Science – Page 10 – Slugger O'Toole

“Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars”

Pete Baker on August 7, 2012, 4:02 pm

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Another wondrous image from Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This time the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard snapped the Red Planet’s “newest celebrity” – the Curiosity rover and its 51-foot-wide (almost 16 metre) parachute descending towards Gale Crater. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona] From the Nasa/JPL press release “If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape,” said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion …

Curiosity: “I’m safely on the surface of Mars”

Pete Baker on August 6, 2012, 2:41 pm

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If you didn’t manage to catch those ‘seven minutes of terror’ earlier this morning for Nasa’s mobile Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the massive 900kg rover Curiosity, here’s how it worked out. From NasaTelevision As the Curiosity Rover said on Twitter I’m safely on the surface of Mars. GALE CRATER I AM IN YOU!!! #MSL — Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) August 6, 2012 Heh. And the first image from the landing site at Gale Crater. [Images credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech] Another with Curiosity’s shadow visible. …

Curiosity: “It’s like the Olympics for nerds!”

Pete Baker on August 5, 2012, 9:09 pm

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Just a quick reminder that, if everything goes to plan, Nasa’s mobile Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the massive 900kg rover Curiosity, is scheduled to land on the red planet at 6.30am [BST] tomorrow morning. As the Curiosity Rover says itself It’s landing day & I’m hours from Mars! Watch my final @nasa prelanding briefing, Aug 5 9:30am PT (1630 UT) ustream.tv/nasajpl — Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) August 5, 2012 And from the Guardian’s Pass Notes No 3,223 Is it all going …

Curiosity: “We’re doing something completely novel, hanging it way out there”

Pete Baker on July 31, 2012, 5:24 pm

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Launched back in November 2011, Nasa’s mobile Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), the massive 900kg rover Curiosity, is scheduled to land on the red planet at 6.30am [BST] on Monday 6 August. [Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS] They’ve successfully repositioned the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft to keep in touch with Curiosity as it descends into Gale Crater [pictured above] in a novel way. To achieve the precision needed for landing safely inside Gale Crater, the spacecraft will fly like a wing in the upper …

National Trust: “To ensure that no further misunderstanding or misrepresentation of this exhibit can occur, we have decided to review the interpretive materials in this section.”

Pete Baker on July 18, 2012, 2:05 pm

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As the BBC report, after a fortnight of stonewalling and denials, and temporarily closing comments at their press blog, the National Trust has announced that they intend “to review the interpretive materials” in the controversial section of their Giants’ Causeway Interpretive Centre. [Have the Geological Society had a word in their shell-like? – Ed] They’re still blaming everyone else. However, one small part of the visitor centre’s interpretive display has caused mixed reactions, mainly from people reacting to media coverage and …

Dwarf Planet Gains Fifth Moon…

Pete Baker on July 17, 2012, 8:08 pm

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Not that it didn’t already have five moons. At least. ANYhoo… As I was saying this time last year, when Hubble spotted a fourth moon orbiting Pluto. The Hubble Space Telescope has been looking at the twin dwarf planet system of Pluto and Charon ahead of Nasa’s New Horizons mission expected arrival in the neighbourhood in 2015. [Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)] They’ve already mapped the surface of Pluto, to an extent, and now they’ve spotted a …

Bovine TB and badgers: “This approach has not been tried anywhere else…”

Pete Baker on July 15, 2012, 3:26 pm

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The different approaches of the various administrations in the UK and Ireland to attempting to eradicate bovine tuberculosis [TB] in wild animals, specifically badgers, are worth noting. They are all in response to the EU Directive 64/432/EEC which, as the Welsh adminstration’s website notes, “requires Member States to provide plans showing how they will eradicate bovine TB in cattle.” In England, the UK government is pressing ahead with badger culling, despite the opposition of animal welfare groups like the RSPCA. In Wales, the Welsh …

Memo to the National Trust…

Pete Baker on July 10, 2012, 5:26 pm

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The “intellectual baboons” behind young-Earth creationism at the National Trust’s Giants’ Causeway Interpretive Centre are singing your praises in letters to the editor and op-eds in the News Letter ‘Caleb’ had engaged over many months with elected representatives and the National Trust on this. The step taken by the Trust is a small, but welcome, move towards greater inclusivity. [added emphasis] It is though, of itself, significant. For the first time a younger earth interpretation has now been included as part …

Giants’ Causeway Interpretive Centre: “The National Trust fully supports the scientific explanation for the creation of the stones 60 million years ago”

Pete Baker on July 6, 2012, 4:07 pm

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Which is fine, but misses the point. The National Trust continues to try to defend its decision to give in to the lobbying of the Caleb Foundation and include young-Earth creationist beliefs in the Giants’ Causeway Interpretive Centre. [Are they after the crank pound? – Ed] Maybe… and maybe not. Yesterday’s NT press office blog carried this quote A National Trust spokesperson said: “The interpretation in the visitor centre showcases the science of how the stones were formed, the history of …

Giants’ Causeway Interpretive Centre: “This is, as far as we are aware, a first for the National Trust anywhere in the UK, and it sets a precedent for others to follow…”

Pete Baker on July 5, 2012, 2:27 pm

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John’s professed concern is misplaced. As the National Trust press release on the “new state-of-the-art visitor centre” at the Unesco World Heritage Site Giants’ Causeway noted New interactive displays and activities inside the visitor centre include an animation of the legend of Finn McCool and an innovative hand-held audio guide. Such distractions aside, and without access to the material at issue, the quotes in the UTV report from the National Trust raise serious questions. The trust said that the exhibit gives …

LHC: “we have observed a new particle consistent with a Higgs boson. But which one?”

Pete Baker on July 4, 2012, 4:31 pm

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That’s what they’ll be trying to work out over the next few years. Matt Strassler’s probably the man to go to for more on the options ahead. But, for now, the news from Cern is that they have, almost certainly, found “that damned elusive particle“, a Higgs boson. Earlier this morning one of the six theoreticians who predicted the field/boson, Peter Higgs, instructed his family to start chilling the champagne, and Stephen Hawking has conceded that he has lost his …

Rio 20 Years On – The UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012

Peter Doran on June 25, 2012, 5:12 am

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The results of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development here in Rio de Janeiro said more about the state of geopolitics than any advance in sustainability. About fifty thousand people gathered for one of the most participatory global summits in history…but to what avail? Non Governmental Organisations, led by Greenpeace, have been quick to dismiss the event as failure of epic proportions. The political centrepiece of the negotiations is a fifty-page list of non-binding reaffirmations of undertakings – many with origins …

Voyager: “We are approaching the solar system’s final frontier”

Pete Baker on June 22, 2012, 5:11 pm

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Here’s a short informative video from Science at Nasa on the indications that Voyager 1 is about to enter into the vastness of interstellar space. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Space, remember, is very very big. And on that note, because I can, here again is some wondrous time-lapse video of the night-sky above the ESO Very Large Telescope array [VLT], in Chile, from NikoBustos. [Video credit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] Or even this [Video credit: ESO/S. Guisard (www.eso.org/~sguisard) ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)] And, of course, the Milky …

As the UUP continues its long gentle journey downwards…

Mick Fealty on June 22, 2012, 2:25 pm

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Who would be in the poor UUP? Alex Kane noted in the Belfast Telegraph on Wednesday, it is the gift to journalists that just keeps on giving, regardless of who is in charge. And the new leader does not have his troubles to seek: The problem is that there is no sign of the better policies, better organisation, or the better communications. Indeed, an opinion poll in the Belfast Telegraph last week put the UUP – at 11% – on …

High level govt meeting considered indemnifying British troops before Motorman in 1972…

Mick Fealty on June 19, 2012, 1:59 pm

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Interesting find by Relatives for Justice trawling the national archives in Kew in London, which… …contains minutes of a meeting held at Stormont Castle on Monday July 10, 1972 – less than three weeks before Operation Motorman, when thousands of British soldiers stormed into the ‘no-go’ areas of the Bogside, Brandywell and Creggan, shooting dead two people. The minutes also refer to plans “to be produced urgently for the containment of areas known to harbour bombers and gunmen.” Operation Motorman …

Transit of Venus 2012: The Movie

Pete Baker on June 6, 2012, 2:39 pm

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Were your skies not favourable for viewing? Did you miss the live online coverage of the last transit of Venus until 2117? Well, there’s a Flickr group. Or you could take in the stunning views from Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Video from NasaExplorer. [Credit: Data courtesy of NASA/SDO, HMI, and AIA science teams]. Enjoy! On June 5 2012, SDO collected images of the rarest predictable solar event–the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. This event happens in …

Transit of Venus 2012: “marvel at the solar system in motion”

Pete Baker on June 5, 2012, 3:33 pm

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As I mentioned back in March, tonight one of the rarest predictable astronomical events will occur – a transit of Venus. [I’m washing my hair! – Ed] What hair? ANYhoo… Since the invention of the greatest human innovation, the telescope, at the beginning of the 17th century, not by Galileo, there have been only 7 such transits. The next time it will happen will be on 11 December 2117. Nasa’s Sun-Earth Day website will be providing a live web cast during the more than …

Aurora Borealis over Europe

Pete Baker on May 17, 2012, 8:19 pm

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Another wondrous view of the Aurora Borealis as captured by the crew of the International Space Station. This time as a backdrop to the equally wondrous sight of Ireland and the United Kingdom under night-time conditions [0-18s]. Video via NasaCrewEarthObs. This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station. The sequence of shots was taken April 5, 2012 from 00:44:21 to 00:50:07 GMT, on a pass from the North Atlantic Ocean, west of the Celtic …

“Vesta is special”

Pete Baker on May 13, 2012, 7:54 pm

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Having arrived at the 530km-wide giant asteroid Vesta in July last year, Nasa’s Dawn Mission scientists have published some of their findings in Science magazine. As the BBC’s spaceman, Jonathan Amos, notes They confirm that Vesta has a layered interior with a metal-rich core, just as Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury do. Using information about the shape of the asteroid and its gravity field, scientists can even say something about the likely size of this core. The Dawn team calculates …

In praise of… The Antikythera Mechanism

Pete Baker on May 11, 2012, 2:40 pm

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I have noted it before [with videos from Nature], but the Antikythera Mechanism is a pretty wondrous object. And, as the Guardian’s ‘in praise of’ editorial points out, “A BBC4 programme on Thursday night retold the tale.” The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project is worth a look too. Here’s a shorter version of the story And, almost as wondrous, the inevitable Lego version… Pete Baker