> cosmicpenguin.net

This just in from the outer darkness - The final image from the Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. The camera is being replaced by Wide Field Planetary Camera 3 (duh!).

From the "gee, we had to spend money to find that out" department, Terrorist Attacks Provoke Surge In Alcohol And Drug Use. Wow, really - humans drown their sorrows and fears with mind altering substances? Thanks for the scoop, Louis Pasteur.

Did the swine flu escape from a lab? This sounds less like science, and more like an attempt to blame somebody (anybody!) for our fear (that is, as soon as we recover from the hangover from the previous story).

And finally, from the biological front - Smelly refrigerator strikes down AT(and)T office - way to go, Ma Bell.

Three space posts in a row - but seriously, can you ever have enough science? This chart is neat - it shows the relative position of meteors over a two year period in Japan. Not only does it show the major meteor showers, but it also helped to discover some new ones.

PS: God speed Atlantis.

PPS: Did you know that Edwin Hubble (of Hubble Telescope fame) was a star forward on the University of Chicago Big Ten championship teams of 1908 and 1909? That totally won't happen today - you won't see anything in space named after Kobe (probably).

Chalk one up for my third favorite axiom, the law of unintended consequences. Apparently, since we are no longer hugging our children with nuclear arms, NASA is running out of fuel for deep space probes. We used to have pounds of the stuff, but we gave it all up at the end of the cold war, and world wide supplies are running short. Oops.

(And in case you wanted to know, I am also partial to the law of gravity and like the Simpsons, in my house we obey the laws of thermodynamics).

I read a story to my daughter called "I Love You This Much" wherein two rabbits, tongue-twistingly called Little Nutbrown Hare and Big Nutbrown Hare compete to say how much they love each other. At one point, Little Nutbrown Hare says that "Nothing can be further then the sky", and now we know just how far that is.

The combination of the orbiting Swift Observatory and a ground network of telescopes have captured a gamma ray blast and after glow from an exploding star 13.035 billion (thats billion with a b) light years away - from when the universe was only 680 million years old. Thats pretty cool, but whats even cooler is how the network of telescopes coordinates with the satellite. The satellite detects the gamma ray, and pinpoints where it came from. Immediately following, an alert goes out world wide for x-ray telescopes to zoom in on the site to catch the afterglow before it quickly fades. It is a testament to science that we can detect and track these things so reliably.

Obama's Inauguration from Space. Courtesy of the Google Satellite. I like the comment on the makezine page that says "Looks like the Orcs attacking Minus Tirith".

Update: As usual, the Big Picture was on the ball with Inauguration pictures. #3 is an expanded version of the satellite picture. There are some amazing photos in there - in particular, #33 struck me - its is a visual representation of the juxtaposition of the past and the present in race relations. I also liked #48 - its is interesting to see the shared bond between presidents boiled down to a simple manilla folder.