Last year, when Minnesota passed a groundbreaking law on best practices for providing pollinator habitat at solar power sites, they also (unexpectedly) helped launch something called Solar Honey, in which solar companies and commercial beekeepers work together in a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/solar-power-and-honey-bees-180964743/
Art is about taking risks. Join us as we become the first artist-museum team to launch a sculptural satellite into space.
A couple of years ago, contemporary artist Trevor Paglen approached the Nevada Museum of Art with a bold idea: launch the first satellite into space that would exist purely as an artistic gesture. The Museum knew that his radical vision — Orbital Reflector — could help to change the way we see our place in the world.
Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nevadaart/trevor-paglen-orbital-reflector
Consternation over the death of the world’s oldest-recorded animal, a 507-year-old clam nicknamed Ming, has earned marine researchers unhappy headlines worldwide.
But a closer look at the story—”Clam-gate,” as the BBC called it—finds the tempest over Ming a bit overblown. (Also see “Clams: Not Just for Chowder.”)
Link: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131116-oldest-clam-dead-ming-science-ocean-507/
The Cassini spacecraft’s final moments are a few hours away. Early Friday morning, it will slam itself into Saturn’s atmosphere.
Cassini is a victim of its own success. It astonished scientists by finding conditions potentially suitable for life beneath the surface of one of Saturn’s icy moons, Enceladus.
On Monday, August 21, 2017, millions of people were staring at the same thing through doofy glasses, as they tried to catch a glimpse of the solar eclipse. Not only that, they also immortalized the awe-inspiring moment in photos, and Bored Panda has collected the best of them in case you missed the phenomenon or can’t get enough of it.
Chemical analysis conducted on ancient pottery could dramatically predate the commencement of winemaking in Italy. A large storage jar from the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BC) tests positive for wine.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-08/uosf-woi082417.php
The Resomator stands monolithic in the corner of a room in the bowels of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It’s as sterile as a hospital here, but every patient is already dead.
The Cassini probe has begun the final phase of its mission to Saturn.
The satellite has executed the first of five ultra-close passes of the giant world, dipping down far enough to brush through the top of the atmosphere.
If all goes well, New Horizons will zip by Ultima Thule on New Year’s Day at 12:33 a.m. EST (0533 GMT) at a whopping 39,000 mph (62,764 km/h). At its closest point, New Horizons will be 2,200 miles (3,540 km) from Ultima Thule. That’s about the distance between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., with Ultima Thule appearing about as large to New Horizons as the full moon does to observers on Earth, Stern said.
The stakes are high. It takes 6 hours and 8 minutes for a signal to reach Earth from New Horizons. A roundtrip for a signal is just over half a day: 12 hours and 15 minutes. So New Horizons will have to work on its own during the actual rendezvous, just as it did at Pluto.
Poster courtesy SpaceArtTravelBureau.com
