Archive for 'Space'
Revisable science
New discoveries of significant amounts of water (at least six-feet of water ice in each of forty craters) on what was once considered a bone-dry Luna shows why today’s AGW to-do is hardly “settled”:
“If [...]
Posted: March 18th, 2010 under Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate.
Tags: "settled science", AGW, Luna, NASA, water on the moon
Comments: none
Heavy Planet
Hal Clement’s classic hard SF novellas here about alien contact, Mission of Gravity and Star Light, with a couple of connected short stories thrown in, make for wonderful reading, and some free education in elementary physics and chemistry.
MG hardly suffers from being so old that the humans employ slide rules and [...]
Posted: March 16th, 2010 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Heavy Planet, Mesklinites, Mission of Gravity, space alien contact, species interplay, Star Light
Comments: 2
Dinosaur extinction
Delighted to see a new confirmation of the postulated dinosaur-killing effect of the meteor (or comet) that splashed into Chicxulub on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula millions of years ago. University of Texas geophysicists, who have helped map the ocean floors, did quite a bit of work on the remains of the crater—all hidden today by water [...]
Posted: March 9th, 2010 under Science/Engineering, South of the Border, Space, Texana.
Tags: Chicxulub, dinosaur-killer, Texas geophysics
Comments: 5
Sun Pillar
Over Mt. Jelm and the Wyoming Infrared Observatory.
Posted: March 8th, 2010 under Science/Engineering, Scribbles, Space, Weather/Climate.
Tags: Mt. Jelm, Sun Pillar, Wyoming, Wyoming Infrared Observatory
Comments: 2
The Invention That Changed The World
Birth control pills? The automobile? Antibiotics? Arguably. But in this case it’s radar, and Robert Buderi does a grand job of explaining why in the 500-plus pages of his sometimes technical, occasionally confusing, but always compelling 1996 classic, which I recently reread for the third time.
Perhaps it’s most compelling if you use your microwave (whose [...]
Posted: March 2nd, 2010 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space, Texana, The War, Troops, Weather/Climate.
Tags: Christian Huelsmeyer, radar, Robert Buderi, Telemobiloscope, The Invention That Changed The World
Comments: 2
Is SETI just asking for trouble?
One of the more amusing tales of science fiction is the one where the exploring earthlings, who believe that technological survival requires logic and logical beings can’t be warlike, run smack into an alien warship whose star troopers proceed to eviscerate them. (See Larry Niven’s warcats.)
Comes now a similar argument from New Scientist (”Hello ET, [...]
Posted: February 27th, 2010 under Blogosphere, Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: alien invasion, ET, New Scientist, SETI, The Foresight Institute
Comments: 6
Moonwalker: AGW is a fraud
Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt:
“Recent disclosures and admissions of scientific misconduct by the United Nations and advocates of the human-caused global warming hypothesis shows the fraudulent foundation of this much-ballyhooed but non-existent scientific consensus about climate.”
Welcome aboard, sir.
Posted: February 24th, 2010 under Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate.
Tags: AGW, Anthropogenic Global Warming, global warming, Harrison Schmidt
Comments: 2
Infrared Andromeda
Twice the diameter of our Milky Way. Largest galaxy in the Local Group.
Posted: February 19th, 2010 under Library, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Andromeda Galaxy, Infrared spectrum, Local Group
Comments: none
Home view
Posted: February 14th, 2010 under Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Earth, Luna, Sol
Comments: 3
Saving NASA. Pity, that.
Ugh: the pols aren’t going to let the bloated NASA bureaucracy’s deeply unimaginative return-to-the-moon program die. I have to give Barry credit for trying to cancel Constellation in favor of private enterprise. Even former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin likes the idea.
Which is not to say I expect the anti-business president to do much for commercial [...]
Posted: February 2nd, 2010 under Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Space.
Tags: Constellation, NASA, return to the moon
Comments: 2







