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Boeing Completes Key Space Based Space Surveillance System Tests


spacewar.com
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:02 UTC
Boeing has successfully completed a series of Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) system tests as part of the development of a new operational sensor for the U.S. Space Surveillance Network. Tests of the SBSS system's visible sensor, payload electronics and high speed gimbal further validate that the enhanced capability of SBSS will be twice as fast, substantially more sensitive and 10 times more accurate than the capabilities currently on orbit, resulting in improved detection of threats to America's space assets.

"The visible sensor on the SBSS satellite will be used to provide critical information vital to the protection of U.S. military and civilian satellites," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Erickson, squadron commander for the SBSS, Space Superiority Systems Wing.

"The end result is that SBSS will significantly enhance the nation's space situational awareness," added U.S. Air Force Col. J.R. Jordan, group commander for the Space Situational Awareness, Space Superiority Systems Wing.

©unknown
Boeing has overall responsibility for the SBSS system and is developing the SBSS ground segment while working with Ball Aerospace to develop the spacecraft and visible sensor.
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Sherlock

Brain 'irrelevance filter' found


BBC
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:14 UTC
Scientists believe they have located a new brain area essential for good memory - the "irrelevance filter".

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Evil Rays

Hear Voices? Put Down the Gun - It May Be an Advertisement

Andrew Hampp
Advertising Age
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:04 UTC
NEW YORK -- New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination."

©Yoray Lieberman
An A&E Billboard 'Whispers' a Spooky Message Audible Only in Your Head in Push to Promote Its New 'Paranormal' Program.
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Clock

Spartans did not throw deformed babies away: researchers


AFP
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:27 UTC
The Greek myth that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly newborns off a cliff was not corroborated by archaeological digs in the area, researchers said Monday.

After more than five years of analysis of human remains culled from the pit, also called an apothetes, researchers found only the remains of adolescents and adults between the ages of 18 and 35, Athens Faculty of Medicine Anthropologist Theodoros Pitsios said.

©Unknown
The statue of King Leonidas of ancient Sparta
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Bulb

Preparing the Ground: Mars robot unearths microbe clue

Jonathan Amos
BBC
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:13 UTC
Nasa says its robot rover Spirit has made one of its most significant discoveries on the surface of Mars.

Scientists believe a patch of ground disturbed by the vehicle shows evidence of a past environment that would have been perfect for microbial life.

The deposits were probably produced when hot spring water or steam came into contact with volcanic rocks.

©NASA
Spirit's broken wheel dug up the silica deposits
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Telescope

Hazy Red Sunset On Extrasolar Planet


Space Daily
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 01:18 UTC


©ESA, NASA and Frederic Pont (Geneva University Observatory)
An artist's impression of the extrasolar planet HD 189733b seen here with its parent star looming behind. The planet is slightly larger than our own Solar System's Jupiter. Its atmosphere is a scorching eight hundred degrees Celsius. Astronomers have found that the sunset on HD 189733b would look similar to a hazy red sunset on Earth.
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Rocket

NASA on target for return to the moon by 2020 say officials


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:12 UTC


©Agence France-Presse

Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday.
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Telescope

Voyager 2 Proves the Solar System is Squashed

Bill Steigerwald
NASA
Mon, 10 Dec 2007 23:22 UTC
NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has followed its twin Voyager 1 into the solar system's final frontier, a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.

However, Voyager 2 took a different path, entering this region, called the heliosheath, on August 30, 2007. Because Voyager 2 crossed the heliosheath boundary, called the solar wind termination shock, about 10 billion miles away from Voyager 1 and almost a billion miles closer to the sun, it confirmed that our solar system is "squashed" or "dented" - that the bubble carved into interstellar space by the solar wind is not perfectly round. Where Voyager 2 made its crossing, the bubble is pushed in closer to the sun by the local interstellar magnetic field.
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Bug

Nanotube-producing bacteria show manufacturing promise

Iqbal Pittalwala
University of California - Riverside
Mon, 10 Dec 2007 19:35 UTC
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria - a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices.

©Signs of the Times
Nanotube-producing bacteria show manufacturing promise.
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Better Earth

Save the Environment: Switch to Linux


CNN
Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:55 UTC
True or False: Switching from a Windows-operated computer to a Linux-operated one could slash computer-generated e-waste levels by 50%.

The answer is: TRUE

A UK government study in late 2004 reported that there were substantial green benefits to running a Linux open source operating system (OS) on computers instead of the ubiquitous Windows OS, owned by Microsoft. The main problem with Windows users was that they had to change their computer twice as many times as Linux users, on average, thereby effectively creating twice as much computer-generated e-waste.
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