seems that NASA’s mighty Cassini–Huygens spacecraft has discovered - even tasted! - organic matter on one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus! quoting the sciencedaily article:
“Enceladus has got warmth, water and organic chemicals, some of the essential building blocks needed for life,” said Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We have quite a recipe for life on our hands, but we have yet to find the final ingredient, liquid water, but Enceladus is only whetting our appetites for more.”
tomorrow night, february 20th - 2008, a total lunar eclipse is occurring which will be very visible in north america (as well as south america). the moon will appear to change color & turn orange to blood red. for those in california/Pacific Standard Time zone, the partial lunar eclipse begins at 5:43pm, then moves into total eclipse at 7:01pm and out of total eclipse at 7:51pm, then out of partial eclipse at 9:09pm. that gives you about a 3 hour window to see some sort of lunar eclipse happening. so be sure to watch it! awesome lunar eclipse photo via mr.eclipse.com.
a very mighty replacement to the hubble space telescope (hst) is planned for launch in 2013. behold nasa’s james webb space telescope (jwst)! this is exciting. even though the hubble had problems, it delivered (and still delivers) some really amazing images, discoveries, and insights into deep space. the james webb space telescope will be larger and more powerful than the hubble, with a much larger mirror and advanced imaging using pria near-infrared (IR) camera, a near-IR multi-object spectrograph, a mid-IR instrument, and a tunable filter imager.
the united states is finally getting its priorities in serious order. you know what i’m talking about. and - no - not those silly things like universal health care for every american, a clean & renewable energy policy, diplomacy, restoration of habeus corpus, electric cars for everybody, or open source voting machines. nope. that’s silly. but dude - we’re going to the moon! totally! we are going, then we’ll build a permanent moon base, and then head off to mars too! sure, it will cost 100’s of billions of dollars. but dude - it’s the moon! yes! i am all for advancing scientific discovery - but - i really think we should fix simple things here on earth first, like levees and pollution. seems easier. i believe david cross summarizes this best …
David Cross - We’re Going To The Moon.mp3
