or videos offered so far. “The pictures weren’t worth a damn,” he told me.
On Saturday, he and other witnesses are gathering to pool their accounts for a national UFO organization – but there’s always a chance the Texas sightings will fade into the distance, just like the O’Hare UFO sighting over a year ago. What's the best way to document a sighting? Here are some tips:
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Nature Nanotechnology / Stanford
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Photomicrographs show silicon nanowires before and
after charging (left and right, respectively).
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If you've ever rushed to save your files before your laptop battery gave out, or scrambled to recharge your iPod, or wished out loud for the resurrection of the electric car ... relief is in sight.
Yet another battery breakthrough is on its way to market, taking its place alongside improved hybrid-electric vehicles, the promise of ultracapacitor systems and even better AA power cells. Next-generation batteries could well last several times as long as current power packs, thanks to nanotechnology.
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NASA / JHUAPL / CIW |
The giant Caloris impact basin is at upper right in
this image of Mercury, captured by NASA's Messenger
probe. Click on the image for a bigger version.
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In the wake of this week’s successful flyby, the team behind NASA’s Messenger probe has released the first picture of a side of the planet Mercury never seen before – a moonlike landscape covered with craters and bright material turned up by impacts.
Yet another image presents a new, up-close view of a double-ringed crater named Vivaldi, which was last seen during the Mariner 10 flyby more than 30 years ago. From here on out, images from the Messenger flyby should be dribbling out on a regular basis via the science team's Web site.
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A technique for developing stem cell lines from a single cell plucked from a human embryo is unlikely to pass muster with the Bush administration, even though the latest experiments indicate that the embryo can survive the procedure. At least that's how the initial reactions to last week's research revelations are shaping up.
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NASA / ESA / UCSB |
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers say they have spotted their first double Einstein ring – a bizarre optical phenomenon that shows how massive objects like galaxies can bend light rays, furnishing evidence for Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The fact that there’s a double ring around this gravitational-lens galaxy means that two other galaxies are aligned precisely behind it. And the odds of that happening are estimated at 1-in-10000. That's a big reason why Tommaso Treu of the University of California at Santa Barbara felt as if he and his colleagues "hit the jackpot" when they saw the double ring's signature in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
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I'm due to be on jury duty beginning Monday, so my guess is that posts to the Log won't be as frequent until I'm back in the office.
ACT via IRG |
Researcher Robert Lanza
wants the White House to
approve a new type of "no
embryo destruction" stem
cell for federal funding.
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Embryonic stem cells can transform themselves into virtually any kind of tissue, holding out the promise of potential cures for spinal-cord patients, diabetics, heart-attack sufferers and many more of the world's afflicted. But how do you balance that promise against ethical concerns about the destruction of human embryos?
Some scientists have concluded that the potential benefits outweigh the ethical concerns, and are seeking to harvest the precious cells from surplus embryos or cloned embryos. Others avoid using embryos altogether, and instead work with adult stem cells, umbilical-cord blood, menstrual blood ... or even garden-variety cells that can be genetically reprogrammed to behave like embryonic cells.
And then there's stem cell pioneer Robert Lanza.
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Scott Eklund / Seattle Post-Intelligencer file |
University of Washington physicist John Cramer is preparing to perform
an experiment in reverse-time quantum causality with the use of lasers.
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The late astronomer Carl Sagan popularized the saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," in reference to reports of alien visitations. Generating low-cost commercial fusion power, isolating antimatter and tracing reverse-time causality aren't as far out there as UFOs, but a similar rule might well apply: Extraordinary science requires extraordinary effort.
With that in mind, here's a progress report on three extraordinary science projects that have popped up in the news:
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If you’re the speculating type, now’s the time to sell high on Obama and buy low on Clinton: The past few days have seen a dramatic shift in the online political markets, where traders put down money to predict which candidates will prevail in the primary season. Since last week’s Iowa caucus, prices for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama’s stock on Intrade have shot up from the 20s to the 70s, while rival Democrat Hillary Clinton has experienced a market crash of similar proportions. It’s enough to set economists wondering once more about how prediction markets work.
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SLAC |
A worker crouches inside the wiring for the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center. SLAC has announced scores of new layoffs due to budget cuts.
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Physicists are still scratching their heads and shaking their fists two weeks after Congress unexpectedly slashed support for big science projects, including the multibillion-dollar ITER fusion-power experiment and the yet-to-be-designed International Linear Collider. The Energy Department is still trying to figure out what to do, but hundreds of layoffs already have been announced - and more may be on the horizon, unless lawmakers provide relief. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama is among those who say they're riding to the rescue.
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TRIUMF |
A suit-clad technician kneels inside the 59-foot-diameter TRIUMF cyclotron during a
maintenance session. The particle accelerator is the world's biggest cyclotron.
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In this age of bigger, newer, more powerful mega-machines for particle physics, Canada's 33-year-old TRIUMF cyclotron is literally a blast from the past. Sure, it's the world's biggest cyclotron - but to some physicists that might sound a bit like gushing over the world's most advanced horse and buggy.
In terms of size and sheer power, TRIUMF's 59-foot-wide magnet is dwarfed by Europe's 5.3-mile-wide Large Hadron Collider. When it gets up and running this year, that super-duper-collider will pack a punch 28,000 times greater than TRIUMF's. Nevertheless, there are some things being done at the TRIUMF lab, next to the University of British Columbia's Pacific coast campus, that the bigger places just won't do - such as figuring out how one element turns into another inside an exploding star.
The newfangled big-bang machines in Europe and the United States may grab more of the headlines, based on what may or may not be found in the future - but in the meantime, Canada's 33-year-old supernova machine is working virtually 24/7 on its own assortment of cosmic mysteries.
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Science / Comstock / Corbis |
The latest roundup of the presidential candidates’ stands (and non-stands) on science-related issues such as stem cells, climate change and energy policy illustrates why a debate focusing on those issues is so needed … and so unlikely to happen. Some hopefuls have been ducking so much you’d think they were out hunting with Dick Cheney. Nevertheless, analysts have come up with bits of data that run counter to the conventional wisdom.
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It's a little weird to announce the top 10 winners of our 2008 Weird Science Award competition on the very day of the Iowa presidential caucuses and the official kickoff of the campaign season. The coincidence reminds me of the top headline I wrote years ago for my newspaper's food section, on the day after Election Day: "'Tis the season ... for fruitcakes." Nevertheless, here's our first annual crop of the Weirdies. Maybe we'll time the next Weirdy ballot for Election Day 2008.
NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute |
A backlit picture from the Cassini spacecraft, acquired in September 2006, shows
Saturn and its rings - including two faint rings that usually go unseen. Click on the
image for a slide show of Cassini's greatest hits.
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The results are in from the latest "People’s Choice" contest for the favorite image from Saturn, and the winners include a sure-fire stunner, a picture worthy of an abstract-art exhibit and a video flyover of a two-toned moon.
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