and going nowhere fast, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, that is. The view above (click to enlarge) is captured by the navigation camera, and looks back at its tracks made in April of this year, the last time the robotic explorer made any forward progress. Here's the latest from NASA/JPL on attempts to free the stuck rover."The LHC pushed protons to 1.18 TeV (trillion electron volts), surpassing the previous record of 0.98 TeV held by Fermilab’s Tevatron."So far so good, I guess. We're still here.
I couldn't have said it better myself."I've spent 4 decades studying global climate change and as a scientist I am appalled at Krugman's cavalier shrugging off the Hadley email scandal as 'just the way scientists talk among themselves.' That's like saying it's alright for politicians to be corrupt because that's the way they are. Legitimate scientists do not doctor data, delete data they don't like, hide data they don't want seen, hijack the peer review process, personally attack other scientists whose views differ from theirs, send fraudulent data to the IPCC that is used to perpetuate the greatest hoax in the history science, provide false data to further legislation on climate change that will result in huge profits for corrupt lobbyists and politicians, and tell outright lies about scientific data.
Posted by: Don Easterbrook | Nov 29, 2009 1:57:05 PM"
“We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn’t make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven’t spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious.”So not only is there collusion to influence the peer review process, apparent fudging or manipulation of data, use of erroneous and flawed software code, intentional and coordinated deletion of documents in order to frustrate FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, now there may be accounting fraud to add to all that. Don't believe it? Read the documents for yourself, or consult this summary.
"The technical name is "fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical wave"—or "MHD wave" for short. The one STEREO saw reared up about 100,000 km high, and raced outward at 250 km/s (560,000 mph)."Fortunately the phenomenon is no hazard for Earth.
of Enceladus shows the spacecraft approaching the backlit geyser-like fountains that spew from fractures in the icy crust near the south polar region of this tiny moon of Saturn. Check out the previous related post that describes this flyby that occurred on 21 November 2009 and provides links to other stunning images.
is Lake Toba in Sumatra, spanning an area of 100 km by 30 km (click to enlarge). Recent research suggests that the lake occupies an edifice created by a super eruption: Supervolcano Eruption In Sumatra Deforested India 73,000 Years Ago.
"CERN hopes to boost the energy to 1.2 TeV per beam – exceeding the world's current top collision energies of 1 TeV per beam at the Tevatron accelerator in Batavia, Illinois.Note that:In early 2010, physicists will attempt to ramp up the energy to 3.5 TeV per beam, collect data for a few months at that energy, then push towards 5 TeV per beam in the second half of the year."
"The LHC is designed to allow collisions at much higher energies – all the way up to 14,000 GeV (14 TeV), or 7 TeV per beam."Clearly we're in for some astounding science, that is, if the world survives.
from the recent flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on 21 November show a fresh, non-cratered, icy surface with countless pressure ridges (click to enlarge)."Stretching across more than 2 million square feet, the terminal doesn’t sit directly on the soil, but rather on more than 300 isolators, bearings that can move side-to-side during an earthquake. The whole building moves as a single unit, which prevents damage from uneven forces acting on the structure."
visualization showing clouds using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Verison 5 (GEOS-5) at 7 km resolution for the period from 17 August through 21 August 2009 (click on image for 3 MB MPEG-4 video). This visualization was designed to closely match a GOES satellite image for comparison purposes.“In North America, there’s a lot of confusion because everything was happening all at once.”
— Isaac Asimov
is scheduled for this Thursday, 19 November. Note to my budding stratigraphers: study hard, don't hardly study.
propagating through the Earth's interior in three-dimensions (click to enlarge)."Six of the eight sectors of the LHC have now been hardware commissioned to allow the passage of beams at 1.2 TeV. The remaining two (Sectors 3-4 and 8-1) will be powered up in the coming week.It's been nice knowin' ya.
If all goes well, in just over one week from now, the beams could circulate in both pipes of the LHC. The first low-energy collisions should follow shortly after."
"Based on the measurements, the team estimated about 100 kilograms of water in the view of their [two spectrographic] instruments — the equivalent of about a dozen 2-gallon buckets — in the area of the impact crater (about 80 feet, or 20 meters across) and the ejecta blanket (about 60 to 80 meters across), Colaprete said."This is particularly amazing: the water ice volatilized in the ejecta may be billions of years old.
from a recent sci-fi flick but an actual image of Earth acquired by the Rosetta spacecraft (click to enlarge). The European Space Agency mission is on its way to intercept comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko where it will place a lander on the comet’s surface in 2014.
survived the Ice Age and persists to this day: Largest Bat In Europe Inhabited Northeastern Spain More Than 10,000 Years Ago. The subject of the article, shown above (click to enlarge), is the Greater Noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus).
from space showing the northeastern United States in true-color during summer (click to enlarge). Lake Erie barely extends into the image from the western edge, and Lake Ontario appears in the enlarged image in the upper left.Image credit: MODIS team; NASA.
"The Sudbury impact ... happened around 1.85 billion years ago. The event fundamentally affected the concentrations of dissolved oxygen in the deep sea — enough to almost instantly shut down the accumulation of marine sediments known as banded iron formations."
because this will freak you out: Arachnid Hall of Fame image gallery at Wired.com. I think spiders are fascinating and beneficial creatures, and avoid killing them, even in the house.
"If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. 2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey."Close shave.
as imaged by the powerful new Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The brightly glowing red regions in the spiral arms of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy are dense bubbles of hydrogen gas in which fledgling stars are developing. This article describes some of the details:"Gradually, the young stars' fierce winds (streams of charged particles) blow away the gas, revealing bright blue star clusters. These stars are about 1 million to 10 million years old. The older populations of stars are not as blue."Link to more information and related images at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
"The proposal identifies a path winding through displays of casts of dinosaur tracks and replicas of animals from the early Jurassic through the late Cretaceous geologic periods. Participants would be allowed to “dig” for bone replicas."The proposal has been tabled by the Grand County Planning and Zoning Commission, however, in order to give staff more time to review information provided by the applicant.
are seen backlit by the Sun in a recent flyby that occurred on 2 November 2009 (click to enlarge to full resolution). This image was taken while the spacecraft was ~190,000 km from the moon, but at its closest approach it flew merely ~100 km (62 mi) above the surface.
from space showing the Heiltskuk Icefield in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia (click to enlarge). Geomorphology students should be able to pick out a wide variety of alpine glacial features - including valley glaciers, horns, aretes, cirques, moraines - in the enlarged view.
of the Milky Way galaxy has been compiled from 3,000 images acquired over 22 months by Axel Mellinger. Here's the link to his All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0 web site to view the full image."Despite a 30 percent population increase during the past 25 years, overall water use has remained fairly stable according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report."Hmm. Maybe I can take that long, hot shower after all.
