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Phoebe Shows Her Dark, Icy Face

June 14, 2004

Planetary scientists are reveling in the sharp new pictures of Phoebe taken last Friday by the Cassini Spacecraft. Phoebe is the outermost moon of Saturn, an oddball since it revolves around Saturn in the “wrong” direction at high inclination. Nine images have been released to the public so far (click here for the gallery). The […]

Cosmology

Cosmos Ages a Billion Years in One Day

May 28, 2004

Physicists have found that a portion of the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen reaction thought to participate in fusion reactions inside stars runs two times slower than previously thought. The measurements were made in the Laboratory for Underground Nuclear Astrophysics (LUNA), a lab nearly a mile underground in Italy that offers more protection from cosmic rays. The ripple effect […]

Astronomy

Young Planet Around Young Star Claimed

May 28, 2004

A star estimated to be one million years old already has a planet in orbit around it, the Spitzer Space Telescope (Hubble’s counterpart for infrared astronomy) has found. Astrobiology Magazine says this challenges old theories. Alan Boss (Carnegie Institute) thinks this supports his disk-instability model for planetary formation, in which gas giants can form quickly, […]

Solar System

Red Planet News; Ring World Beckons

May 25, 2004

Let’s drop in on Mars for the latest findings. The two Mars Exploration Rovers are still doing splendidly; Spirit has its goal mapped out, a tour of the Columbia Hills where rock outcrops beckon geologists. It recently crossed the 1.5 mile mark and set a single-day distance record, covering more than a football field with […]

Cosmology

Searchers in the Dark Over Dark Matter

May 10, 2004

No sooner had Sean Carroll published his essay in Nature1 that dark matter proves how insignificant we are, that Geoff Brumfiel tells us in Nature Science Update that researchers can’t find the stuff. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search II is four times more sensitive than previous searches, but came up empty. Carroll had just reiterated […]

Astronomy

Hot Jupiter! Exoplanets Found Very Close to Stars

May 7, 2004

Two examples of Jupiter-size planets have been found by the European Southern Observatory. They are so close to their parent stars, they orbit in less than two earth-days each. Mercury would be 17 times farther out than one of them. They belong to a new class of exoplanets scientists are terming “hot Jupiters.” A few […]

Solar System

Io, Io, It’s Off to Work We Go

May 4, 2004

The innermost large moon of Jupiter, Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. About the size of our moon but no more than a speck of light in small telescopes, Io caused a sensation when Galileo first glimpsed it and the other three major satellites of Jupiter in 1610. Back then, […]

Astronomy

Lutherans Helped Copernicus

April 30, 2004

Every once in awhile, we are confronted to reconsider things we “know” are true, only to find out the truth is closer to the opposite. The usual spin on Nicolaus Copernicus is that he was a brave scientist who threatened the church with his discovery that the earth orbits the sun, not the sun the […]

Intelligent Design

SETI Researcher Analyzes Language Mathematically

April 26, 2004

Space.com had a story April 22 about Dr. Laurance Doyle, who studies non-human communication with information theory. The article is mostly about his study of whale and dolphin signaling, but mentions how information theory is related to the intelligence of the communicating entities: Doyle’s team uses statistical tools from a field known as “information theory” […]

Solar System

The Spin on a New Planet

April 16, 2004

Planetary scientists are “completely baffled” by a new “mysterious” planetoid named Sedna, discovered March 15. About 70% the diameter of Pluto, it has no moon like Pluto does, but rotates very slowly – somewhere between 20 and 50 days – which would normally imply the presence of a satellite. Most small bodies rotate in a […]

SETI

Arecibo SETI Project Draws a Blank

March 31, 2004

Project Phoenix, a 10-year project searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, found nothing, reports the BBC News. The project used the world’s most powerful radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, to scan 800 nearby stars for signals. Project manager Peter Backus claims the team has learned a lot about searching for ETI, but concludes we […]

Cosmology

Privileged Planet Website Opens

March 16, 2004

A website featuring a new book by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet, has opened. The subtitle of the book is How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. The authors take issue with pessimistic views, such as those of Steven Weinberg and Carl Sagan, that our planet is “pointless” or […]

Dumb Ideas

Much Ado About Nothing

March 12, 2004

How much can you say about nothing? Some people can say quite a lot. One astrobiologist just wrote a large book about it: Lonely Planets: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life by David Grinspoon (Harper Collins, 2003). Larry R. Nittler reviewed this new book in the March 12 issue of Science.1 Nittler describes […]

Cosmology

The Evolution of Omnipotence

March 11, 2004

With a headline like “New Theory: Universe Created by Intelligent Being,” one might think that National Geographic News has gone creationist and rediscovered Genesis 1. The opposite would be true. The article by John Roach explores the radical thinking of a lawyer/scientist named James Gardner, who has just published a book, Biocosm: The New Scientific […]

Astronomy

Hubble Deep Field Surpassed: Ultra Deep Field

March 9, 2004

If you remember the awe of seeing the first Hubble Deep Field image in 1995, check out the new HUDF: Hubble Ultra Deep Field (see also the New Scientist report). The field of view, just one-tenth the size of the full moon, is a composite of 800 images taken for 11.3 days. The 1995 image […]

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