Monthly Archives: February 2008

Some Planetary Science news bites…

Posted on February 23, 2008 by Adam

The latest issue of Astrobiology is out and a few abstracts caught my eye… Acetylene as Fast Food: Implications for Development of Life on Anoxic Primordial Earth and in the Outer Solar System …acetylene, as any welder knows, is quite … Continue reading →

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Earth and Sun – a merged future…

Posted on February 23, 2008 by Adam

Posted on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 – 06:49 am:    Found this really interesting update on what the Sun is going to end up like in a few billion years – and whether Earth will end up in a decaying … Continue reading →

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More Planets than we know what to do with…

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Adam

A recent study of young stars reveals a bunch with dust disks. Both New Scientist and BBC Science-Nature News report on the find… Planet Hunters Set for a Big Bounty Many Earth-like planets may exist in Milky Way …with the … Continue reading →

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Affinities of Homo Dmanisi

Posted on February 17, 2008 by Adam

Homo Dmanisi is a 1.8 million year old hominid known from near complete skulls and now skeletons unearthed in the former-Soviet republic of Georgia. The Bradshaw Foundation has some good material on the finds, plus a rather curious discussion of … Continue reading →

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Power Costs for Centralised Supplies

Posted on February 17, 2008 by Adam

Brian Wang’s “Next Big Future” is an excellent reference for the latest trends in all things related to the Future that’s rushing our way. A particularly pertinent posting is from the DoE in the USA on the costs of various … Continue reading →

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Mining the Gas Giants

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Adam

Helium-3 is often seen as a profitable material to “mine” the Lunar regolith for – it’s a potential fusion fuel, but currently a fuel without a market. No current reactors in the works (i.e. ITER) are big enough (!) to … Continue reading →

Posted in Sol Space | 3 Comments

Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes…

Posted on February 10, 2008 by Adam

Robert Hutchings Goddard is the father of modern applied rocketry, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky the father of rocket theory. A certain paper of Goddard’s published in 1919 (Summarised in Scientific American in 1920) looked at what kind of rockets were needed to … Continue reading →

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Life born of Ice…

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Adam

According to Nordic mythology the Gods were born of the interaction of fire and ice. Considering the chilliness of their northern world I can sympathise. Modern biochemistry is also leaning towards an icy origin of Life – or at least … Continue reading →

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