Cool science stuff

Any amount of liquid water on Mars is a game-changer just in terms of future colonization. Desalinated water can be used to irrigate crops, and can be electrolyzed to produce oxygen to breathe and hydrogen for rocket fuel.

If life is indeed discovered, though, that'll put the kibosh on colonization for many, many years. Can't pollute Mars with terrestrial organisms while we study it.

 

The Federation wouldn't allow it. The Prime Directive, you know.

 

So I had the news on after the football game last night and the idiot anchors got the eclipse story wrong twice, in different ways.

First they called the event, "a rare supermoon." Uh, no, a supermoon happens four or five times every year. What's rare is a total eclipse of the supermoon.

Then they said, "there won't be another total lunar eclipse until 2033." No, total lunar eclipses are not uncommon. There won't be another supermoon total eclipse until 2033.

I found myself shouting at the TV, "No! You're wrong!"

 

Science + Journalists = usually a bad outcome

 

Yeah, I feel the same way when they say "a ref was attacked." The referee is a specific official, the guy in the white hat. It's so commonplace that you just shrug and give up.

 

Blue skies -- over Pluto?

New Horizons Space Probe Finds Brilliant Blue Skies, Water Ice on Pluto

 

This is really cool.totally changes the way you think of the landscape of Pluto. I always imagined it looking more like the moon - black, white, totally barren.

 

I wish those four last words described the Kardashians.

 

So... First glimpse of aliens in the process of building a Dyson Sphere?

The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...ge_dips_in_brightness_are_a_bit_baffling.html

The strange star that has serious scientists talking about an alien megastructure

The money quote, from The Atlantic story (BTW, Wright is Jason Wright, an astronomer at Penn State):

“When [Boyajian] showed me the data, I was fascinated by how crazy it looked,” Wright told me. “Aliens should always be the very last hypothesis you consider, but this looked like something you would expect an alien civilization to build.”

 

That is a very real concern. Some missions have been proposed to land a drilling rig on Jupiter's moon Europa, which has a subterranean ocean and is believed to be a candidate for extraterrestrial life. One of the things holding it up, besides the logistical difficulties and money, is the fear of contamination. Not just bringing our germs and such to Europa, but being certain that if we do find life it's actually alien and not something from Earth that hitched a ride.

 

Latest on the "impossible" EmDrive: NASA confirms that the ‘impossible’ EmDrive thruster really works, after new tests

Note: NASA didn't really confirm that it works, despite the sensational headline. EagleWorks just eliminated a couple more variables that could have caused the observed results.

 

JETPACKS!!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...g-beside-an-airliner_563b90d7e4b0411d306ff7d6

IronMan is coming soon!