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POPSNASA Plans to Visit the Sun The two mysteries prompting this mission are the high temperature of the sun's corona and the puzzling acceleration of the solar wind: Mystery #1—the corona: If you stuck a thermometer in the surface of the sun, it would read about 6000o C. Intuition says the temperature should drop as you back away; instead, it rises. The sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, registers more than a million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than the star below. This high temperature remains a mystery more than 60 years after it was first measured. Mystery #2—the solar wind: The sun spews a hot, million mph wind of charged particles throughout the solar system. Planets, comets, asteroids—they all feel it. Curiously, there is no organized wind close to the sun's surface, yet out among the planets there blows a veritable gale. Somewhere in between, some unknown agent gives the solar wind its great velocity. The question is, what?
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POPSInternet-Telescope Will Provide Movie-like Window on Universe LSST is designed to be a public facility. The database and resulting catalogues will be made available to the public with no proprietary restrictions. A sophisticated data management system will provide easy access, enabling simple queries from individual users. The public will actively share the adventure of discovery.
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POPSThe Simulated Universe ... In this article, I provide an exposition of the Simulated Universe argument and explain why some philosophers believe that there is a high possibility that we exist in a simulation. I will then discuss the type of evidence that we would need to determine whether we exist in a simulation. Finally, I will describe two objections to the argument before concluding that while interesting, we should reject the Simulated Universe argument. This article is a critique on Nick Bostroms article Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?
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POPSMass extinctions? Blame it on the ocean In the course of hundreds of millions of years the world's oceans have expanded and contracted in response to the shifting of the Earth's tectonic plates and to changes in climate. There were periods of the planet's history when vast areas of the continents were flooded by shallow seas such as the shark and mosasaur infested seaway that neatly split North America during the age of the dinosaurs. As those epicontinental seas drained, animals like mosasaurs and giant sharks went extinct, and conditions on the marine shelves where life exhibited its greatest diversity in the form of things like clams and snails changed as well.
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POPSShock Discovery of Ancient Space Invader This rock sample contains fragments of the first asteroid ever discovered intact. The brown 'nuggets' in the sample once orbited the Sun, and are probably older than the planets in our Solar System.
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POPSAsteroid Impacts On Earth: A Protection Plan Indeed, over billions of years, the Tree of Life here on Earth has been whacked time and time again by what Schweickart labeled as “the crazy cosmic gardener.” “The good news is that we can do something about this,” the former astronaut explained. “The marriage of we human beings and the machines that we’ve created are now at a level of capability which enables us to fire the crazy cosmic gardener. We can stop this process from occurring again.”
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POPSSmall asteroid risk is higher than estimated The chairman of this week's Planetary Defense Conference, William Ailor of the Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit established by Congress to support the Air Force's space defense program, said scientists generally agree that the risk to Earth from large asteroids is small. Researchers have identified more than 700 of these potential "planet killers" -- out of an estimated 1,000 -- and found that not one is on a collision course with Earth. "But with the smaller ones, the asteroids in the range, we're finding more and more," Ailor said yesterday. "They're hard to detect, and it's hard to predict where they are headed, but they can do a great deal of damage." NASA estimates that there are as many as 100,000 of the smaller asteroids in near-Earth orbit and that about 20 are "potentially hazardous."
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POPSLong-distance demonstration of solar-powered wireless power transmission achieved In the longer term, with sufficient investments in space infrastructure, space solar power can be built from materials from space. The full environmental benefits of space solar power derive from doing most of the work outside of Earth's biosphere. With materials extraction from the Moon or near-Earth asteroids, and space-based manufacture of components, space solar power would have essentially zero terrestrial environmental impact. Only the energy receivers need be built on Earth.
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POPSGiant Impactor Theory what makes science attractive, is the ability to develop methods to test the solidity of the basic theories. one has to wait and see what would be the impact :)
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POPSSea's Ebb And Flow Drive World's Big Extinction Events Arnold I. Miller, a paleobiologist and professor of geology at the University of Cincinnati, says the new study is striking because it establishes a clear relationship between the tempo of mass extinction events and changes in sea level and sediment: "Over the years, researchers have become fairly dismissive of the idea that marine mass extinctions like the great extinction of the Late Permian might be linked to sea-level declines, even though these declines are known to have occurred many times throughout the history of life. The clear relationship this study documents will motivate many to rethink their previous views."
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POPSAsteroid may hit Mars January 2008 It's like Mars is a crash test dummy. June 30 is the Centenary of the Tunguska Impact on Earth. It has been called a meteor strike, but the jury is still out on exactly what it was. It was a weird meteor.They only discovered this asteroid in November It'd due on Jan 30 but I don't know where it will be night if it hits.The odds are 75:1, but they are short odds in astronomical terms. At least we wont be in suspense for too long. I was wondering how big a telescope would have to be before it can be seen, but it will probably be easier to see on youtube
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POPSAsteroids Get A Kick Out Of Sunlight An artist's concept of a massive asteroid belt in orbit around a star the same age and size as our Sun. Research indicates that sunlight speeds up an asteroid's spin and changes the direction of its axis.
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POPSExploring the origins of Solar System In an eight-year mission, Dawn is scheduled to enter orbit around Vesta in October 2011, proceed to Ceres in May 2012 and then begin orbiting Ceres in February 2015 -- travelling a total distance of 5.1 billion kilometers.
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POPSHow Jupiter helped life develop on Earth. The whole article is well worth the read. It discusses some of the problems with Jupiter also. Further, it shows how condition had to be JUST right for life to develop on earth. For how the Moon helped see: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/1742DD5B-C55D-47F8-A270-F7770280466B/
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POPSAstronomers trace Human's dusty origins Tremendous pressure and energy is required for some of the heavier elements to form. It is thought they are produced in supernovae, and quasars, but we still have so much to learn. Every discovery makes the picture a little clearer
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