OTTAWA -- If the sky is clear tonight, look up and you'll see two special shows from outer space: one out-of-control spy satellite on its way to destruction and, for good measure, a total eclipse of the moon.
Both will be visible with the naked eye, although some of Canada will miss the dying spy satellite.
Science & Technology
Washington - The Pentagon says bad weather at sea appears likely to put off, until at least Thursday, an attempt to shoot down the wayward U.S. spy satellite.
Little affected by last week's "temporary restraining order" slapped on Wikileaks, a website that allows whistleblowers to release obscured corporate and government documents for public scrutiny, users can still access the site's documents though its IP address (88.80.13.160) as well as domain names including wikileaks.ws, wikileaks.be, and wikileaks.cx.
MIT researchers have explained why two mutations in the H1N1 avian flu virus allowed the disease to spread during the 1918 pandemic that killed at least 50 million people. The work could help scientists detect and contain a future bird flu outbreak among humans.
Robert Jastrow, who led a major space science institution and helped to bring space down to earth for millions of Americans, died Friday at his home in Arlington, Va. He was 82.
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| ©George C. Marshall Institute |
| Robert Jastrow |
A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people's heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.
The U.S. Navy may make its first attempt to shoot down an errant spy satellite loaded with toxic fuel overnight on Wednesday in an area of the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii, according to U.S. officials and government documents.
A notice to mariners broadcast by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency warned of "hazardous operations" in the area between 9:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday and midnight EST on Thursday.
A notice to mariners broadcast by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency warned of "hazardous operations" in the area between 9:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday and midnight EST on Thursday.
NASA has selected a proposal by an MIT-led team to develop plans for an array of radio telescopes on the far side of the moon that would probe the earliest formation of the basic structures of the universe. The agency announced the selection and 18 others related to future observatories on Friday, Feb.15.
A US warship is moving into position to try to shoot down an out-of-control US spy satellite as early as Wednesday before it tumbles into the Earth's atmosphere, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Armed with two specially modified interceptor missiles, the USS Lake Erie has been tasked to intercept the satellite over the Pacific and shoot it down into the ocean, the officials said, adding that a cruiser, the Aegis, is already in waters off Hawaii.
Armed with two specially modified interceptor missiles, the USS Lake Erie has been tasked to intercept the satellite over the Pacific and shoot it down into the ocean, the officials said, adding that a cruiser, the Aegis, is already in waters off Hawaii.
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| ©AFP/Us Navy-HO/Michael Hight |
| This picture released by the US Navy shows Lt. Cmdr. Andrew Bates operating the radar system control during a ballistic missile defense drill on February 16 aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie. The US warship is moving into position to try to shoot down a defunct US spy satellite as early as Wednesday before it tumbles into the Earth's atmosphere, Pentagon officials said Tuesday. |
Good ideas can have drawbacks. When information is freely shared, good ideas can stunt innovation by distracting others from pursuing even better ideas, according to Indiana University cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone.
"How do you structure your community so you get the best solution out of the group?" Goldstone said. "It turns out not to be effective if different inventors and labs see exactly what everyone else is doing because of the human tendency to glom onto the current 'best' solution."
"How do you structure your community so you get the best solution out of the group?" Goldstone said. "It turns out not to be effective if different inventors and labs see exactly what everyone else is doing because of the human tendency to glom onto the current 'best' solution."
Comment: How ironic that Jastrow, skeptic of anthropogenic global warming, headed the very institute that now is a major player in promoting it, with James Hansen as its head. What's even more ironic - and left out in the above obituary - not surprisingly - is that Robert Jastrow was a vocal skeptic of Carl Sagan's attack on Immanuel Velikovsky, author of Worlds in Collision, who, using comparative mythology and ancient literary sources argued that Earth has suffered catastrophic close encounters with other planets in ancient times. Now we know that these contacts were most probably cometary encounters and not planetary. However Jastrow wrote of Velikovsky in Science Digest Sep/Oct 1980: In Sagan's attack on Velikovsky, Robert Anton Wilson writes in "Cosmic Trigger": Of course, Carl Sagan, not to be outdone, replied to Jastrow's letter by calling it 'scientific incompetence'. However, as comet Shoemaker-Levy crashed into Jupiter in July 1994, 29 months before Sagan's death, it was Velikovsky and Jastrow who got the last laugh, if one could laugh at such a cosmic catastrophe clearly threatening our planet.