Seems that in Scotland, sightings of the Loch Ness monster are down, way down! This is causing a bit of concern amongst the locals that a shy Nessie will result in fewer tourists coming to the Loch to try and catch a glimpse of the world’s most famous mythological beastie. From MSNBC: Loch Ness monster […]
…since the last X Prize: SANTA MONICA, Calif., September 13, 2007 – The X PRIZE Foundation and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a remarkable $30 million prize purse. Private companies from around the world will compete to land a privately funded […]
Thanks to a tip I saw somewhere on the net today and the ever-helpful information at Heavens Above, I knew that the International Space Station (ISS) would be passing overhead here in Denver around 9:00 pm MDT. And sure enough, just before 9:00, a very bright dot appeared in the northwest sky, slowly heading toward […]
Teenagers don’t think: Her analysis included research she conducted with ISU colleagues on more than 10,000 youths from across the country regarding such things as smoking, use of alcohol and/or drugs, or practicing unsafe sex. She’s found that one of the biggest reasons teens are so hard to figure out is because there is an […]
And here it is: (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.) This planet is some 63 light-years away from us. It is one of the so-called “hot Jupiter” planets, that is, a gas giant that is in a very close, tight orbit around its star. You can find more details here. Yeah, I know there’s not a lot of […]
Of course, I blame Bush: As seen in Figure 1, Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004. As they say on Neptune, global warming has become an inconvenient truth. But with no one to […]
Tetrapod Zoology has become one of my favorite blogs. It’s written by Darren Naish, who describes himself thusly: Darren Naish – me – is, or was, a vertebrate palaeontologist, formerly based at the University of Portsmouth, UK. They still host my homepage, but have usefully deleted all the links to the pdfs I so lovingly […]
No, not on Earth – on Mars. A growing number of people are raising a stink about global warming, claiming that mankind is causing the world we all share to heat, by some claims, to a point that will cause a climatic catastrophe. Now a bit of a hint from Mars: Mars, too, appears to […]
…you’re addicted to love [*]: A Wall Street Journal article surveying research on the neurobiology of love reports on the work of Dr. Helen Fisher. Love triggers the dopamine system which is also involved in drug addiction. Dr. Fisher has studied love by looking at people’s brains using magnetic resonance imaging machines. A recent study […]
Up Earth Creek without a paddle
I am a child of the Space Age (or, to use Robert Heinlein’s phrase from his ‘Future History‘ timeline, the False Dawn of Space Travel). I had just turned 8 years old when President Kennedy in May 1961 issued his famous challenge: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this […]
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