A stellar shockwave produced by a celestial bullet called Zeta Ophiuchi. Image courtesy NASA/WISE
The image above is just the ribbon on the gift NASA researchers assembled and left under our collective tree this week. The WISE telescope produced a mind blowing Cosmic Atlas and slideshow for about what it costs us to prop up Wall Street for a few hours or chase non existent WMD in Iraq for a couple of days. That brings up a fair point about the next generation version of WISE, the James Webb Space Telescope:
After seeing what WISE produced, you can imagine -- or maybe we can't and that's what so exciting -- what a dish with over 250 times the resolution of WISE could do! The worry is JWST may be trying to do too much too soon, without an intermediate step, plus it's so expensive and subject to so many delays already, its gutting NASA's interplanetary science budget right now.
Might a scope with a mere 25 times the resolving power of WISE make more sense for the next step, especially if we can have it years sooner, while still developing a range of other ambitious missions like a rover on Europa or instruments that can directly image earth-like exoplanets, in the bargain?
- Joseph Kittinger's sky-diving record of over 100,000 feet has stood for 50 years. This week a new space-diver, Fearless Felix, geared up in preparation for a summer attempt to break it by falling over 20 miles from the edge of space, and go super sonic in the process.
- James Inhofe found himself in the able hands of Rachel Maddow this week and Climate Progress has the full video with comments. I counted at least four or five whoppers Inhofe had to abort when Rachel called him on them.
- In what should come as a shock to absolutely no one—with the possible exception of Conservapedia's entry on relativity—CERN confirms its hot little neutrinos are not exceeding the speed of light.
- A tiny peek into the dark, anti-science bubble the right now dwells in courtesy of Newton Three-Wives:
[W]hich is something that the Left rejects - they don't believe the Wright Brothers invented flying, they don't believe Edison invented electric light, and they don't believe we're about to invent the next generation of interesting things.
Well golly-gee-willickers, Jethro, I saw that there electricity one time at the state fay-er, but what does it have to do with lanterns and who is this here Edison feller?
- Beware, the icy finger of death!