Earlier this week I was wondering, “why are all the amazing astrological and deep space discoveries being ignored by the media?” I mean, in the last 12 months we discovered ice on Venus, Mars and the Moon. Why isn’t that ALL over the news? Anyways, I did some searching around I am now in love with astronomynow.com. The amount of mind blowing amazingness on there is numbing. I just finished reading about a star that we have been tracking, apparently a planet got to close to it, and it is in the process of eating it. The planets atmosphere got swollen and there is a ring of debris orbiting this monster sun. The planet is so close that it’s covering a whole orbit in 1.1 days. That’s INSANE… it take us a whole year. I also read about the Japanese program to build a robotic moon base, built by robots, for robots. WHY IS THIS NOT ALL OVER THE NEWS!?!?! That’s sooo much cooler and interesting than anything regarding Brittany Spear’s. But the highlight of my day of deep space exploration has been the discovery of the James Webb Space Telescope. If you have not already heard, NASA is retiring the Hubble space telescope. The image on the background of this site was taken by the Hubble, and it’s given us a ton of new understanding into the workings of our universe. The Hubble used to hang out around the moon and take pictures from there. The James Webb is going to orbit about a million miles from Earth. From that vantage point it will look deep into space and further back IN TIME to observe the universe when stars and galaxies were just beginning to form. It also will be instrumental in finding Earth-like planets around other stars and gain more information on dark matter, which comprises nearly 95% of all matter in the universe. HOLEY SHIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!?!?!?!?!??!

Anyways, if you want to see a life size model of this amazing device that’s going to advance our human understanding of the universe, the James Webb makes its next “World Tour” stop in New York City’s Battery Park, as part of the World Science Festival, June 1-6. I’ll be there.

HOVERBOARD – NILS GUADAGNIN from nils guadagnin on Vimeo.

Czech out this site that allows you to play with your favorite molecule

January 29, 2010 Mars will be in opposition to the Sun, and closest to Earth. At that time, Mars will shine in the sky at about midnight, rising to the east, just after sunset, the sun and its apparent diameter will be 14 seconds of arc.

At that time, Mars will shine in the sky at about midnight, rising to the east, just after sunset, the sun and its apparent diameter will be 14 seconds of arc.

In the approach that will take place on 29, 2010, at 16h 36 min., GMT, the Earth and Mars distarão only 99 million km.

Even the naked eye, is easy to see the bright red-orange Mars. However, more accurate observations will always require a place away from urban lights and the use of binoculars or spotting scopes with tripod, at least.

Only observers who use instruments with at least 15 cm aperture (diameter of the lens) will be able to view details of the Martian surface as the ice caps and dust storms.

Even the naked eye, is easy to see the bright red-orange Mars. However, more accurate observations will always require a place away from urban lights and the use of binoculars or spotting scopes with tripod, at least.

Only observers who use instruments with at least 15 cm aperture (diameter of the lens) will be able to view details of the Martian surface as the ice caps and dust storms.

Major approaches
On August 27, 2003 Mars and Earth were closer to each other than at any other time in almost 60 thousand years. At that time the distance between our world and the Red Planet was only 55,780,000 kilometers. Except for the Moon, Mars was the brightest object in the entire night sky for several weeks.

The opposition was earlier on June 13, 2001, but was on June 21 when the distance was minimal: about 68 million kilometers. This peculiarity is due to the slight slope that exists between the orbits of Mars and Earth – which means that the minimum distance between two planets can occur days before (or after) the opposition.

What is likely to happen again?
Mars was very close during the opposition perihelic September 1956 (56.7 million kilometers) from August 1971 (56.2 million kilometers) and September 1988 (59.2 million kilometers).

So far the year 3000 will happen 15 perihelic oppositions. The best one will be in 2729, when Mars will be 55,651,000 kilometers from the Earth (rather than 2003). The next perihelion opposition takes place in July 2018.

source: scienceray.com

WALL STREET JOURNAL | RESEARCH REPORT | NEW MEDICAL FINDINGS

A peculiar use of capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers spicy, could dramatically reduce damage from heart attacks, according to a study in Circulation. The researchers applied capsaicin on part of the abdominal skin of mice before cutting off the blood supply to their coronary arteries for 45 minutes—in effect, mimicking a heart attack. Twenty-four hours later, these mice had lost only 15% as many heart cells as mice that had instead received a placebo gel before the same procedure. The researchers suspect that capsaicin applied to abdominal skin aids heart recovery by stimulating nerves connected to the spinal cord, which in turn activate survival-oriented nerves in the heart muscle.

Caveat:The researchers did not test their methods on human subjects. (Read more.)