Science-In-The-News

&
How Stuff Works

    Feel free to browse through the attached science news articles via web-links.  Also, find a web sit on how things work.  One example page is attached, to update just use the main address for more information.
Science is everywhere!!

IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - February 11, 2004

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE: 1990-2007
from Wired News

The Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, once called the "best telescope
in the universe" by astronomers and astronauts, will be taken off life
support as early as 2007, NASA officials said.

The announcement came after a month-long battle by supporters who tried to
revive the space agency's plans to engage in one last shuttle mission to
repair the aging telescope. Under mandates from the Bush administration,
NASA has to redirect its resources toward manned missions to the moon and
Mars.

Bill Readdy, head of space flight at NASA, defended the agency's decision
to cancel the mission in a news conference on Monday, saying that it would
be too difficult for NASA to prepare a second, backup shuttle on the ground
in case of an emergency during the Hubble mission.
http://snipurl.com/4fk8

IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - February 10, 2004

MARS ROVER SNAPS FINE-GRAINED MATERIALS
from The Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The first close-up photos of the rock outcropping discovered by NASA's
Opportunity rover rule out the possibility that the layered Martian rock
was created by volcanic lava flows. The photos also suggest that it is
unlikely there was once a large body of water at the Meridiani Planum site.

But the photos revealed a new mystery: small, spherical grains of an
apparently different material embedded within the layers of stone.

"The deeper we get into this, the more it is reminding me of a mystery
novel," said principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell
University. "We start getting clues, one at a time. Some of them mean
something and some are probably red herrings, and we don't know which is
which yet."
http://snipurl.com/4emk


HYDROGEN-FUELED CARS WON'T HIT HIGHWAYS SOON, PANEL SAYS
from The San Francisco Chronicle

Despite all the promise of pollution-free vehicles, a transportation system
based on hydrogen fuel cells is anything but a sure bet, members of a
National Academy of Sciences panel concluded last week.

Even if the most optimistic predictions prove true, and the first hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles reach commercial showrooms by 2015, it would take at
least another quarter-century before they have a major impact on the
market, the panel concluded.

"This is a tremendously important, transforming opportunity we are talking
about, but it's not going to happen with current technology and current
knowledge," said Dan Sperling, a panel member and director of the Institute
of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.
http://snipurl.com/4em2

BEYOND BRRR: THE ELUSIVE SCIENCE OF COLD
from The New York Times

For tens of thousands of years, nobody knew how cold it was. They knew
about ice and snow and the danger of freezing to death, but no one had
thermometers. Instead, they used metaphors, often vulgar, to describe what
the cold could do.

In the 16th century, the thermometer was invented. But it wasn't until the
18th century that Fahrenheit and Celsius came up with their numerical
scales, making polite conversation about the weather possible for the first
time. General satisfaction reigned, if not with the weather itself, at
least with how to talk about it, until the 20th century, when the wind
chill factor was invented, complicating things. The start of the 21st
century has brought even more complicated attempts to describe how hot or
cold it is, by academic researchers, government agencies and private
companies.

Once again, nobody knows how cold it is.
http://snipurl.com/4emt



IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - February 6, 2004

'EVOLUTION' BACK IN GEORGIA TEACHING PLAN
from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said Thursday she will recommend
restoring the word "evolution" to Georgia's science teaching standards and
apologized for taking it out.

But she did not commit to reinstating other deleted national teaching
standards in the biology curriculum, which scientists say are needed if
Georgia students are to fully understand evolution.

The state's proposed revision of the middle and high school science
curriculum triggered a furious backlash from scientists, parents and
politicians because, among other things, it replaced "evolution" with the
phrase "biological changes over time."
http://snipurl.com/4bu3

REPORT QUESTIONS BUSH PLAN FOR HYDROGEN-FUELED CARS
from The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — President Bush's plan for cars running on clean,
efficient hydrogen fuel cells is decades away from commercial reality,
according to a report by the National Academy of Sciences.

Promoting the technology in his State of the Union address a year ago, Mr.
Bush said a hydrogen car might be available as the first vehicle for a
child born in 2003. On Monday, the Energy Department included $318 million
for both fuel cells and hydrogen production in its 2005 budget. "Hydrogen
is the next frontier; a hydrogen economy is where the world is headed,"
said Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy.

The Bush administration anticipates mass production of hydrogen cars by
2020. But the academy study, released Wednesday, said some of the Energy
Department's goals were "unrealistically aggressive."
http://snipurl.com/4bv6

PEBBLES MAY BE MARS WATER CLUES
from The Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Close-up pictures of the Martian surface taken by NASA's Opportunity rover
have revealed an unusual soil structure scattered with puzzlingly spherical
pebbles, which may hold clues to whether water was widespread on the
planet's surface.

The pebbles are big, coarse, gray grains that may contain hematite, a
mineral often formed in water that was one of the reasons the craft landed
in Meridiani Planum in the first place, principal investigator Steve
Squyres of Cornell University said Wednesday.

The grains are sitting on a material "that is very red, very fine-grained,
that gets exposed in the bounce marks" left behind by the air bags that
cushioned the rover's landing, he said. "Then we've got this sand that
looks like some kind of finely ground up basaltic sand."
<http://snipurl.com/4awi>


COLUMBIA INVESTIGATOR FEARS RUSHED LAUNCH
from Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- An investigator of the Columbia disaster fears more
astronauts will die if NASA rushes ahead with a space shuttle launch this
fall without making all the needed repairs.

"An early launch could create the same conditions which cost us 16 lives,"
Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane Deal said earlier this week. He was referring to
the crews of the Columbia and Challenger and two men who died in a
helicopter crash while searching for shuttle debris.

NASA's top spaceflight official insists, however, that the plan for
resuming shuttle flights as early as September or October will be driven by
milestones, not schedule. He stressed Wednesday that those months are
merely planning dates.
<http://snipurl.com/4aw5>


IN THE NEWS

Today's Headlines - February 4, 2004

NASA CHIEF PLANS NEW SPACE QUESTS
from The San Francisco Chronicle

NASA's proposed budget should increase by about 5 percent per year over the
next three years, and would lay the groundwork for returning robots to the
lunar surface within five years, and perhaps humans by 2015, NASA
Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Tuesday.

If approved by Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2005 would be $16.2
billion, a 5.6 percent increase over the $15.4 billion budget for fiscal
year 2004.

By far the single biggest budget change is a proposed $70 million study of
the feasibility of renewed lunar exploration.
http://snipurl.com/49vz

EUROPEAN SCIENTISTS PLAN MANNED MISSIONS TO MARS
from Associated Press

LONDON (AP) - European scientists set out a route map Tuesday for manned
missions to Mars that aims to land astronauts on the Red Planet in less
than 30 years.

Like U.S. President George W. Bush's proposed mission to Mars, the plan put
forward by the European Space Agency involves a "stepping stone" approach,
which includes robotic missions and a manned trip to the Moon first.

"We need to go back to the Moon before we go to Mars. We need to walk
before we run," said Dr. Franco Ongaro, who heads the ESA's Aurora program
for long-term exploration of the solar system, at a meeting of Aurora
scientists in London. "These are our stones. They will pave the way for our
human explorers."
http://snipurl.com/49wo

RULING THE WEATHER FRONT
from The Hartford Courant

From rain dances to shadowy Cold War schemes, the effort to control weather
is a common theme in history. And many of us join that history as we
negotiate our way through the latest wintry mix at rush hour - minds
wandering to a sunnier day when nature's volatile forces are tamed at will.

Ross Hoffman entertains such thoughts. But instead of just grousing about
moving south, Hoffman is actually doing something about the weather - he's
plotting ways to exploit its natural chaos to knock severe storms off
course.

The plan may sound like something out of a comic book, but Hoffman is a
serious-minded meteorologist. He has no giant weather-controlling
contraption, just a team of meteorologists at Atmospheric and Environmental
Research, a Lexington, Mass., consulting firm. And unless writing grant
proposals qualifies as such, he claims no super powers.
http://snipurl.com/49w0

Today's Headlines - February 3, 2004

LIVERMORE, RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS SAY THEY'VE CREATED 2 NEW ELEMENTS
from The San Francisco Chronicle

Two new "super-heavy" chemical elements have likely been discovered by
scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and in Russia.

The achievement, announced Monday, offers a closer glimpse of an exotic,
long-hypothesized domain at the outer reaches of the periodic table of
elements in which inherently unstable elements might survive long enough to
yield new insights into the underlying fabric of matter.

The periodic table, the checkerboard-like chart that hangs in every
chemistry classroom, depicts both known elements and those that haven't
been discovered or created yet.
http://snipurl.com/493n

PANEL OF EXPERTS FINDS THAT ANTI-POLLUTION LAWS ARE OUTDATED
from The New York Times (Registration Required)

Despite three decades of progress, existing air-quality laws are inadequate
to prevent pollution from threatening the environment and human health, the
nation's top scientific advisory group concluded yesterday.

The panel, the National Research Council of the National Academies, said it
was particularly concerned about ozone, an ingredient of smog that has
proved difficult to curtail, and fine soot, which has been shown to be
especially harmful.

State and local authorities in many polluted regions are increasingly
finding that even if they control local emissions, they can end up
violating federal standards because of additional pollution drifting from
sources outside their jurisdiction.
http://snipurl.com/46l4


NASA CHIEF PROMISES TO REVIEW DECISION NOT TO SERVICE HUBBLE
from The Baltimore Sun (Registration Required)

NASA has agreed to review its plans to cancel a servicing mission to the
Hubble Space Telescope and cut short its life span by up to four years.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe will ask retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr.
to review the decision announced two weeks ago to scrub the final space
shuttle flight to the Hubble.

The mission would have installed new scientific instruments, replaced
critical targeting and power components, and ensured the telescope's useful
life until 2010.
http://snipurl.com/46i9

Today's Headlines - January 30, 2004

VOLUNTEER DISCOVERS ASTEROID ONLINE VIA 'SPACEWATCH' PROGRAM
from Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- A volunteer in an astronomy project scrolled through
thousands of telescope images on the Internet and discovered an asteroid by
noticing its telltale streaks.

Stu Megan, a semiretired computer specialist, reviews online images for the
University of Arizona's Spacewatch program. He has pored over more than
6,500 images since the project went public in October.

The program allows volunteers to spot fast-moving space objects, or FMOs,
by logging onto a Web site and downloading images taken by telescopes at
Kitt Peak National Observatory, 56 miles southwest of Tucson.
http://snipurl.com/46iv