November 2009 - Posts
Featurepics.com |
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Books on scientific subjects offer the world ... and other planets as well.
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Science books used to show dinosaurs exclusively in shades of scaly green and brown. Books about the solar system used to list just nine planets, and books about the subatomic world didn't go much farther than protons, neutrons and electrons.
As times have changed, so has the science - and so should science books. Just in time for holiday giving, here's a selection of books for kids (and grownups) that incorporate recent developments on the scientific frontiers.
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Blue Origin |
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Click for video:
New Shepard flies in Blue
Origin video from 2006,
used with permission.
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Amazon.com billionaire Jeff Bezos' usually secretive Blue Origin rocket venture raised the curtain today on three research experiments that are slated to take suborbital journeys on its prototype spaceship in two years' time.
For years, Blue Origin has been working on a vertical-launched rocket that could someday take passengers on an automated trip beyond 62 miles (100 kilometers) in altitude. That's beyond the boundary of outer space - at a height where passengers could see the blue, curving Earth beneath the blackness of space, and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
Blue Origin's engineers have flown their New Shepard prototype craft through several low-altitude tests at Bezos' hush-hush launch facility near Van Horn, Texas. But details about any of the tests beyond the first one have been hard to come by.
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NASA / STScI |
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The galaxies NGC 2207 (left) and IC 2163 are entangled in a picture from the
Hubble Space Telescope. Such mergers are the focus of Galaxy Zoo's latest project.
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Galaxy Zoo's latest online research project is a "cosmic slot machine" that asks users to match up simulations of galactic smash-ups with pictures of the real things. The payoff? That comes in the form of citizen science.
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Toshiba UK |
Click for video: An armchair floats to the edge of space in Toshiba's "Space
Chair Project" commercial. Click on the image to see Toshiba's video on YouTube.
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Space ballooning hits new heights in an HDTV commercial showing a simple armchair floating against the backdrop of our curving planet, almost 100,000 feet above the ground. When you watch the video, the first thought that comes to mind is, "Wow, that's cool!" And the second thought is probably, "How the heck did they do that?"
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Who would have thought that a water flea, diseased neurons and poisoned algae could be so beautiful? It's just a matter of having the right perspective.
The flea, the neurons and the algae are among the stars of the show in this year's Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. The contest is just one of several conducted annually to highlight scientific imagery that puts a fresh perspective on subjects that, under other circumstances, might seem commonplace or even repellent.
Take the water flea, for example.
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NASA / ESA |
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An ethereal "X" or boxlike structure marks the chaotic center of the edge-on
galaxy NGC 4710. Click on the picture for a larger version.
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One of the "X-Files" that astronomers keep in their filing cabinets relates to the mysterious X shape seen at the center of some galaxies — but this particular mystery may be close to being explained.
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Malcolm Park |
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A fireball seems to shoot right through a house in Grafton, Ontario. Malcolm Park
captured the image as he was setting up to photograph meteors on Monday night.
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This week's Leonid meteor shower may not rise to the level of a shooting-star storm, but it's certainly producing a flurry of fine-looking pictures.
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Hulton Archive / Getty Images file |
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A new line of fragrance is inspired by Marilyn Monroe's DNA.
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A venture that uses the DNA from Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson and other dead celebrities to mix up personality-driven fragrances is getting more than a whiff of publicity - but if you're expecting a touch of "Marilyn" to make you smell like the real Marilyn, you have no nose for science.
MyDNAFragrance's "Antiquity" line of perfumery appears to be the latest marketing gimmick driven by genetics, along the lines of DNA art, protein-coded music and (heh, heh) celebrity DNA samples.
The venture does use the celebrities' DNA code, after a fashion, and it does translate that code into a customized scent recipe - so there's certainly no false advertising. But the DNA that's used has absolutely no bearing on what a person smells like, and the DNA itself is not featured in the recipe.
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S. Abe and H. Yano / NASA / ISAS |
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Meteors flash brightly in a picture taken from an aircraft flying at an altitude of
39,000 feet during the 1999 Leonids Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign.
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The Internet can help you get a great view of this week's Leonids or any other meteor shower, on your computer screen or in the honest-to-goodness night sky.
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CERN / CMS Collaboration |
A computer-generated graphic shows particles flying through the Large Hadron Collider's Compact Muon Solenoid detector during a "splash event" on Nov. 7.
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The world's biggest and most expensive particle-smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, is all warmed up (and cooled down) for a fresh start after a few snags, including an unfortunate incident that involved a bird and a baguette.
Fourteen months ago, the LHC began operating in the middle of a media spotlight fit for a rock star - but broke down after only nine days. A faulty electrical interconnection between the underground collider ring's high-powered magnets, coupled with a helium leak, caused significant damage to the ring - and the LHC has been closed for repairs ever since.
Those repairs included the installation of a magnet protection system that should automatically shut down the collider if anything similar should happen again. The LHC is now undergoing its final checkouts, including a test last weekend that involved sending beams of protons halfway around the ring.
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ESA |
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The OSIRIS camera on the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft captured
this view of Earth from 393,000 miles (633,000 kilometers) away on Thursday.
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Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is making its final flyby past Earth on its way to an asteroid and a comet – a close encounter that should yield beautiful pictures of our home planet, and perhaps the answer to a cosmic mystery as well.
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This summer's animated movie "Up" and last month's weird tale of the balloon boy may have given you your fill of high-flying fiction - but if you're looking for factual sagas that soar, check out this year's winners of the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards. There's even a story about a kid with a balloon.
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NASA |
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A NASA graphic traces the asteroid 2009 VA's path within the moon's orbit and past
Earth. Each dot on the 2009 VA line indicates an hour of time along the route.
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Asteroid-watchers say a space rock about as big as a garage came within 9,000 miles (14,000 kilometers) of Earth last Friday, just 15 hours after it was detected.
Experts quickly determined that the asteroid 2009 VA would miss us - and even if it came directly at us, it wouldn't have caused a catastrophe. Nevertheless, the close encounter serves as a reminder that someday a much bigger rock may well hit us and that it's best to be prepared.
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NASA / ESA / SSC / CXC / STScI |
Click for video: Color-coded images from NASA's three Great Observatories —
the Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes — are combined to produce this
spectacular view of the Milky Way galaxy's central region. Click on the image to
watch a video about the image from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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NASA has blended three views of our home galaxy's turbulent core to produce a picture filled with scientifically significant snap, crackle and pop. And the deeper you go into the image, the more you learn.
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Courtesy of Nat'l Academy of Sciences / PNAS |
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The southeast corner of a painted pyramid excavated at a site in Mexico shows
scenes from everyday Maya life in the A.D. 620-700 time frame.
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Murals found on a buried Mexican pyramid reveal how the average Maya lived about 1,350 years ago - shedding light on aspects of Maya society that are "virtually unknown," researchers say.
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Consortium for the Barcode of Life |
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Color-coded genetic sequences serve as "DNA barcodes" for a hermit thrush (far left), an American robin, a bumblebee and a honeybee. The gray bars stand for genetic differences.
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DNA fingerprinting isn't just for humans anymore: The "barcodes of life" are being read in other species as well, and they're being used to crack down on smugglers, track down disease carriers and trace the effects of climate change.
About 350 experts from 50 countries will be meeting in Mexico over the next week to discuss the rising number of applications for the technology. One of the major items on the agenda is to seal a global deal to extend the DNA barcode system to plants.
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NASA / ESA / U. of Va. / STScI / ANU |
Click for video: Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 captures a detailed view of
starbirth in the spiral galaxy M83. Click on the image to watch a zoom-in video.
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The Hubble Space Telescope's new wide-field camera has sent down a picture showing how the "assembly line" of starbirth works in a nearby spiral galaxy.
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Reed Saxon / AP |
LaserMotive's David Bashford, right,
prepares a robotic climber for its
ascent on Wednesday.
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Just days after $1.65 million was won in a NASA-backed rocket contest, it looks as if big money will be awarded in the $2 million Power Beaming Challenge as well.
Like the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, the Power Beaming Challenge is part of NASA's Centennial Challenges, a program aimed at encouraging new technologies that could be adopted by the space agency for future exploration. This particular competition could eventually lay the groundwork for future space elevators - but power-beaming technology is likely to be put to work even if those space elevators are never built.
Teams entered in the challenge have been working on robotic transport systems that can be remotely powered by laser beams to climb up a long steel cable. The contest, part of the Space Elevator Games managed by the Spaceward Foundation, started up in 2005 and has been getting progressively harder every year.
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The countdown is ticking toward some multibillion-dollar decisions on America's future in space, as explained in my big-picture analysis today. When the space shuttle fleet is retired, will NASA stay the course with its Ares rocket development effort, or will it emphasize buying seats on other people's spaceships instead? It's a question that touches upon technical as well as political complexities.
Want to feel like an insider? Here are some Web sites that give you countdown status reports on the space debate:
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NGLLC / X Prize Foundation |
Click for video: Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket rises above the Mojave
Desert during its prize-winning flight. Click on the image to watch a video report on
the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge from msnbc.com's Dara Brown.
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California-based Masten Space Systems' Xoie rocket prototype has won a million-dollar prize from NASA, edging out its closest competitor by just a couple of feet.
NASA announced today that the Masten team's "try, try again" effort at California's Mojave Air and Space Port won the top prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge's Level 2 contest. The Xoie rocket's final flight on Friday was good enough to best Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, which qualified for the prize with its Scorpius rocket in September.
NASA said Armadillo would receive the Level 2 contest's $500,000 second prize.
A different flight by a different rocket, known as Xombie, earned Masten the $150,000 second-place prize in the Lunar Lander Challenge's less ambitious Level 1 contest. Armadillo won the $350,000 top prize in Level 1 last year.
Armadillo and Masten will be awarded a total of $1.65 million at a Washington ceremony on Thursday, NASA said. The ceremony will close out the three-year-old, $2 million Lunar Lander Challenge program.
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Years after the controversial presidential election in 2000, election activists are still struggling to work the bugs out of balloting systems. The butterfly ballot may be ancient history, but changes in voting practices have brought in a whole new slate of challenges.
"U.S. elections really are a mess," said Arlene Ash, a biostatistician at Boston University who has made a study of statistical issues in elections. She said that was an astounding reality for "a country which has prided itself on industrial quality control and really getting technology right."
Tuesday may be an off-year Election Day, but the occasion serves as a good time to consider how far we've come since the year 2000, and how far we have yet to go.
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