4 April 2011
The Science of Red Mars
Have you read the book Red Mars yet? If not, you can download a pdf of it here. It’s a classic hard sci-fi epic about the colonization of Mars, and for my latest post over at Science in my Fiction, I took a look at how the highly accurate depiction of Mars in the book has held up with all the new discoveries in the last 20 years. Head on over and check it out!
30 March 2011
First Image of Mercury from Orbit
MESSENGER just returned the first image of Mercury ever taken from orbit around the planet!
22 March 2011
Open Laboratory 2010 Now Available!
Do you like science? Do you like blogs? Do you like blogs about science? I sure hope so, because if not, what are you doing here? Anyway, assuming you answered the above questions in the affirmative, you’re going to want to immediately follow this link to purchase your copy of OpenLab 2010. It’s a collection of “the best science writing on the web” from 2010. Inexplicably, one of my blog …
20 March 2011
Supermoon
Hey folks, did you know that tonight, the Earth doesn’t have just any moon? No, tonight we have a SUPERMOON. What’s that you say? The moon looks just like any other full moon? Well, clearly you haven’t been paying attention. You see, the “supermoon” phenomenon means that it will be ever-so-slightly larger in the sky than normal. This is because the moon will be at perigee: the closest point to …
19 March 2011
LPSC 2011: Day 2 – Cryospheres, Carbon, and Methane Skepticism
More on the cryosphere of Mars, along with some speculation about martian carbonates and skepticism about the presence of methane in the martian atmosphere.
17 March 2011
Orbiting Mercury
In a little over 12 hours, the spacecraft MESSENGER will finally be orbiting the planet Mercury. It’s been a long trip: MESSENGER launched way back in August of 2004 and has spent the intervening time doing flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury. To date it has gone almost 4.9 billion miles.
16 March 2011
LPSC 2011 – Day 1: Cryospheres and Making Moons
Greetings from Texas, loyal readers! As you may have noticed, this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference came and went with barely a peep here on the blog. This is because, unlike some members of the planetary science community, I do need to sleep occasionally, and I spent almost all of my time at LPSC either in sessions or working on my never-ending paper. Yeah, remember the one that I …
8 March 2011
Planetary Decadal Survey
Last night Steve Squyres unveiled the results of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. The decadal is a massive document used to chart the course of planetary science for the next ten years, and it drew a huge crowd here at the conference. This decadal was different from previous ones because it specifically was tasked with coming up with a list of missions that would be achievable with the funding available …
28 February 2011
Spectacular Lava Lake Photos
Here’s a little something to keep you occupied while I try to do All The Things this week. The Big Picture has a spectacular series of photos of the world’s largest lava lake in Nyiragongo Crater in Africa. Enjoy!
Not dead yet
Hello loyal readers. Sorry I’ve been AWOL lately, but things have been slightly crazy. I have been frantically working on wrapping up a paper and last week I was out at Los Alamos National Lab last week collecting some last-minute data (a.k.a. zapping some more rocks) for the paper. This week I get to (somehow) finish it and make a poster about the results which I will present next week …
