Partial cut of panorama from Gale Crater. Click image for lots of awesome pics and background explanations at Bad Astronomy.
Safe On Mars! I have to confess, I can't quite believe the landing sequence worked so
flawlessly. But it was a hoot on the
front page and on the
reco list, and a big shot of fun in the arm for
the country:
So what, in the scheme of things, is the justification for the draconian budget cuts to NASA’s planetary program that threaten scientists’ carefully thought out plans for exploring the solar system in the coming decade? Is it that we don't value the high-tech jobs, the magnet for STEM education, the knowledge and inspiration we get from NASA’s planetary explorations?
NASA/JPL have been doing a superb job of getting raw data straight to the public. Take a moment to sust sit down with your significant other or child,
starting here right through black and white
Martian gold.
- H. rudolfensis gets a boost as a specific taxon with the find of more fossil remains from three different individuals. Good news for lumpers & splitters: "Rudy" might well be part of the ancestral line that led to anatomically modern humans.
- If you liked Alaskan bear cam, you'll probably love kitty cam! And what do you suppose kitty cam caught your sweet lil pussy cat doing when you weren't looking?
- Microbiologists and astrobiologists agree: One of the most resilient classes of microbes on earth go by the name of Methanogens. They and their archean cousins could be the true rulers of terrestrial biota and more:
That's where University of Massachusetts Amherst scientist James Holden comes in. He is working on an exciting new discovery about microbes that exist within the cracks of undersea volcanoes. "Evidence has built over the past 20 years that there’s an incredible amount of biomass in Earth’s subsurface ..."
- What do you do when our space exploration technology is increasing leaps and bounds, offering more and more bang for the buck as Mr. Moore's law predicts, but our political appropriations machinery is seized up by greedy billionaires? Here's one answer:
If you’re Alan Stern – head honcho of the Pluto New Horizons probe and longtime scientific researcher- you start a new company that’ll fund space science by engaging the public. So he did. The company is called Uwingu – Swahili for "sky" – and the team includes several top-notch scientists like Geoff Marcy, Andy Chaikin, Emily CoBabe-Ammann, Pamela Gay, Mark Sykes, and many others.
