Martian Ice @ 03/13/2008 12:46 PM
Via BBC News: Huge ice deposits ‘seen’ on Mars:
Large volumes of water ice have probably been detected below Mars’ surface, far from the planet’s polar ice caps, scientists have said.
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Climate Change and US Transportation @ 03/12/2008 11:04 PM
Via National Geographic News: Global Warming to Affect U.S. Transport:
Flooded roads and subways, deformed railroad tracks, and weakened bridges may be the wave of the future with continuing global warming, a new study says.
Climate change will affect every type of transportation through rising sea levels, increased rainfall, and surges from more intense storms, the National Research Council said in a report released Tuesday.
Complicating matters, people continue to move into coastal areas, creating the need for more roads and services in the most vulnerable regions, the report noted.
“The time has come for transportation professionals to acknowledge and confront the challenges posed by climate change and to incorporate the most current scientific knowledge into the planning of transportation systems,” said Henry Schwartz Jr., past president and chairman of the engineering firm Sverdrup/Jacobs Civil Inc., and chairman of the committee that wrote the report.
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Mars (or, Why I Love National Geographic) @ 03/04/2008 10:19 PM
Dry Debris, Not Water, Caused Recent Flows on Mars:
A dry landslide—not liquid water—is the most likely explanation for at least one of the bright streaks seen recently on Mars, a new study concludes.
PHOTO IN THE NEWS: First Mars Avalanches Seen In Action:
The first-ever picture of avalanches occurring on Mars might have had scientists yodeling for joy when they found it among the latest batch of images from NASA’s orbiting HiRISE camera.
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Let's All Do the Daylight Savings Time Shuffle @ 03/04/2008 10:17 PM
From the Wall Street Journal, via Slashdot: Daylight Saving Wastes Energy, Study Says:
…Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings.
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Previous Calculations Were A Bit Off @ 02/21/2008 12:35 PM
Via Slashdot: Milky Way Is Twice the Size We Thought:
Peter writes to tell us about a research group at the University of Sydney in Australia, who in the middle of some calculation wanted to check the numbers everybody uses for the thickness of our galaxy at the core. Using data available freely on the Internet and analyzing it in a spreadsheet, they discovered in a matter of hours that the Milky Way is 12,000 light years thick, vs. the 6,000 that had been the consensus number for some time.
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