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I was going to point out that myself! And most likely this was also via amateur radio. Ham radio operators have been doing this for about 26 years now, it's definitely not a "first".

The SAREX (Space Shuttle Amateur Radio EXperiment)Program started in 1983 when Mission Specialist Owen Garriott W5LFL operated from the shuttle for the first time. Since then there's been an established program of scheduling contacts with school students and the astronauts. First on the shuttles and now on the ISS.

Also, Mir was quite active on amateur radio as well. They would be on voice from time to time and there was also a packet radio system aboard Mir.

Any amateur radio operator in the world is free to attempt a contact with the ISS. In fact, NASA even has a page about amateur radio aboard the ISS.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/reference/radio/

In fact, any school can apply to have a chance of a scheduled contact between students and the ISS.

For 400 years, surely the Moon is one of the first things everybody with a telescope has pointed it at. The difference between Galileo and those before and since is the high quality of the inferences he made from the very limited glimpses he had of the sky. Harriot will remain a footnote because the race to draw the first map is secondary to its scientific interpretation.

At the other end of the human spectrum, many people don't even realize the Moon is visible during the daytime. Their world view simply equates the daylight hours with the Sun and the nighttime hours with the Moon. Even if they do happen to notice the Moon high in the sky before sunset, not a single neuron clicks. A lot of astronomy is possible even without a telescope, cf. Tycho, whose name now graces a most beautiful crater, http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/clm_usgs_14.html.

jeez dude, you should really search, uhmmm this thing called the interwebs before letting yourself get raped by the ABSURDLY high prices these journals demand for a single paper! look. here. FREE! If you're an American YOU ALREADY PAID FOR THIS research. that's why it's on a NASA site for free. even when it isn't taxpayer funded research it's still VERY common to see a paper from a peer reviewed journal also up on a professor's personal page as a preprint or whatever.

"Microgravity" is the correct term for the background acceleration levels present on the International Space Station, and is commonly used by researchers who care about the exact levels of disturbance on their experiments (even researchers on the Vomit Comet).

Gravity gradients and small disturbances (hard drive motors, astronauts bumping the walls, etc.) make the broad spectrum acceleration noise floor on the ISS about 10 micro-Gs. Peaks caused by refrigerator pumps, maneuvering jets, Soyuz and Shuttle dockings, etc. are much higher.

More information is at NASA Principal Investigator Microgravity Services: http://microgravity.grc.nasa.gov/MSD/MSD_htmls/pims_products.html

Some point? Like now? or 17 years ago!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090125.html

Yes? Your point being?

Mine's that the PDO has now shifted from it's warm phase, which together with other ocean currents have been driving the rise in temperature since ~1980, and temperatures are on their way back down again. You know, there's absolutely nothing special about the climate we've had the last 10-15 years compared to many other times in human history - including the 1930s.

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/PDO.html

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/25/warming-trend-pdo-and-solar-correlate-better-than-co2/

The problem is the heat exchanger has to be pretty big, so they tend to have lower power density... that is, a heat engine (say, a stirling engine) will be larger and heavier than an internal combustion engine of the same output.

I disagree.

Natural, unnatural. Who cares? We're just as dead. By your reasoning, all murders are natural deaths, the same as when bugs kill or eat each other. I have no problem with those semantics, as long as you don't go on to claim that we should therefore eliminate laws against murder. Which is basically what you're doing here.

In short, don't mistake semantic shenanigans for actual contributions to the discussion.

I don't know where you're getting your belief that "greenhouse gas emissions" is a loaded, anti-human term. There are unarguably natural sources of greenhouse gases. The oceans emit H20, trees emit methane, animals and volcanoes emit CO2. The difference is, those sources are historically well-balanced with CO2 sinks. Human emissions are not, which is why our (much smaller) emissions actually raise CO2 concentrations, when other sources don't. Source.

The answer is simple - 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.

[citation needed]

(though this NASA graph seems to contradict you: it shows the last data point (2007 or 2008?) as the lowest since 2000, not 1977. It also shows a steep climb from 2000 to 2005 or so, contradicting your "steady cooling", and wide variation in the past -- for example, the temperature fell around 1990, but then climbed steeply afterwards. So I'm disinclined to believe that a few years' worth of temperature decreases mean that the problem is solved. Graph linked from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ -- the top google hit for "global temperature data")

The answer is simple - 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.

[citation needed]

(though this NASA graph seems to contradict you: it shows the last data point (2007 or 2008?) as the lowest since 2000, not 1977. It also shows a steep climb from 2000 to 2005 or so, contradicting your "steady cooling", and wide variation in the past -- for example, the temperature fell around 1990, but then climbed steeply afterwards. So I'm disinclined to believe that a few years' worth of temperature decreases mean that the problem is solved. Graph linked from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ -- the top google hit for "global temperature data")

"for no return other than glory and prestige." I wouldn't say that's entirely true: http://science.howstuffworks.com/ten-nasa-inventions1.htm http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spinoffs2.shtml Some of these I would say were driven by NASA, but not necessarily invented.

They are all here:
http://www.history.nasa.gov/Apollo204/find.html

Temperatures haven't been going down by any significant amount. It was a cold winter in parts of the US and Europe, but 2008 was still in the top ten hottest years on record, 2007 in the top three.

Here's NASA's map of average global temperatures for 2008:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36699

Doesn't look particularly good does it?

What about seeding the ocean?

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/fertilizethis.html

Seems like algae growth should increase with more dissolved CO2. Presumably it is limited by things like iron. The idea is you seed the ocean, algae bloom and if you get it right the dead algae sink to the bottom where it could stay for thousands of years.

You can take care of the temperature by spraying sulphate aerosols or see water into the stratoshere.

http://sciencetalks.jpl.nasa.gov/meetings/2008/es/042201/PJR_JPL_april2008.ppt

Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.

Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.

Anyway. From Realclimate:

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.

Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.

Anyway. From Realclimate:

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

The object in TFA poses no significant danger. More accurately, "posed". It's closest approach (691,200 km) was the day before the article.

No presently tracked NEO poses more than about a 0.13% cumulative impact probability for all its projected passes over the next century (2000 SG344).

But as more objects are located, and their individual cumulative impact probabilities are calculated, they're compiled into pages such as at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ . These objects don't care about each other and their impact risks are independent. Taken together, they sum. Individual target estimates don't change, but the total impact risk does.

At what point does the total cumulative impact risk (copy both recent and non-recent tables, paste into a spreadsheet, and sum down all impact probabilities in column D) become significant enough to merit serious attention?

2009 BD made the press but 2009 BE didn't. The latter was only 110,000 km farther, but 2.5 times the diameter, and passed by 2 days before 2009 BD. Recent and upcoming flybys are listed at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

The object in TFA poses no significant danger. More accurately, "posed". It's closest approach (691,200 km) was the day before the article.

No presently tracked NEO poses more than about a 0.13% cumulative impact probability for all its projected passes over the next century (2000 SG344).

But as more objects are located, and their individual cumulative impact probabilities are calculated, they're compiled into pages such as at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ . These objects don't care about each other and their impact risks are independent. Taken together, they sum. Individual target estimates don't change, but the total impact risk does.

At what point does the total cumulative impact risk (copy both recent and non-recent tables, paste into a spreadsheet, and sum down all impact probabilities in column D) become significant enough to merit serious attention?

2009 BD made the press but 2009 BE didn't. The latter was only 110,000 km farther, but 2.5 times the diameter, and passed by 2 days before 2009 BD. Recent and upcoming flybys are listed at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

since the asteroid is coorbital, it's a little misleading to say that it's "passing" within 400,000 miles. what's really interesting is that it will be at more or less that same distance for many months, suggesting that it and earth share a common history.

according to this java simulation of the object's orbit, it won't be this close again until about 2100.

VideoSift shares a YouTube video playlist (seven videos) showing a tour: "A day in the life of a space station astronaut, follows Garrett Reisman, as he goes about his day to day tasks onboard the International Space Station (ISS)."

Fron AQFL.

VideoSift shares a YouTube video playlist (seven videos) showing a tour: "A day in the life of a space station astronaut, follows Garrett Reisman, as he goes about his day to day tasks onboard the International Space Station (ISS)."

Fron AQFL.

No, No. That's backwards.

You can't land anything heavier than the current rovers *with* air bags or bouncing. Which is why MSL won't be using them.

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/tl_edl.html
You thought EDL was crazy for pathfinder and MRO?

On another note (grandparent), we won't be doing even MSL with solar power, because it doesn't provide enough electricity. It uses nuclear (and actually, they already have/may end up having to add solar panels because the power budget was too low).

How about a cigarette then?

Having relatively easy access to water makes long term habitation much more possible, the two deficiencies you mention are solvable.

Sufficient Atmosphere - ummmmm

Breathable gases can probably be harvested from the Martian soil. The primary thing is oxygen, and that is plentiful, if a bit bound up at the moment, on Mars. At best, the soil should have iron oxides which could be harvested, at worst we would have to crack it out of the water.

Sufficient Magnetosphere - uh oh

Not really that big of a problem. While the solar wind would bake an exposed human like a pop-tart, the required shielding isn't that hard to make. Also, there may be parts of Mars which have small pockets of magnetic protection [1]. It won't help with the atmosphere problem, but it will keep a human from being baked.

The real problem is going to be power. Solar is an option, but with the dust storms this probably won't work. Fossil fuels are a no go for the same reason local water is so important: getting it there takes way too much energy. That pretty much leaves the nuclear option. And even this has the problem of having to transport the fuel; granted with a good IFR reactor the amount of fuel needed could be significantly reduced, but that fuel would still need to be transported.

So, really, the remaining hurdle is figuring out a good way to power the whole thing. Any such setup is going to consume energy like an American at a Vegas buffet, and that is going to be very difficult and costly to transport, if we can't find it locally.

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

Two of the last three Soyuz vehicles returning from the ISS have done recently exactly the same thing. See eg. http://www.russianspaceweb.com/iss_soyuztma11.html . Pictures of the landing site; click through for the full res images. Check the large area of burnt grass - it set a pretty big fire when it landed - the significant distance between the hole in the ground and where the capsule fetched up -- that's how far it *bounced*; and especially the heavily charred front end of the capsule and the burnt-through thruster fairing. This happened in April 2008.

And, by the way, does anyone know what NASA or other agencies do to try to NOT inoculate the planet when they send probes there?

At least the Viking mission was sterilized before launching (PDF warning) http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/fact_sheets/viking.pdf/.

I would imagine that the practice has continued since then.

The Russians only attempted a few landings, and IIRC those were also sterilized by international agreement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_5/

Do you know of a site that predicts conjunctions of Jupiter's Galilean satellites from Earth's perspective?

Sky and Telescope has a Javascript utility.

JPL's Horizons on line system includes major satellites and will also provide orbital elements.

The USNO Nautical almanac also has this information if you want it in print.

Good post - you raise some points that I have wondered about.

Back when the Narrabi interferometer was in use, even a cooled photomultiplier might have a quantum efficiency of 10 or maybe 20%. Now, with CCDs, 80 % is possible, so that is a factor of 4 or so right there.

BUT, now there are all of these big light buckets looking for Cherenkov radiation from cosmic rays, and (as you point out) computer resources are dirt cheap, so the question I would have is, could you do useful "parasitic" observations using, say, Veritas ?

Note, by the way, that the various interplanetary gamma ray burst networks are also intensity interferometers. And, to answer your question, the SNR increases by the sqrt of the bandwidth. If you could do bandwidth synthesis, you might be able to really improve your angular precision (not resolution); that is linear in the bandwidth.

Doesn't look like it, no. But the Mars Science Laboratory rover mission, slated for launch in 2011, has not been assigned a final landing target yet.

Not quite. It says "similar techniques have also been used to make infrared and optical images of stellar surfaces"

In the optical, interferometry is done by actually combining light from two or more telescopes. So, first, the telescopes have to be close enough to do that. Second, the atmosphere limits your coherence between remote sites to 10's or 100's of meters at most (longer separation are possible in the IR than in the optical). Third, the wavelength is much smaller (a factor of ~ 10,000, typically), so source resolution effects (which in the radio start really hurting at an Earth radii or so), start really hurting at a few hundred meters or so. (The sources are typically different (stars versus quasars), but both tend to have sizes around a milli arc second or so.)

The canceled (but hopefully to be revived) SIM mission was an interferometer in space, where the atmospheric issues will not obtain, and you could get sufficient accuracy to see the effects of Earth size planets on their stars.

The real trouble with intensity interferometry is that you have only the square root of the sensitivity of phase interferometry, so typically you can only detect the very brightest sources.

The Narrabi intensity interferometer, for example, used 10 meter optical dishes IIRC and could only detect the brightest 32 stars, so it was substantially less sensitive to light than the human eye. (Great angular resolution, but very insensitive.)

Took me about a minute to realize they were writing about the old italian guy.

My thinking was interrupted by the space probe of the same name that used a gravitational assist off the earth, and on the way took a couple cool pictures to tune up the cameras.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/images/moon.html

That's why you probably wont need a big antenna. One of this mobile ones with the magnet on the bottom should be really enough.

May also take a few meters of cable, some solder and a soldering iron with you... if need be, you can put together a simple handheld yagi and call you beloved ones via HAM satellite. And that's what your internet connection comes into play: Spend a few minutes looking up the up-to-date comm passes. Even just listening in could be a very exiting experience for you and your shipmates.. with any luck, you might even make contact with the International Space Station (Callsign: NA1SS)

Check this http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/reference/radio/ and this http://www.issfanclub.com/taxonomy/term/6 out.

"[Comets] almost never live up to the hype"

I've been looking at the sky for comets since around the time of the moon landings, Hayley's comet was a big dissapointment even though I was living in the bush at the time and had near perfect skies. However a couple of years ago when a I got break in a week of cloudy sky I saw Comet McNaght at it's peak brightness looking very much like this to (an old fart's) naked eye, from a beachside suburb in the glow of a major city! After 40yrs of looking at the sky I finally saw a comet in all it's awsome glory, but by that time comets were no longer the reason I habitually enjoyed "sticking my head out at night".

This kind of thing damages the scientific credibility as a whole and turns people off the idea of beleiving scientists: "remember that comet they told us about - what a bust that was, I guess name of global catastrophe is the same - waste of time".

Slightly offtopic but I don't agree, the only reason to belive scientists has got nothing to do with the scientists theselves. How many posts do we see on slashdot following the religious right's "unthinking is a virtue" philosophy when it comes to a political rant against the IPCC, they ranters fail to even read, let alone falsify the assertions contained within it's reports. And to add insult to injury these type of anti-science rants are often modded insightfull by what is supposed to be a bunch of nerds. I agree with Dawkins and Sagan that the "unthinking is a virtue" philosophy is our worst enemy but scientists are the last group of people I would blame for it's popularity.

I don't see how one's disappointment with a predicted astronomical event (comet, eclipse, meteor shower etc) would damage the scientific credibility. Maybe if they popped their head outside, saw nothing, and then heard the news the next day that someone had messed up a calculation (or mistakenly used Metric/Imperial units in the wrong place) and the event never took place...That would bring credibility into question. At worst, a lackluster show by a comet, or during an eclipse/meteor shower, would lead to a bit more apathy towards science and the universe. However, that apathy will die quickly the next time something really cool, like the Aurorae or a meteor, lights up the night sky. ^_^

Whether or not the design is better is largely irrelevant to this debate; what is relevant is the DIRECT team are failing to take into account the overhead of switching projects and switching managers at this stage. Regardless of which was the better approach, DIRECT lost the debate some time ago, and revisiting it now (even if it results in a better vehicle in the long run) isn't going to make anything either cheaper or quicker.

Actually, if you look at NASA's budget documents only $2-3 billion has been spent on Ares so far, although that annual rate will increase over the next few years. If we're going to switch architectures now is the time to do it, particularly since DIRECT estimates a savings over Ares in the tens of billions.

As an added bonus, Orion capsule development will also be benefited, since they won't have to spend so much time trying to figure out what to cut and what safety systems to get rid of to squeeze onto the Ares I.

Given your understanding of the competition between ARES, and DIRECT, "Why is it that the Delta Clipper is not being considered for handling the payload logistics part of the project?" The damn thing looked like it could do the job till NASA decided to land it on its side...

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it were completely extinct in Haiti but hanging on in the Dominican Republic, considering the stark difference in the condition of the native forests.

Lots of political borders look like that. Look at the Israeli / Egyptian border for a really exaggerated version:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=31.052934,34.332275&spn=7.403502,9.041748&t=h&z=7

Guess who waters their crops (between rockets falling, of course!).

NASA conducts an extremely detailed study into literally hundreds of architecture design alternatives known as the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. It is a fantastic report - read it here.

And for people who don't have time to read this 24MB pdf, here is the list of the members who redacted it. Feel free to find conflicting interests about these people. I used to think that Constellation was Griffin's little pet and that little people really had a say about the decision. I am now quite unsure. I think that getting a definite answer requires diving into both reports and checking their facts cautiously. It can easily take several weeks.

Then comes the Columbia disaster and the subsequent investigation which recommended that shuttle be retired by 2010.

In 2004 Bush announces the Vision for Space Exploration clearly defining our country's goal to resume our manned exploration of the moon and Mars.

NASA conducts an extremely detailed study into literally hundreds of architecture design alternatives known as the Exploration Systems Architecture Study. It is a fantastic report - read it here. The study rejects using EELVs (due primarily to safety concerns)and recommends a shuttle-derived re-using shuttle and Apollo technology across the two launch vehicles (then called CLV and CaLV). The recommended architecture becomes the basis of the Constellation architecture. (Which later replaces Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSMEs) on the CaLV with RS-68 engines and extends teh CLV from 4-seg to 5-seg (which was actually in the original trade space). This configuration was chosen as it was both the safest configuration as well as having one of the lowest O&M costs (particularly compared with alternatives that leveraged SSMEs more heavily.) NASA is finally on a path to returning to a capability beyond LEO as well as dramatically reducing its workforce with the looming retirement of shuttle a somewhat simpler to maintain replacement

Therein lies the problem... as retirement looms and irreversible decisions begin to be made (reconfiguring pads, not-ordering certain long-lead items for shuttle, etc..) that huge workforce of shuttle support finally realize what Constellation means to their job security. Without shuttle and its extremely complex reusable sub-systems, many of these people will be out of a job and their pet projects in jeopardy.

Not surprisingly, there becomes no shortage of personnel at Shuttle-oriented NASA sites who begin advocating against Constellation and for an extension of Shuttle. Adding to the detractors are of course the disgruntled "establishment" consortium of launch providers, ULA, advocating using EELVs. Then there are the Direct guys who are brilliant NASA engineers but this concept was in essence already considered in the ESAS study and deemed less favorable than the CLV approach.

Add to the mix the political baggage that comes with the program's genesis stemming from an unpopular president and the oncoming president's commitment to "change" at all levels of government and you have a perfect storm of opposition - much of it which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual merits of the current design.

People who have not worked on Constellation simply don't understand how much work has gone into it compared with any of the above mentioned alternatives. Of course they look good now. They have been studied by small groups of engineers for months. Compare with the thousands who have been working on Constellation for years. Despite what anyone says about their program being cheaper or faster - any change at this point will result in

I'd be a little perplexed if Haiti didn't have the animal in it, IT SHARES THE SAME GOD DAMN ISLAND with the Dominican Republic.

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it were completely extinct in Haiti but hanging on in the Dominican Republic, considering the stark difference in the condition of the native forests.

The corona is radiating like mad in the UV, EUV, and X-ray. Have a look at some of the UV imagery: http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eit/eit_full_res.html. In those bands the corona is more luminous than the surface. The magnetoacoustic model cannot quantitatively account for that, the required energy flux to keep the corona temperature up there is way too high.

Since the 1990s, scientists have known that increasing global temperatures have lengthened the growing season in the Arctic. With carbon dioxide, one of the key ingredients in photosynthesis, also on the rise, the forest should have been thriving. But it wasn't. The forest was getting browner, not greener.

They go on to discover that because of a warming climate, there are droughts occurring which deprive the forests of water, and so gradually they die. And although other trees can move in, they will suffer the same limitations. Overall, the effect is to reduce the amount of carbon held out of the atmosphere by trees, and also to extract less as time goes on leading to a higher build up of CO2, sooner.
Forest on the Threshold

And yes, pure Oxygen is poisonous.

FTFA:

She [Anne H. Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS] adds, "We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet."

Good thing Boeing's not using fere software for aircraft simulation tools, space station labs, sub hunters, or moon rockets ;-)

New word announcement: "fere" - used to denote the application of open source (free) software in critical roles, striking fear in the uninformed masses.

Examples:
"The new software we're using to control our killbots is the latest fereware clone of the commercial Killdows Humans release."
"NASA is requesting support from the fere community for software that can accurately convert between metric and SAE units."

I thought Mars' thin atmosphere had less to do with gravity and more to do with the fact that Mars has much less of a magnetic field, thus allowing the solar wind to blow away what atmosphere the planet has? In fact, there was an article or two not all that long ago wherein scientists had discovered that Mars' magnetic field sometimes even paunches out, forming loops that hasten the process of atmospheric erosion.

Lemme see... Okay, here's an older article talking about how Mars has a very weak magnetic field, with the planet therefore facing the full brunt of the solar wind. And here's the more recent one that I remember, describing how Martian magnetic fields loop far out from the planet in narrow columns, ultimately pinching off big blobs of atmospheric gases far above the surface where the gases then get blown away by the solar wind. Interesting reads, both of them.

So, in a nutshell, it seems to have much less to do with gravity, and much more to do with planetary magnetic fields. Mars is afforded much less protection by its magnetic field compared to the Earth.

Cheers,

I thought Mars' thin atmosphere had less to do with gravity and more to do with the fact that Mars has much less of a magnetic field, thus allowing the solar wind to blow away what atmosphere the planet has? In fact, there was an article or two not all that long ago wherein scientists had discovered that Mars' magnetic field sometimes even paunches out, forming loops that hasten the process of atmospheric erosion.

Lemme see... Okay, here's an older article talking about how Mars has a very weak magnetic field, with the planet therefore facing the full brunt of the solar wind. And here's the more recent one that I remember, describing how Martian magnetic fields loop far out from the planet in narrow columns, ultimately pinching off big blobs of atmospheric gases far above the surface where the gases then get blown away by the solar wind. Interesting reads, both of them.

So, in a nutshell, it seems to have much less to do with gravity, and much more to do with planetary magnetic fields. Mars is afforded much less protection by its magnetic field compared to the Earth.

Cheers,

Good thing NASA likewise never uses Open Source to design engines and aircraft alongside companies like Boeing. (*This product may contain nuts^H^H^H^Hsarcasm.)

Good thing NASA likewise never uses Open Source to design engines and aircraft alongside companies like Boeing. (*This product may contain nuts^H^H^H^Hsarcasm.)