Space

I'm a reasonable man, but there's a laxness in cyberspace I just can't abide with. And I'm talking to you, space.com. I'll say it straight, you may know science but you ain't giving your readers any links to the real stuff. You just echo-chamber yourself-- all your dang blag links link back to you! If you ain't gonna share your references, you ain't doing science, just flappin' yer gums. Buck up and cite like a man, ya here?

Let's look at us down home at ScientificBlogging. We got us an article on NASA's report of 'water on the Moon'. It's a purty piece, maybe a bit talky, but it's got itself some solid references. Let's list 'em:

Today, November 16, is the 35th anniversary of a coded radar beam that was directed out into the galaxy by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, who used the enormous radio telescope dish at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, to send a message from the Earth. Those signals are now 35 light years away. They have already passed the nearest stars, and may even have been intercepted, with a reply heading our way.

If that has happened, and we can decipher the incoming message, there will be some very happy people at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Our perception of the human race, living on a small planet circling an ordinary star, will be forever changed.  We will no longer be alone.

Our satellite hits the road-- even before it gets built!  I will be presenting a short talk on "Project Calliope: Science and Social Media" at the winter AAS meeting in Washington DC on January 7, 2010.  The session is 'Innovations in Teaching and Learning'.

The word on the street is that Jesus is pretty t'd off at NASA.¹ What mortal sin² did the space agency allegedly commit? The non-biological reproduction of an RNA component in a laboratory, of course.

NASA scientists reproduced uracil in a lab under conditions found in space, according to Astrobiology. Uracil is one of the components of the genetic code that makes up ribonucleic acid (RNA); RNA is mainly known for its role in protein synthesis. In other words, NASA was able to create a building block of life in the lab.

While today we're pretty darned certain there is no intelligent life on Mars, in the early 20th century, it was still an open question. 

So-- about four decades before the publically known Project Ozma search-- the Navy stepped up to find out. 

Well before SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), Project Ozma, Area 51, or even the 1938 radio hoax 'War of the Worlds', the Navy was looking for Martians.

Today is the 75th anniversary of Carl Sagan's existence. Unfortunately, Carl Sagan is no longer alive to celebrate with us. Carl is the paradigmatic advocate for science. Those trying to popularize science after Carl are all trying to be Carl. Sagan not only made science interesting, he never compromised on the facts. He trusted his audience to be intelligent and interested.

An elevator to space? No, this isn't a reprise of Charlie and Chocolate Factory. As I mentioned in a blog back in January, an elevator into space is the end goal - a 100,000 km long tether anchored to the Earth as a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions.

Scientists used a pair of gravity-measuring satellites, GRACE, to look at Amazon river basin water levels and, hopefully, better predict future water storage and runoff.  The twin GRACE satellites measure the mass distribution of the Earth between the two satellites, and accumulating these measurements over time lets us know how the Earth's mass shifts around.  A team led by Shin-Chan Han compared this data with simulations to look at, basically, how water is stored, released, and sloshes about within the Amazon river basin.  They compared the data with simulations.