“We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.” Have your perambulators and origami cranes at the ready…I missed this ten days ago amid the Half-Blood hullabaloo and drive south, but it’s very well-done: 20/20 Hindsight takes a trip in the Wayback Machine to blog the 60th anniversary of the Trinity Test in real-time.
Category: Science
Millennium Falcons.
“‘There’s very little in life that is 100 percent guaranteed,’ said N. Wayne Hale Jr., the deputy manager of the shuttle program, at a news briefing Sunday evening. ‘And there’s probably less in rocket science.‘ With Discovery poised to fly tomorrow despite a nagging sensor problem, the NYT examines the durability of the aging shuttle fleet. Update: Back in the blue! Godspeed, STS-114.
Say Cheese.
Via a friend in the program, Google maps the moon to commemorate the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11.
The Rocket’s Red Glare.
In a day of fireworks the nation over, the most intriguing flash-bang occurred 83 million miles away, with the successful crashing of NASA’s Deep Impact into Tempel 1. (Space.com has gathered together the best pics from the big show.)
Ever Watchful.
“Concealed within his fortress, the Lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf — a Great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.”. (Via Supercres.)
(And, while I’m quoting our fallen friend, Saruman of Many Colors: “The hour is later than you think. Sauron’s forces are already moving. The Nine have left Minas Morgul…they crossed the river Potomac on Midsummer’s Eve, disguised as judges in black.“)
They’re coming to get you, Berkeley.
According to this article, scientists recently brought several dogs back from the dead. And, yet, they were somehow changed…
Sail on, Silver Bird.
All systems are go today for the launch of Cosmos 1, a satellite designed to test the possibility of interstellar travel via solar sail. “Because it carries no fuel and keeps accelerating over almost unlimited distances, it is the only technology now in existence that can one day take us to the stars.” (Well, it worked for Chris Lee.) Update: Uh oh…
Hardwired?
It’s an ugly day for voter rationality in today’s New York Times. According to a new study by several political scientists, our political predispositions may be genetic (and last summer’s Zellout may have been the result of a lingering discordance between genetic and environmental factors in Miller’s make-up.) Whatsmore, we seem to choose our elected leaders immediately by their physical attributes, namely a general look of competence: “Both babies and baby-faced adults share certain characteristics: round faces, large eyes, small noses, high foreheads, and small chins. No one trusts the competence of a baby, and few, apparently, trust that of an adult who looks like one.” (Don’t lose heart, fellow advocates of an informed and capable electorate — There’s obviously a huge gaping hole in this latter theory.)
No more paradoxes.
“‘Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality,’ said Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. ‘It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we’re losing in Iraq.’” Two quality links via the consistently splendid Follow Me Here: First, Republican Senators McCain and Hagel call out Dubya on the war. Between this and “Freedom Fries” Jones, are the floodgates opening in GOP-land?
And, on an altogether different note, physicists cast doubt on the possibility of time travel paradoxes “When Greenberger and Svozil analysed what happens when…component waves flow into the past, they found that the paradoxes implied by Einstein’s equations never arise. Waves that travel back in time interfere destructively, thus preventing anything from happening differently from that which has already taken place.” (Well, looks like time-traveling historians won’t need to worry about any Primeresque recursions, then.)
Oil Slick.
Here’s Dubya’s head-in-the-sand environmental policy in a nutshell: The NYT discovers the White House has Philip Cooney, a former oil industry hack, rewriting climate reports to cast doubt on global warming. “Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the ‘climate team leader’ and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has no scientific training.”