Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
The New Horizons probe on its way to Pluto went past the orbit of Saturn this week, the first craft to cross that boundary in nearly 27 years, and only the third ever.
The Phoenix Mars Lander finally managed to dump its soil sample into the over for analysis after several days of trying. "Just why the soil took such coaxing to get into TEGA is a mystery. The soil is unlike anything scientists expected to encounter, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith, as it tends to clump together in little clods. Scientists aren't sure what in the soil is causing this clumpy behavior — it could be a particular mineral, or, some speculate, water ice."
NASA launched its newest space telescope this morning, the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope. "GLAST includes two main telescopes designed to scan the sky in gamma-ray light - the most energetic region of the electromagnetic spectrum, far beyond the visible range of the human eye."
$23 billion dollars in Iraq is just missing, and the US government has a gag order to prevent even discussing allegations of fraud against contractors. Wonder why that would be?
Watts Towers. Lots more information and photos at the official site, though the site design makes it hard to read.
Eight billion, 23 billion, I'm sure we are the financial equivalent of a Friedman Unit away from the number getting big enough that someone will care. The Republican coverup and the media blackout on the Waxman hearings means it's still the sound of one hand clapping for now.
As for the gag order, it's not fraud if it goes where you always intended it to go in the first place; i.e., as stated int he linked BBC article: only Halliburton got to bid - and won.
I'll be intrigued to see how these wonderful events elsewhere in the solar system are handled by the Republican agents in their ongoing War on Science. My prediction: the same political appointees that previously interfered with NASA's work will dictate that the presence of ice on Mars disproves global warming.
Posted by: shpx.ohfu at June 12, 2008 08:23 AMThe Watts Towers figured prominently in the ending of Ricochet, a truly under-appreciated movie.
Posted by: NCProsecutor at June 12, 2008 10:46 AM