In September 2012, Michael Rhodes, a technician at the National Declassification Center (NDC) in College Park, Md., donned white cotton gloves, entered a climate-controlled room, and opened a cardboard file box. It was time for the report inside—”Project 1794 Final Development Summary Report 2 April—30 May 1956″—to become public. He soon realized that the file […]
How would you change the course of an Earth-threatening asteroid? One possibility – a massive spacecraft that uses gravity as a towline – is illustrated in this artist’s vision (Dan Durda (FIAAA, B612 Foundation)) of a gravitational tractor in action. In the hypothetical scenario worked out in 2005 by Edward Lu and Stanley Love at […]
In an emotional goodbye to 100,000 supporters, the Pope revealed that he is stepping aside because God told him to. In a voice raw with emotion, Benedict XVI told tens of thousands of pilgrims in St Peter’s Square that he was resigning because God had called on him to devote himself to prayer. He said […]
NASA’s Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, […]
Pope Benedict XVI urged the tens of thousands of people gathered to listen to him on Sunday to “renew” and “refocus on God by disowning pride and egoism,” in one of his last appearances as pontiff before he steps down on Feb. 28. “The Church calls on all its members to renew themselves… which constitutes […]
An asteroid half the size of a U.S. football field will pass between Earth and orbiting satellites next week, sparing the human race from the fate suffered by dinosaurs, NASA said. The 150-foot diameter asteroid, named 2012 DA14, will pass about 17,000 miles above Earth on Feb. 15 — lower than the orbits of some […]
As North Korea continues defying the concerns of the world by going ahead with its third nuclear test, refugees from the troubled country have spoken out to reveal the extreme religious persecution believers are suffering in the isolated Pacific nation. “They ignore all freedoms. The human rights level is zero percent. Religions are not allowed. […]
[FOR HIGH RESOLUTION, CLICK ON IMAGE / Credit: R. Evans & K. Stapelfeldt (JPL), WFPC2, HST, NASA] Rocks from space hit Earth every day. The larger the rock, though, the less often Earth is struck. Many kilograms of space dust pitter to Earth daily. Larger bits appear initially as a bright meteor. Baseball-sized rocks and […]
The demise of the dinosaurs is the world’s ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change? In an attempt to resolve the issue, scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have now determined the most precise […]
Beyond a fertile field of satellite communication antennas at Kennedy Space Center, an Atlas V rocket streaks into orbit in this long exposure photograph. In the thoughtfully composed image recorded on the evening of Jan. 30, the antennas in the foreground bring to mind the rocket’s payload, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. This TDRS-K […]