When a science fiction author postulates some bizarre astronomical or planetary configuration, hordes of fans (and not a few scientists) will tsk-tsk, saying that such a system could never possibly exist. And then there’s this: A quartet of stars has been discovered in an intimate cosmic dance, swirling around each other within a region about […]
It’s even stranger than you think. Hat tip to Dave Barry. ..bruce w..
Or, rather, images of the strange. Quick quiz: what is this thing? I don’t know either, but if you open up Google Earth (4.2 beta), scroll over to the middle of Greenland (70 deg N, 40 deg W), and then start zooming in, this is what you’ll find. I have to think it’s a data […]
Monkeys surprisingly proficient at mental arithmetic: A college education doesn’t give you much of an edge over a monkey when it comes to doing some basic arithmetic, according to a study released Monday that underscores the surprising mental agility of our simian relatives. In a rapid fire test of mental addition, monkeys performed almost as […]
Freighters with sails — or, in this case, one very large sail that flies like a kite: A kite the size of a football field will provide most of the power for a German heavy freight ship set to launch in December. The Beluga shipping company that owns the 460-foot Beluga said it expects the […]
Maybe all those cheesy 50’s monster movies were right: The fossil, found in a 390-million-year-old rock, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought, the researchers said. “This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized […]
“Space for all people” may sound nice, but who establishes (and enforces) the rule of law? I’m a very simple man, and here’s my simple understanding of property law: say I’m a solar-farmer on the moon, just selling my electrical output to them city-folk across the ridge at the spaceport. Pirates, who’ve mutinied against the […]
April 12th, 1981. I was still in high school in Illinois. I was a young nerdy guy engrossed with all things having to do with space and man’s conquest of the heavens. I vividly recall the launch. It was the 3rd day they had tried to launch, each time there was some technical problem that […]
This posting over at Colony Worlds argues that we’d be better off colonizing Ceres (the asteroid) before we colonize Mars: Ceres however is located within the “mineral field of dreams,” dancing around the sun between 2.5-3 AU (or astronomical units). This places the icy world in the heart of the metal rich zone, the majority […]
Word from the New Scientist that a group of researchers are working up a detailed SETI search on a nearby star that is specifically selected because of it’s similarities to our sun. From New Scientist The star, called HIP 56948, lies a little more than 200 light years from Earth. Its size, mass, temperature, and […]
