Monthly Archives: January 2005

Astronomers believe they have captured the first-ever image of a planet outside our own solar system. This extrasolar planet orbits a brown dwarf called 2MASSWJ 1207334-393254 (or 2M1207 for short.) The image was captured by the Near Infrared Camera and … Continue reading →

It might seem to be old news, but our own Moon has got a lot left to tell us. The European Space Agency’s probe SMART-1 successfully used its experimental ion drive engine to loop out to the Moon and is … Continue reading →

Let us jump right into a preview of 2005 with a mix of logic, forecasting, educated guessing, assumptions, and flights of fancy. I prognosticate, you decide. We will observe and then I will come back at the end of the … Continue reading →

The dark material on Iapetus would look dark brown to the human eye, according to this near-true color image of the Saturnian moon. Why the moon is stained this color closer to a mysterious equatorial ridge and less so at … Continue reading →

Okay, get those 3D glasses out. Iapetus, the strangely-shaped and strangely-colored moon with strange landforms that defy current scientific explanation, gets the stereo treatment, with never before seen basins and craters.

Planetary science is never boring and often very surprising. Take for instance the new images sent back by the Cassini space probe of Saturn’s moon Iapetus. The moon has always been mysterious since the first Voyager images revealed a light … Continue reading →

Most robots at work today look nothing like humans (although much work is going into a new generation of bipedal robots.) For example, Rotundus AB in Sweden has developed spherical robots that move around by rolling using the physics of … Continue reading →

Someday I will get there myself. The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) opened this week in Las Vegas, Nevada, bringing to one place a plethora of technology, electronics, and content companies. One of the show’s highlights is new television technology. Consumers … Continue reading →

Images taken by various space probes are made available to the public soon after they are uploaded to Earth, but because of the sheer number received, most images remain in raw form until they can be calibrated and corrected. These … Continue reading →

The scientific progress and technological advances of today are collapsing our anthropomorphic conceits and forcing us to ask deeply personal questions about what it means to be human. We will soon share the Earth with clones, chimeras, cyborgs, genetically-enhanced humans, … Continue reading →