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These robots would signal other robots that poison was food, would watch the other robots come and die, then move away.

What caused the life to form way out there?

Um... it didn't. "Building blocks for life" does not equal "life". But once the 'building blocks' formed, life could get started... almost certainly on Earth. See, e.g., here.

I suspect it is nothing compared to the twaddle on twitter.

Depends on who you follow try SciAm's current recommendations: science writer carlzimmer, evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen phylogenomics, theoretical physicist seanmcarroll, science writer RebeccaSkloot, NASA astronaut Mike Massimino Astro_Mike, or astronomer Phil Plait BadAstronomer

Actually, I visit Phil Plait's sites regularly, and really like his material (http://www.badastronomy.com/index.html and http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy).
His tweets are a different matter entirely - twaddle, and inescapably so due to the limitations of tweeting (what a pathetic term). You can find his twaddle at http://twitter.com/BadAstronomer. I encourage you to contemplate how poor a communication medium twitter really is, when it reduces someone with the aptitude and knowledge of Phil Plait to producing twaddle.
Now contemplate how intensely boring/stupid/inane the twaddle of a less gifted twitterer must be. Collectively, it's electronic flatulence - an outpouring of brainfarts.

Here is some fun context:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/24/the-blue-and-the-green/

Of course, it might be fair to describe the perceptual difference there as a different color, rather than a different shade.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us

What does a Doctor gain by prescribing you a treatment that isn't needed?

Your money? In a fee-for-service scheme, the more treatments my doctor gives me, the more she gets paid. Fortunately, my own physician is a person of high moral character; and an office visit with a family practitioner doesn't get the sort of payments from an insurance company that drug therapies or surgeries do.

I am of course tlkaing about science based medicine

As this incident proves, "science" and "medicine" are often far apart.

Natural path, homeopaths, acupuncturist and others of there ilk are a different matter. They charge of treatments that do no damn good.

My physical therapist took my money for months, and did me less good than my acupuncturist. As an Asian Bodywork therapist I use some of the same techniques as acupuncturists, and my clients pay me and come back and refer their friends, because my treatments do some good. And I even have some science to back that up.

Placebo effect? Perhaps. It plays a role in any treatment, including surgery. My mom used the placebo effect to help relieve people's suffering when she was a nurse, she got paid for that. If someone can put on a little show that gets my brain to release endorphins and stop the pain, I don't see a problem with paying for that performance, whether it's a nurse's "beside manner" or a shaman's ritual.

(Hey, I just found yet another case where a surgical technique was found no more effective than a placebo surgery. That makes 5. I have yet to find a trial where a surgical intervention was compared to a sham in a blinded trail and proved superior.)

Careful, even YOU emit radiation. Better find another body...

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/life-is-rad

10 meters to 100 feet in depth, depending which source of the story you a reading.
Considering that the article I read earlier (that I can't find right now) reported it being up to 40-80 meters deep - I'd go with the higher number.

Thing is, about 90%+ of the garbage is smaller than a bottle cap, and most of it floats just couple of feet bellow the water surface.
So, just skimming it would do about diddly point squat as Capt. Moore had put it.

Given that 41% of museums mount the skeletons incorrectly, I doubt it would be that useful.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/26/the-flesh-of-physics/

Yes, but there is an undeniable correlation, check the graphs:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/07/23/george-wills-crack-fact-checkers-continue-their-nap/

In fact, you can see the tracks of the astronauts in the latest images of the Apollo 11 landing site returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Um, maybe it's just me but I don't see any footprints in the LRO image of the Apollo 11 landing site. Perhaps you're referring to the footprints in the Apollo 14 image? Those footprints go quite a long ways away from the LM and due to the pixelation of the image it's hard to tell just how well-preserved they might be that close to the descent stage.

You are aware that most (if not all) of the footprints were obliterated by the rocket that took the astronauts off the moon, right?

Uh, no they weren't. In fact, you can see the tracks of the astronauts in the latest images of the Apollo 11 landing site returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Aldrin's famous first footprint exists only as a photograph.

That's not at all obvious. When the rockets of the ascent stage were fired, thus beginning the return to rendezvous with Columbia, the surface of the moon may have been shielded by the components of the LM that were left behind.

Yup. Jupiter got served.

Isn't Jupiter too close for the Hubble? It's a deep space telescope and Jupiter hardly counts.

Just like my point-and-shoot camera doesn't care whether something is 100 feet away or several miles away when I manually set it to infinite focus, the Hubble Space Telescope doesn't care whether something is a light second or several billion light years away. It has imaged every planet in the solar system except Mercury (including Earth), has imaged the moon, and once indirectly imaged the sun.

This is only the latest in a long line of technical problems with Ares I, to say nothing of all the delays, cost overruns and other management issues.

First, they discovered an oscillation issue from the SRB that could cause damage to the upper stage and the orion capsule. Last year, they found out that with a slight wind gust, the vehicle might collide with its launch tower.

Incidentally, both of these problems and the current one are all related to the SRB. President Obama needs to do the right thing here and kill Ares I before it has the chance to kill anyone.

Which we apparently don't have. I could take a better picture of the moon with a telescope and a camera.

Better than the recent orbiters that have and will be sent up? No. Good enough to see the landing sites? Also no.

My current science heroes are all grass-roots enthusiasts like Brian Dunning, Phil Plait, Pamela Gay & Fraser Cain, The Skeptical Rogues, Derek & Swoopy and the like.

Listening to all those podcasts and recommending them to all my friends has brought an interest in science out from purely occuring inside my own head into being a regular dialogue with people I know. It also makes you feel like the human race is actually going somewhere, instead of the general impression you get from the mainstream media that we are perpetually circling a gory hate-filled drain.

And, of course my original inspiration that started me listening to all these podcasts, Micheal Shermer, whose book "Why People Believe Weird Things" should be given to every 13 year old as part of their school education.

If I had 500 quid to get to Las Vegas I would love to have gone to this. Defniately doing it next year.

Phil Plait is pretty good as a crusader for critical thinking / science, though not one particularly aimed at children.

I'm a huge fan of Drs. Tyson and Kaku, as mentioned elsewhere. I'd suggest looking at some of the newer popularizers for your own younglings. People like Richard Wiseman, Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait, the colorful crew at Deep Sea News, and probably any number of other blogs linked from the above.

Get the little nibblers interested from the start! We can use all the scientists (or at least science-literate) that we can get.

I can see the "Funny" rating, but for the life of me I cannot understand how this can be modded anywhere above zero. Clearly you have never held a real job... or attended any classes at a legitimate school, for that matter. This comment made me feel like this: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/files/2008/09/thestupiditburns.jpg

That would just start another Texas war:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/07/25/texas-doomed/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/26/texas-from-saved-to-doomed-in-just-6-hours/

And maybe Arizona too:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/06/arizona-is-6000-years-old/

In any case, when Phil posts about astronomy (like the name of the blog suggests) it is a great read.

That would just start another Texas war:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/07/25/texas-doomed/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/26/texas-from-saved-to-doomed-in-just-6-hours/

And maybe Arizona too:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/06/arizona-is-6000-years-old/

In any case, when Phil posts about astronomy (like the name of the blog suggests) it is a great read.

That would just start another Texas war:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/07/25/texas-doomed/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/03/26/texas-from-saved-to-doomed-in-just-6-hours/

And maybe Arizona too:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/07/06/arizona-is-6000-years-old/

In any case, when Phil posts about astronomy (like the name of the blog suggests) it is a great read.

Some evolutionists seem to get it.

Bob Jacobs, the deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at NASA, says the story's fiction.

(via Phil Plait)

I have a couple of articles that I might suggest you read:

Neil Tyson on exploring space

10 Everyday Gadgets With Ties To The Space Program

And actually, I could continue copying links for a long time. This is just barely scraping the surface. The space program has paid for itself many times over (one conservative estimate is 3 times) with advances to technology and industry.

Feeding cattle different grass, ie something similar to what they evolved to eat, solves the methane problem.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/06/08/omega-3s-in-a-cows-diet-provide-a-health-boost%E2%80%94to-the-atmosphere/

So other than making lots of money from selling a low-methane breed, I really don't see the point, we already have the solution to the methane problem, we were just feeding them wrong.

No, everyone knows that it takes a brown dwarf chunk to radically change the gravitational pull of the moon.

Oh, an other versions:
Discovery Channel

Bad Astronomy

But CICLOPS has the main story. (And should be able to take a reasonable Slashdotting, these days.)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/12/a-boy-claims-he-was-hit-by-a-meteorite/

Short story is that it's possible (although not as presented in the media right now), but be skeptical.

No kidding. The number of crashes is small, the number where the computer-or-human choice might make a difference is smaller yet. The putdown in the Hudson, I think I give to the human, but that other relatively heroic effort in the past few decades -- where the pilot steered the plane with thrust, not rudder, ultimately crash-landing without complete fatalities -- apparently is NOW handled well by autopilots, probably better than a human could do it. But, at the time, the people programming the autopilots judged total loss of rudder to be too improbable to worry about. Oops.

On the other hand, not making stupid, well-known mistakes, is something computers are really good at.

Phil Plait has just put up a blog post explaining that it's probably a lot less likely than than these other guys have made it seem. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/06/05/flying-the-meteoric-skies/

Isn't navy sonar already killing the whales?

I can't believe this is going to help things.

This is more of a media event than a true major discovery. All orchestrated by the History Channel.

See this article.

Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?

They actually got this right according to Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait: "Their speed was a little less than a kilometer per second, which sounds about right. At their altitude there wouldn't be much if any air to slow them, so they'd free fall; as they plunged deeper air resistance would slow them down. At first I thought they'd actually burn like meteors, but in reality (ha! Reality!) they weren't going that fast." (link)

For comparison, Shuttle re-entry speed is a little less than 8km/s.

Since we observe things (the Narada, the Enterprise) falling into (accelerating towards) the black hole much faster than they did towards the object that preceded it (the Narada), I think we're stuck with the conclusion that the mass involved increased. Which, perhaps, offers an explanation for the fact that the acceleration isn't so fast as to preempt the dialog. Perhaps the red matter is causing a slow increase in mass.

The alternative explanation of the increased acceleration--that Enterprise was suddenly much closer to an unchanged amount of mass--seems unworkable.

Here's one nice analysis of the physics of Star Trek XI:TFB.

Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?

Or how about that giant drill? Why did it fall when they cut it off the ship? If the ship was in geosynchronous orbit, then the drill must have been traveling slightly slower than geo-synchronous orbital speed; it should have very gently drifted eastwards.

The Bad Astronomer covered this.

First off, something they got right once I thought about it some. The shuttle left Enterprise to go to the Romulan ship. At first I thought both ships were in orbit, but thatâ(TM)s not true! The Romulan ship had lowered the mining drill from above the atmosphere, but it had to be hovering above the ground to do that, not orbiting the planet, or else they wouldnâ(TM)t be stationary over one spot (true, there is a geosynchronous orbit that keeps you over one spot, but itâ(TM)s tens of thousands of kilometers over the surface, and the ships were clearly just above Vulcanâ(TM)s atmosphere).

So when the trio jump from the shuttle, my first thought was that theyâ(TM)d still be in orbit; to deorbit means theyâ(TM)d need to change their velocity by several km/sec, which is clearly not possible. But they werenâ(TM)t in orbit, so they just fell. OK, +1 internets for the movie.

They would fall fast. And they did! Their speed was a little less than a kilometer per second, which sounds about right. At their altitude there wouldnâ(TM)t be much if any air to slow them, so theyâ(TM)d free fall; as they plunged deeper air resistance would slow them down. At first I thought theyâ(TM)d actually burn like meteors, but in reality (ha! Reality!) they werenâ(TM)t going that fast.

Its not a NASA photo.

http://www.astrophoto.fr/

Thierry Legault is a guy with a telescope and camera.

Your not supposed to look directly at the sun and this guy points a telescope at it. I think its pretty good. Who knew what the sun would look like with a shutter speed of 1/8000 sec.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/05/15/check-this-out-amazing-photo-of-the-sun/

This brings to mind the case of Gloria Ramirez, who was admitted to the hospital and whose blood, when taken in a syringe caused those who smelled it to become physically ill. Several of the hospital workers who were near Gloria had to be hospitalized themselves, and the hospital declared an internal emergency (Gloria herself died shortly thereafter). While there are some theories about how the hell this happened, nobody really knows. Bit of a tangent, but TFA made me think of it.

These rays are so energetic that any thing with a line of site within 1000 light years is toast.

We are 8000 light years from a star that has probably already gone supernova. The light just now arriving to earth from it shows that it is on the brink of going supernova at anytime.

If it has gone supernova and one of the gamma ray streams is aimed at us,(The poles don't seemed to be aligned with us right now. But dying stars aren't exactly stable things.) then lights out for life on the planet. The planet may survive. But life most definitely won't.

The problem is, that collapsing the star into a black hole will with some kind of exotic matter not prevent the gamma ray burst. They are caused by the acceleration of matter by the gravitational collapse of the star.

You already have a precedent

Little googling revealed that bacteria could actually do it.

Bacterial cement
However bacteria need nutrient (urine base btw) to do it. It may happens simple concrete could actually be cheaper.

Finally, we can put America's habit of pissing all over poor countries to use!

Little googling revealed that bacteria could actually do it.
Bacterial cement However bacteria need nutrient (urine base btw) to do it. It may happens simple concrete could actually be cheaper.

Increasing taxes increases revenue. Obviously.

It's sad how many intelligent people have been convinced otherwise.

The graph above also shows that the US has a corporate tax collection problem; relative to our tax rates we're collecting a lot less revenue than we should.

In contrast, Ireland, which has been touted as a model for low corporate tax rates (less frequently now that their economy has collapsed) was actually successful at collecting revenue at those rates.

Obama is completely correct in this case. So I doubt he will succeed.

News at 11

The rapid dissemination of information that twitter provides can be a good thing (or at least so I read on Bad Astronomer, I still haven't been to twitter after the first time I went there to see what it was), but seriously, the same rules apply as with anything you read on the Internet.

If you're a twitter user and you feel the need to let people know about things, at least link them to a reputable information source. No, an obvious conspiracy site saying this is a terrorist attack is not an information source.

At any rate the point I was making is that there is a definite chemical mechanism involved in nicotine addiction or similar, whereas video games are just an enjoyable passtime.

Actually some studies have said that playing video games releases dopamine into the body. So there may very well be a 'chemical mechanism' involved in video games. Whether or not that makes them physically "addictive" is another matter of course.

here's an article about how humans are designed precisely for very very long-distance running.
No other animals I know of can run 100 miles in under 36 hours. The link has lots of discussion of indigenous people who regularly ran down wild animals to exhaustion and ate them.
Most tribes who did this used relays rather than doing it individually, but there are people who have done it. There's even a book about it, called Running After Antelope about some marathon runners who try to run down antelope in Wyoming. That's probably the hardest animal there is to try this with (aside from, y'know, polar bears or tigers) because antelope regularly run 30 miles in an hour. (It's depressing to be riding a bike through Wyoming and get passed by a bunch of antelope, one of whom is lame and is only running on three legs -- and still going twice your speed.)

Actually, some of the reactions required for abiogenesis work better in ice: http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/did-life-evolve-in-ice/article_print

1) According to the site, 1190437 people submitted votes or named selections. "Colbert" got 230539 and "Serenity" got about 190k. Even combined, the top two choices only got about 35 percent of the vote. Alone, "Colbert" got about 19% of the vote. Even if the poll results were not biased by ballot stuffing, all they make clear is that no matter what choice NASA made, 80 percent of the voters disagreed with it. In no reasonable sense did "Colbert" win an election -- if a candidate was voted into office with a plurality of only 19% of the vote, there would be calls for his head and the system would probably be reformed.

2)Can we please stop conflating whoever put this survey on with the entirety of NASA? Some small group of people within the organization are responsible for the survey and the name selection. Complain about Bill Gerstenmaier, as it appears that he bears some responsibility for the survey and the naming, or maybe the ISS Project Office.

3)The rules did make it clear that the contest "winner" wouldn't necessarily be picked for the module name. It even gives reasons why: "NASA reserves the right to ultimately select a name in accordance with the best interests of the agency, its needs, and other considerations. Such name may not necessarily be one which is on the list of voted-on candidate names." The ISS is a big international project, and it's possible that the naming of a module might have a diplomatic effect. Relations with the Russians, our major partners on the station, seem somewhat stressed, maybe even on station. So not selecting what may be viewed as the flippant choice for a module name seems the more diplomatically sound choice.

--sabre86