If you missed this last week:
the grave of Copernicus, the 16-century astronomer who advanced the notion that the earth revolves around the sun, has likely been located.

This stuff the U.S. Air Force is testing comes pretty close to what Scotty described in Star Trek IV.

Larger than Pluto and farther away from the sun, 2003 UB313– “Xena”– may be the tenth planet in the solar system. On the other hand, maybe Pluto should lose its status.

Click here and here for additional information.

I suspect everyone knows that the first shuttle launch in recent years occured yesterday. The latest news (well, not for long) may be found here.

Yahoo! News has the details. A launch could come as early as July 13th.

Anyone else catch this very cool “documentary” on Animal Planet last night? If you missed it, be sure to check it out when it reruns this Saturday. And if you don’t have Animal Planet, you can nab the DVD already.

No, astronomers haven’t identified the source of spam, but this story from last week merits mention.

Perhaps Mars lacks little green men, tentacled invaders, or whatever Bowie was singing about in the ’70s, but life of some kind may be hiding on our neighbouring world. At least, NASA has once more raised the question.

Continue reading →

Huygens sends back images and info from Saturn’s enigmatic moon.

If you haven’t already heard, there’s (depending on your source) a 1 in 45 or a 1 in 37 chance that Asteroid 2004 MN4 could wander into the planet on April 13, 2029, causing widespread destruction and other unpleasant effects reminiscent of the plots of bad movies from 1998. Information may be found here and here.

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: As reported in the responses, more recent estimates significantly reduce the odds of impact.