It's all happening at the 'Zoo February 17, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2comments
Someone told me
It’s all happening at the Zoo.
Space Debris over Texas (or not) February 15, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2commentsThe internet is all atwitter over the sighting of a fireball over the city of Austin, Texas, and numerous other similar sightings throughout the state(?). Speculation abounds that it may have been debris from the this week’s high-speed collision of two satellites in space, causing both to shatter to pieces – although the Federal Aviation Authority has not been able to confirm. After Twitter, blogs and local news, the bigger papers like the New York Times have picked up on the story too, although information so far appears to be sketchy and speculative. In any case I hope no one has been injured. Here’s a quick bunch of links for more info:
TED Prize: Searching for life in the Universe February 15, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . Add a commentOne of the winners of the annual TED prize, announced at the organisation’s annual conference in Long Beach last week, is astronomer Dr. Jill Tarter, Director of the SETI Institute in California. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a kind of super-club of creative minds from those fields set up in 1984 who meet a few times year to discuss Big Ideas.
There’s a lot of lofty rhetoric involved and they could easily be accused of being a kind of elitist international country club for geeks. But I think there’s more to it: talks from the TED conference are made freely available at their website for everyone to watch and there is some genuinely good stuff there: originality,creativity, and an awareness of and concern for global issues. TED talks have been viewed online more than 100 million times and translated into 25 languages. Many of TED’s ‘Brain Trustees’ have impressive track records in turning innovative ideas into success -Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Craig Venter, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins are just a few of the names on their list.
The TED prizes are awarded annually to three of these creative minds, who get a $100,000 cheque and $1 million in support funding, as well as opportunity to tap the networks and resources of the powerful TED community, to help realise “One Wish to Change the World”. Dr. Tarter’s wish for changing our world is to “ empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.”
Europe's spacetastic 2009 February 11, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 2comments
Herschel and Planck, snug as a bug
2009 is an exciting year for the European space community, with some high-profile launches, an astronaut recruitment programme, new launch vehicles, and, let’s not forget, a Belgian becoming the first ever European commander of the International Space Station.
Most anticipated for astronomers worldwide, however, is the launch of two major astronomy missions, Herschel and Planck. These two space telescopes are both designed to operate at the L2 Lagrangian point – a gravitationally stable point 1.5M km from Earth – and will be launched together on board an Ariane 5 on 16 April, from Korou.
More dark chatter February 9, 2009
Posted by sarah in: science . 1 comment so farWhile Mars and exoplanets stole most of the science headlines in 2008, papers reporting results from a number of cosmic ray detectors gathered a lot of attention in the (astro-)physics community. Excesses in the number of particles detected at high energies (~50 GeV) that could not be explained by theoretical predictions sparked speculations that cosmic ray satellite PAMELA may be picking up the signature of dark matter in the Galaxy. A commonly accepted scenario for the nature of dark matter are the so-called WIMPs, or weakly interacting massive particles, which don’t interact in “regular” processes but may annihilate each other to produce high energy cosmic radiation. A number of cosmic ray and gamma ray detectors have produced intriguing results, leaving scientists with an intricate puzzle of information to assemble into a coherent picture.
