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Jupiter Flyby--in Cinerama

Even rocket scientists have a sense of humor. Overnight the NEW HORIZONS spacecraft, on its way to Pluto, flew past Jupiter in a gravity-assist maneuver, and the project team, to mark the occasion, made what looks like a movie trailer....

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February 28, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

La Nina: She's Baack....

NOAA passes word, late today, that there are signs of a growing La Nina in the Pacific. If you remember your sea-surface temperature phenomena, that's the cold patch that forms along the equator in place of an El Nino, which...

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February 27, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

One Bright Green Statuette

In the end, Al Gore's slide show won half as many Oscars as Martin Scorcese's epic. Technically, "An Inconvenient Truth" wasn't Gore's film, but he was onstage anyhow. "My fellow Americans, (laughter), people all over the world, we need to...

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February 26, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Al Gore's Newest Friend

An update to Thursday's post: Never mind using one ABC blog to cite another, but on Political Radar, George Stephanopoulos reports that he's done an interview with Jimmy Carter--who endorsed Gore in the 2008 race: "If Al should decide to...

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February 23, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Al Gore, Rock Star

Al Gore is not going to the Academy Awards by bicycle, as a satyric Nashville column would have it. And he's not shaving his head to radiate more heat out into space. I saw him Tuesday night, here in New...

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February 22, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (5)

Guns in Space

Please stow your phasers in your utility belts before liftoff. This post comes from Brian Hartman of our Washington bureau: After tripping into a constitutional gun rights controversy, the FAA has amended a rule that bans carrying guns on commercial...

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February 21, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (7)

How to Stop an Asteroid

Rusty Schweikart was regarded by his fellow astronauts in the 1960s as a bit of a renegade. Most of the others were pilots; he was a scientist. He grew his hair long. And he seemed to think--well, he thought more...

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February 20, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

The Revolution Will Not be Televised

When satellite radio appeared, it was billed as one of those technologies destined to change the world. If you didn’t have satellite radio, you just had “terrestrial” radio. Or maybe not. Sirius and XM, the two major players in the...

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February 19, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (6)

Hello, My Name is Bill, and I'll be Your Server Today….

A quick addendum to yesterday's POST about computer servers and power consumption…. 9ball and Robert, I got a kick out of your comments--and Chuck and Andy, thanks for some good thoughts as well. I should say that Koomey's paper on...

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February 16, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

Power Hungry

Follow this for a second: the computer servers that keep the Internet running now use more electricity than the entire state of Mississippi. That's the catchphrase coming from a study led by Jonathan Koomey, a scientist from Lawrence Berkeley National...

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February 15, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (6)