Cool! (Pun possibly intended)

This is what space exploration is all about. The Phoenix probe has found what is believed to be ice on Mars.

Today in panspermia

Scientists at Imperial College - London have uncovered evidence that the precursors of genetic material probably came to Earth from outer space on meteorites. I checked the Book of Genesis and I think this must have happened on day two.

The real role of pure science

Clearly the billions and billions of US dollars, pounds, yen, rubles and yuan that have been spent on space research and exploration have not been wasted now that we will soon have space beer. Thank you Sapporo Breweries!

Breaking news from the universe!!

Scientists believe that they may have found about half of the missing matter in the universe in the form of strands of baryons littering the (not so) empty void of inter-galactic space. They still need to find a shitload of WIMPS to make up the balance though. I still don't know if this means that the universe is going to expand forever until it nothing but cold (near absolute zero) emptiness or collapse back on itself compressing time and space back to nothing or nearly nothing. In either case I shall certainly be dead billions of years into the future when one of these cases is realised.

Trust...but verify

Those dirty ex-commies (the Ruskies) and those dirty still-commies (the Chinese) have conspired to propose a new treaty that would ban the deployment of weapons in space. Of course, the US will find this unacceptable and therefore at some point launch a new weapons race. (Maybe this time it will bankrupt the US!) I can only assume it would be even more unacceptable if it required the US to allow unlimited access to American scientific and military sites for neutral authorities to engage in inspections.

After all, inspectors are really just to justify inspections.

Today in infamy

Twenty one years ago today the space shuttle Challenger blew up less than two minutes after launch killing all aboard.

The universe strikes back

Apparently fed up with what we are doing to the planet the universe has expressed its disgust with our woeful behaviour by sending us a toxic meteor. Unfortunately the aim was bad and the object struck Peru instead of its intended target in Crawford TX.