« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

Wheels Stop

Sometimes the waters really do part. Discovery just landed safely in Florida, after three days of weather forecasts so bad that there had been idle talk of contingency landing sites as far away as Hawaii. In the end, they landed...

Continue reading "Wheels Stop"

December 22, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Looking for Daylight

The Discovery crew is in a bit of a squeeze. They lengthened the flight a day to squeeze in that extra spacewalk. In the meantime, the weather closed in down here on earth. For the first time in 25 years...

Continue reading "Looking for Daylight"

December 22, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

"You Could Say D.C. is the New North Carolina"

A climate story in today's Washington Post raised some eyebrows around here: the National Arbor Day Foundation reporting that Washington is becoming home to trees that were previously only found south of there. Above is a map from the Arbor...

Continue reading ""You Could Say D.C. is the New North Carolina""

December 20, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (4)

Mt. St. Helens, Alive Again

St. Helens, which has been simmering since the fall of 2004, has let loose a new cloud of ash. Take a look, in this picture from a U.S. Forest Service webcam. Over the last couple of years, the volcano has...

Continue reading "Mt. St. Helens, Alive Again"

December 19, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (8)

Fight Pollution With More Pollution?

Paul Crutzen has a theory: pump the atmosphere full of sulfur dioxide, and the particles will act as a sort of sunshade, reducing the effects of climate warming. There's more HERE. It's not a terribly new theory, and to a...

Continue reading "Fight Pollution With More Pollution?"

December 19, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (7)

Space Station Smacked by Sun

This from Gina Sunseri: The solar flare yesterday appears to have had one consequence--the gyroscopes that keep the space station oriented in space are down. (See yesterday's STORY, if you missed it.) The reason is complex: extra energy from the...

Continue reading "Space Station Smacked by Sun"

December 15, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

Pictures From the Sun

Thursday, 2:58 PM EST At this hour, radiation from the Sun is washing past us, changing the shape of the Earth's magnetic field, and pelting some spacecraft with high amounts of radiation. So far, if it's doing more than that,...

Continue reading "Pictures From the Sun"

December 14, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

Free Long-Distance Calls...Almost

There's no such thing as a free lunch. But there are cheap lunches, especially in long-distance communications. One of them got a little less cheap today. Skype, the service that routes calls via the Internet, announced a a new "Unlimited...

Continue reading "Free Long-Distance Calls...Almost"

December 13, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

Discovery's Port Wing

Call them gun-shy. Early yesterday morning a motion sensor in Discovery's port wing recorded a small "impact"--their word, not ours--while the crew was sleeping, on the way to yesterday's successful docking with the space station Was there anything to it?...

Continue reading "Discovery's Port Wing"

December 12, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Urgent Update From Space

They found the remote. One of the kids left it on the kitchen counter. If you want to find THEM--the astronauts, that is, not their video-player remote--take a look HERE. (Caveat: this is a site that can get busy during...

Continue reading "Urgent Update From Space"

December 11, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (1)