Category: Science
Supersonic X-Plane (now with extra whisper-mode).
NASA has achieved a significant milestone in its effort to make supersonic passenger jet travel over land a real possibility by completing the preliminary design review of its Quiet Supersonic Transport or QueSST aircraft design. QueSST is the initial design stage of NASA’s planned Low Boom Flight Demonstration experimental airplane, otherwise known as an X-plane. […]
US to establish brand new military service … the U.S. Space Corps.
All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Space Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal’s a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps! Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Committee on U.S. Armed […]
Seeing What Others Cannot See by Thomas G. West (book review)
It’s odd that I haven’t come across any of the other books by Thomas G. West because he specialises in the genius mind. With ‘Seeing What Others Cannot See’, the sub-title, ‘The Hidden Advantages Of Visual Thinkers And Differently Wired Brains’ gives what this book is all about. Namely, key scientists have a stronger sense […]
Ten new ‘Earths’ rustled up by NASA.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has just released a fascinating mission catalog of planet candidates which introduces 219 new planet candidates, then of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet. […]
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken (book review).
Something that is pointed out at the beginning of this book, the extensively titled ‘Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed To Reverse Global Warming’ is that there was never a list of things that needed to be done to halt global warming. Likewise, no one has taken into account how to make it work […]
When gravity falls: with ‘orphan memory’.
Monash University researchers have identified a new concept – ‘orphan memory’ – which changes the current thinking around gravitational waves. The research, by the Monash Centre for Astrophysics, was published recently in Physical Review Letters. Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that cataclysmic cosmic explosions stretch the fabric of spacetime. The stretching of spacetime is […]
Jupiter: planet of weird wonder.
Early science results from NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter portray the largest planet in our solar system as a complex, gigantic, turbulent world, with Earth-sized polar cyclones, plunging storm systems that travel deep into the heart of the gas giant, and a mammoth, lumpy magnetic field that may indicate it was generated closer to the […]
NASA Mercury: 1956 to 1963 by David Baker (book review).
In many respects, I have always wondered why Haynes left a look at NASA’s Mercury Program until last of their space books. At least, I’m assuming it’s the last. Without these early space flights, none of the rest would have been possible. Back in the late 1950s and start of the 1960s, there were all […]
The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent (book review)
Jeremy Lent’s book title, ‘The Patterning Instinct’, sounds like a book on knitting but makes more sense from its sub-title, ‘A Cultural History Of Humanity’s Search For Meaning’. Lent’s perspective is to look at humanity from a historical point of view and what it all means. Also, if you’re looking for the meaning of life, […]
Alien Covenant – with extra real rover.
The Moonrover Audi Lunar Quattro celebrates its film debut in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi movie Alien Covenant this week, ahead of its impending mission to the Moon next year. The Audi lunar Quattro has been developed in cooperation with Berlin-based start-up Part-Time Scientists. Over the past two years, the automobile manufacturer has worked with a team […]
