Ejecta rays point to the problem with ‘ideal’ models
The PNAS Journal Club points to an interesting research study on craters: “Journal Club: Researchers may’ve finally solved mystery of crater ray formation”.
All posts tagged with space
Congress looking to investigate why so much federal grant money has gone to serial sexual harassers and abusers
Two years ago this month, I asked, “Why do universities cover up high-profile harassment? Look for the money”.
Link: Exoplanet fatigue
Oliver Morton thought that the recent Proxima Centauri exoplanet news would be bigger; he ponders why he was wrong: “It will be a long time before you see an...
Why do universities cover up high-profile harassment? Look for the money
How can professors get away with years of sexual harassment or abuse of graduate students without their universities taking any action?
Quote: The Sagan effect
Many people know the story that Carl Sagan was rejected for membership in the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. The story has given rise to ...
What happened on Apollo 13
Ars Technica has a long article in honor of the anniversary of the Apollo 13 by writer Lee Hutchinson, giving background to the famous accident that the movi...
Launching genetic diversity to the stars
Popular Mechanics asks, “How Many People Does It Take to Colonize Another Star System?”. The basic problem is that a multigenerational star voyage requires t...
Billions of Earths
The Bad Astronomer explains this week’s new Kepler-assisted astronomy findings: “The Sky May Be Filled with Earth-like Planets”.
Hunting for Dyson spheres
From Markus Hammonds at io9: “The Hunt for Alien Megastructures”. Turns out that people are already using observational data to try to identify planet-scale ...
Asteroid defense: think small
Rand Simberg: “Should NASA Be Doing More Asteroids?”
Autonomous asteroid manufacturing
Adam Mann of Wired describes the interesting plans of Deep Space Industries, working on the idea of how to make money from asteroid mining: “New Asteroid Min...
Space radiation
Maggie Koerth-Baker, on “How space radiation hurts astronauts”. I did not know about this part:
Stone tools on the moon
Moon rock is expensive here on Earth, but on the moon it’s as cheap as dirt. So maybe future moon colonists could make stuff out of it using 3-d printing tec...
Martian will
Adam Mann in Wired covers Elon Musk’s ideas about putting people on Mars: “Elon Musk Wants to Build 80,000-Person Mars Colony”.
Anthropocentric aliens
Steve Silberman provides an in-depth interview of Lee Billings, in the middle of writing a book about the discovery of extrasolar planets: “Five Billion Year...
MacGuffin
The headline of this Guardian story really says it all: “Priceless Tibetan Buddha statue looted by Nazis was carved from meteorite”.
Interstellar design
Popular Mechanics has an article that goes through some of the basics of space flight design principles: “What would a starship actually look like?”
Astrobiology editorial
Nature has a short opinion piece about NASA’s astrobiology initiative Lazcano:Hand:2012.
Space news
From Alexis Madrigal: “Hey, brother, can you spare a Hubble?”
Mailbag: Beyond the solar system
My name is Corey Hayes. I am in my final year of Anthropology at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada. My Minor's English, and I've been told I have a bent...
An arsenical profile
Popular Science writer Tom Clynes gives us a long profile of Felisa Wolfe-Simon, who became a lightning rod for criticism after she authored an article claim...
Alienation
On the issue of alien cyanobacteria, I recommend David Dobbs: “Aliens riding meteorites: Arsenic redux or something new?”
Suborbital experiments worth the cost
Yesterday, some commercial space news made the NY Times (“Space Tourism: One Giant Leap for Researchers” and Wired (“Scientists Buy Rocket Rides to Suborbita...
Ham the space chimp
Remembering Ham, 50 years later: “The chimp that took America into space.”
Landing your capsule
Vintage Space is a blog written by a historian of spaceflight, which has lately been focusing on the development of landing systems in the Mercury, Gemini an...
Arsenate redux
I wrote a short post about the arsenate-bacteria story last weekend; in the meantime the story has developed. Carl Zimmer ran a long story early this week, r...
Alien biology hype
Rosie Redfield begins to disassemble the NASA-sponsored “alien life forms” story:
Space rock
The Age:
Meteorite mania
Hmmm….
Blue planet
Charles Stross: “How habitable is the Earth?”
Astronaut leavings
Sophie and I went out last week to see the International Space Station and Space Shuttle as they flew over just after sunset. Very impressive brightness, and...
Buzz Aldrin interview
The Freakonomics blog ran a Q-and-A with astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
Boldly going?
Could the first Mars colony be a retirement community? Lawrence Krauss thinks so:
Saturn V
The LA Times had a very nice article last week with reminiscences of engineers who built the Saturn V rocket:
Mailbag: Saturn V remembrance
Thanks for your post on the Saturn V. I remember watching the first shuttle launch, and being surprised at how it jumped off the pad. I had become used to ...
A different space infrastructure
Rand Simberg (Transterrestrial Musings) gives a history of efforts to redirect NASA, and an alternative blueprint for the future, in a long essay in The New ...
Tom Wolfe on the moon landing
Worth reading from last week if you haven’t seen it: The Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe’s lament on NASA’s unfulfilled promise, “One Giant Leap to Nowhere”. Mo...
Ancient Earth rocks may be on Moon
Simulations have shown that ejecta from ancient impacts on Earth may have landed safely on the Moon, allowing future astronauts to search for ancient traces ...