Science & TechnologyS


Rocket

NASA finds minor scratch damage to shuttle shield

Irene Klotz
Reuters
Wed, 13 May 2009 01:12 UTC
Cape Canaveral, Florida - The U.S. space shuttle Atlantis apparently was hit by a piece of debris that nicked part of its heat shield but the damage appeared very minor, NASA said on Tuesday.

Atlantis and its seven-member crew blasted off from Florida on Monday on an 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

It will be the U.S. space agency's last chance to tinker with the telescope -- which has vastly expanded scientists' knowledge of the universe -- before NASA ends the shuttle program in 2010.
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Frog

Enemies of creationism may be hindering science teachers

Andrew Brown
Guardian
Tue, 12 May 2009 14:58 UTC
A US judge's ruling is a warning to those who want to teach real science in schools that they need to change their tactics

Adistrict court judge in southern California has ruled that a teacher who described creationism as "superstitious nonsense" was making a religious statement, which is impermissible in US public schools. On the face of it, this is completely absurd, even for southern California. Creationism is superstitious nonsense, and teachers should be able to say so. But when you look at the background, the case becomes in some respects less absurd, but also more threatening - especially for hardline rationalists such as Richard Dawkins, who would like to dismiss creationism as beneath contempt.
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Magnify

Physicists make smallest incandescent lamp


United Press International
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:36 UTC
Los Angeles, -- U.S. scientists say they have created the world's smallest incandescent lamp to explore the boundary between thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.

The UCLA researchers said thermodynamics concerns systems with many particles while quantum mechanics works best when applied to just a few. The team is using its tiny lamp to study physicist Max Planck's black-body radiation law, which was derived in 1900 using principles now understood to be native to both theories.
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Info

Phair, woman who named Pluto, dead at 90


United Press International
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:30 UTC
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© UPI Photo/NASAAstronomers declared that Pluto is no longer a planet at an International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague, Czech Republic on August 24, 2006. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005 shows Pluto, its moon Charon (below and right of center) and two newly discovered moons to the right.
Banstead, England -- Venetia Phair, who earned scientific notoriety at the age of 11 by suggesting the name Pluto for a newly discovered planet, has died in Britain, her son says.

Phair's son, Patrick, confirmed his mother, who was born Venetia Burney, died of unspecified causes April 30 at the age of 90 in the British town of Banstead, The New York Times said Monday.
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Info

Scientists create liquid lens on a chip


United Press International
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:26 UTC
State College, Pa. -- U.S. scientists say they've created tunable fluidic micro lenses that can focus light at will while remaining stationary and can be fabricated on a chip.

The Pennsylvania State University research engineers said such fluidic lenses can be used for many applications, such as counting cells, evaluating molecules or creating on-chip optical tweezers. The lenses might also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity of moving the tip of a probe, they added.
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Magnify

Culture Minister: 132 archaeological sites in Egypt not excavated


Egypt State Wide Information Service
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:14 UTC
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said that the researches conducted via satellites have confirmed the existence of 132 archaeological sites in Egypt that witnessed no excavations until now.
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Magnify

The king of Stonehenge?

Paul Harris
Mail Online
Tue, 12 May 2009 01:02 UTC
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An artist's impression of the 'King of Stonehange' who was buried at Bush Barrow 4,000 years ago
Were artefacts at ancient chief's burial site Britain's first Crown Jewels?

He was a giant of a man, a chieftain who ruled with a royal sceptre and a warrior's axe.

When they laid him to rest they dressed him in his finest regalia and placed his weapons at his side. Then they turned his face towards the setting sun and sealed him in a burial mound that would keep him safe for the next 4,000 years.
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Laptop

Twitter: sucker's game that boosts elite

Seth Finkelstein
The Guardian
Fri, 08 May 2009 19:15 UTC
Let me start by confessing I do have a Twitter account. But I won't be fooled again. That is, I refuse to once more play the attention-seeking game, where everyone enriches the contest runner and surrounding marketers for the privilege of aspiring to be one of the very few big winners.

Twitter is a "real-time short messaging service". Users can subscribe to quickly updated text messages from an entity, though the messages are limited to a maximum of 140 characters. Think blogs, but faster and constrained to extremely short postings.

If someone subscribes to you, they're called a "follower", while subscribing to someone is called "following". The language is already revealing of the structure.

When I first heard of Twitter, I made the mistake of thinking it was like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an old system that allows a group to exchange text messages among themselves. So I wondered why there was such a fuss over a variant of that ancient idea.

Comment: This is one of many recent negative articles on Twitter that correctly point out the concerns of this latest social networking tool.

Facebook, Twitter Used For US Military Recruiting
Swine flu: Twitter 's power to misinform
Facebook and Twitter 'fuel an epidemic of online bullying'

There are positives of course, such as the presence of the best alternative news source on the web.

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Meteor

The Asteroids Are Coming


Space Daily
Mon, 04 May 2009 01:51 UTC
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© UnknownScientists have demonstrated that several large NEO impacts in the past have altered both life and the environment.
This isn't just "buzz" to get you excited about a new movie coming; we really are being buzzed by asteroids and other NEOs (Near Earth Objects), and one day these conjunctions could become collisions! There are lots of NEOs out there orbiting the sun.

Some, like comets, are less worrisome since they are composed primarily of ice and small, rocky particles that dissipate upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Others, however, like asteroids are thought of as minor planets that are large enough to damage Earth and its environment if an encounter should take place.


Comment: It is quite likely that comets are as threatening to Earth as asteroids. Read Tunguska, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction, The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets or Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls for more in-depth reading.

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Blackbox

'Star Trek' Warp Speed? Physicists Have New Idea That Could Make It So


Science Daily
Sun, 10 May 2009 21:33 UTC
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© iStockphoto/Heidi KristensenCould traveling at warp speed to distant star systems ever become a reality?
With the new movie 'Star Trek' opening in theaters across the nation, one thing movie goers will undoubtedly see is the Starship Enterprise racing across the galaxy at the speed of light. But can traveling at warp speed ever become a reality?

Two Baylor University physicists believe they have an idea that can turn traveling at the speed of light from science fiction to science, and their idea does not break any laws of physics.

Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Dr. Richard Obousy, a Baylor post-doctoral student, theorize that by manipulating the space-time dimensions around the spaceship with a massive amount of energy, it would create a "bubble" that could push the ship faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the Baylor physicists believe manipulating the 11-dimension would create dark energy. Cleaver said positive dark energy is responsible for speeding up the universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded faster than the speed of light.
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