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Hubble Telescope Celebrates 15th Birthday with Stunning Images
April 25, 2005
Fifteen years old this month, the Hubble Space Telescope showed off new images of the Whirlpool Galaxy and Eagle Nebula (see ESA press release).  Engineers at JPL who built the WFPC-2 (Wide Field and Planetary Camera), the camera that took most of those famous images that adorn our walls and calendars, took great satisfaction today […]
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Solar System

Titan’s Atmosphere Is a Hydrocarbon Factory
April 25, 2005
A press release from Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced the discovery of complex hydrocarbons in Titan’s atmosphere.  Some molecules have up to seven carbon atoms.  The discoveries came from the recent flyby on April 16, the closest yet, at just 638 miles above the surface.  Swooping into the upper layers of the atmosphere, the spacecraft came […]
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Cell Biology

Bacterial Hydrogen Fuel Cell May Yield Cleaner World
April 24, 2005
Scientists at Penn State are working on a new, improved fuel cell.  Its secret?  Bacteria that can be coaxed with a little electricity to produce “four times as much hydrogen directly out of biomass than can be generated typically by fermentation alone.”  Will you someday be able to harness hydrogen from organic waste to drive […]
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Fossils

Giant Carnivorous Amphibians Found in African Fossil Deposit
April 23, 2005
Meat-eating amphibians shaped like crocodiles?  Be glad you didn’t live in West Africa 250 million years ago, say scientists at McGill University.  Two species were described, one with large and small fang-like teeth, and another with curved horns on the back of its head. The fossils didn’t come with dates on them, and since amphibian […]
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Origin of Life

In the Beginning, Hydrogen: Was It Miller Time?
April 22, 2005
A press release from University of Colorado says that the spark-discharge experiments of Stanley Miller in the 1950s (see 05/02/2003 entry) might be relevant again.  Why?  Researchers used new models to estimate the amount of hydrogen in the early earth’s atmosphere, and came up with numbers 100 times higher than before.  If hydrogen did not […]
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Education

Evolutionists Plan Secret Weapon for Kansas Debate
April 21, 2005
Pro-evolution scientists have changed their mind and decided to join the hearings about the Kansas science standards, but haven’t released a list of witnesses.  Those in favor of the new standards, which call for critical thinking about evolution, have published a complete list.     On March 31, Geoff Brumfiel in Nature1 reported, “Biologists snub […]
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Solar System

How to Get Asteroid Dust Ponds in Mere Millennia
April 19, 2005
A team of U. of Colorado and MIT scientists modeled the formation of the smooth dust ponds found in some of the craters on the asteroid Eros by the NEAR spacecraft (see 02/13/2001 entry).  They calculated that micrometeoroid settling from impacts was too slow a process, and instead ran experiments with electrostatic levitation of fine […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Butterflies Really Know How to Fly
April 18, 2005
The path of a butterfly may appear haphazard to us, but there is a method to the fluttering.  A UK team of scientists put transponders on butterflies and monitored their flight paths.  They found that the looping paths appear to help with orientation and food detection.  The rest of the time, they flew straight at […]
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Politics and Ethics

Temple Mount Debris Yields Artifacts from Solomon’s Temple
April 17, 2005
Israelis were shocked and outraged when Palestinians undertook an illegal construction project in 1999 on the Temple Mount, and threw the debris into the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, but there was little they could do about it.  Though this “archaeological disaster” caused irreparable damage to the site, the holiest place for the Jews, some Israelis […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Fossilized in the Act of Laying Eggs
April 15, 2005
Two eggs, with shell material still attached, were found inside the oviducts of a theropod dinosaur, a Chinese team reported in Science.1  This first-time discovery of intact eggs in the body of the female “suggests that theropod dinosaurs had two functional oviducts (like crocodiles) but that each oviduct produced only one egg at a time […]
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Early Man

Gorilla or Hominid?  Toumaï Controversy Continues
April 14, 2005
Michel Brunet’s controversial Toumaï skull (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) made the cover of Nature last week,1,2 but rivals contend it was not part of the human line.  The skull he found in Chad in 2002 (see 07/11/2002 and 10/09/2002 entries) was badly disfigured and needed reconstructive surgery, leading to criticisms that any interpretations were subjective.     […]
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Solar System

Solar Eclipse Probabilities Calculated
April 13, 2005
The probability, on average, that the spot you are standing on will see a total solar eclipse is once every 360 to 375 years, says Joe Rao, a lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium, writing for MSNBC News.  Some cities, though, like Los Angeles, have to wait 1565.9 years, and some rare spots may not see […]
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Terrestrial Zoology

Go to the Roach, Thou Robotics Designer
April 13, 2005
Most of us can’t step on them fast enough, but of cockroaches, engineers at Johns Hopkins say “the pesky critters are excellent role models” – for robotics.  Classroom exercises include building obstacle courses for cockroaches and observing how they use their antennae to navigate, even in the dark.  Said one student, experienced in trying to […]
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Cell Biology

Molecular Motors Do Ballet
April 13, 2005
Scientists at University of Illinois studied dynein and kinesin – the tiny molecular trucks that ferry cargo inside the living cell – and found that they are not just individualists: they cooperate in a delicate yet effective performance.     Some scientists had thought that the two machine types, which travel in opposite directions, were […]
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Education

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Academic Bill of Rights?
April 13, 2005
Why would Nature claim that academic freedom is a threat to academic freedom?  In the April 7 issue,1 Emma Marris titled her news item, “Professors bristle as states act to mould lecture content – Academics are fighting right-wing ‘bills of rights’.”  The academic freedom the professors want is their own freedom to control lecture content, […]
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