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Climate Change: As scientists confirm the earth has not warmed at all in the past decade, others wonder how this could be and what it means for Copenhagen. Maybe Al Gore can Photoshop something before December. It will be a very cold winter of discontent for the warm-mongers. The climate show-and-tell in Copenhagen next month will be nothing more than a meaningless carbon-emitting jaunt, unable to decide just whom to blame or how to divvy up the profitable spoils of climate change hysteria. The collapse of the talks coupled with the decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put...

Apparently a "Global Climate Center" was hacked and the contents have been posted to the Internet. A ZIP file exceeding 60MB and containing a huge number of emails and other documents has been posted worldwide. Original speculation as to whether the files posted were legitimate or some sort of spoof appears to now be confirmed as legitimate: “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.” I have not had time to read all of the material...

New Scientist magazine is generally regarded by the secular community as one of the top-ranked science magazines in the world. However, a published opinion by a regular columnist demonstrated how “unscientific” and anti-God some of their articles have become—something we have documented before (see Refutation of New Scientist’s Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions). Amanda Gefter wrote an article discussing multiverse theory, or the idea that our universe may be only one of many that currently exist. Such speculations attempt to explain away the appearance of design in the universe, because of, as we shall see, the spiritual implications. In an...

A new image of the bulge at the center of a distant spiral galaxy, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is giving astronomers insight into how these galactic paunches form. The image of NGC 4710 is part of a survey that astronomers have conducted to learn more about the formation of bulges, which are a substantial component of most spiral galaxies. When targeting spiral galaxy bulges, astronomers often seek edge-on galaxies, as their bulges are more easily distinguishable from the disc. The detailed edge-on view of NGC 4710, taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows the galaxy's bulge in...

NASA scientists are sick of being asked if the world is going to end in 2012 – so much in fact, they've published an article on their website explaining just why it's a load of rubbish. The release of Roland Emmerich's blockbuster film 2012, in which John Cusack's character Jackson Curtis has to deal with the end of the world, has only made matters worse. There are several theories as to how the world is supposed to end, most of which focus on a particular date - December 21. The best-known is that relating to the Mayan 'long-count' calendar, which...

- Names Ares "Invention of the Year" Based on Launch of Dummy Vehicle Citing Time magazine's selection of NASA's proposed Ares rockets "The Best Invention of the Year" based on a single purported "test flight" of the vehicle on October 28th, the Space Frontier Foundation congratulated NASA on its propaganda triumph. The Foundation pointed out that the rocket launched by NASA was not an Ares 1 at all, but a dummy vehicle cobbled together from pieces of other space systems, an elaborate mock-up shaped and painted to look like the actual vehicle, which isn't even scheduled to fly for another...

On Friday November 13th the movie titled: 2012 which dramatizes global disaster was the number one weekend box office hit in what is the first of quite possibly a deluge of movies that will inundate America and rest of the globe about what far too many believe will be the end of the world. Sure it should be taken as just a light diversion to entertain the great masses, but for far too many it will be taken more seriously. For buried within the value of its entertainment is a nugget of less skepticism at it being just a movie...

The latest object to shoot high-def video from the edge of space is…an arm chair. To promote its REGZA SV LCD TVs (LED backlight, local dimming), Toshiba trekked into the Black Rock Desert with a helium balloon. Watch the result: Click here to go to page with video. This is the first part of the ad. The second half for their Satellite T Series ULV laptops will come out next year. [Toshiba UK via Engadget] Facts about the shoot: • The shots were taken at a staggering 98,268 feet above the earth using Toshiba's own cameras • To reach the...

NASA claims definitive detection of Moon water in the Solar System's 'attic'.On the way to a wet landing.N. GRUMMAN, W. FURLONG/NASA The debate is finally over. Lunar scientists have detected water for certain near the north pole of the Moon, after the impact of a NASA projectile kicked up water vapour along with a plume of dust. But it's not just about the water, say the scientists, who found hints in the plume of other, more exotic molecules, ranging from organic hydrocarbons to mercury. Increasingly, the scientists are viewing the polar craters as the 'attics' of the Solar System, repositories...

LOS ANGELES – For NASA's stuck Mars rover, the Spirit may be willing, but the wheels could prove too weak. The space agency on Thursday outlined a rescue plan to try to free the rover Spirit, which has been bogged in a sand trap on the red planet for half a year. The risky operation is expected to last several months. "If it cannot make the great escape from this sand trap, it's likely that this lonely spot straddling the edge of this crater might be where Spirit ends its adventures on Mars," said Doug McCuistion, who heads the Mars...

Moon moister than thoughtDiscovery of water inside crater paints "a surprising new picture" By JOHN JOHNSON JR., Los Angeles Times First published in print: Saturday, November 14, 2009 Declaring "This is not your father's moon," National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said Friday that last month's mission to punch a hole in the lunar surface found significant amounts of water in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole. "The moon is alive," declared Anthony Colaprete, the chief scientist for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission during a briefing at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif....

The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Secrets the moon has been holding, for perhaps billions of years, are now being revealed to the delight of scientists and space enthusiasts alike. NASA today opened a new chapter in our understanding of the moon. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon’s south pole. The impact created by the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket created a...

NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, a key component of our hereditary material, in the laboratory. They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions produces this essential ingredient of life. Pyrimidine is a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen and is the basic structure for uracil, part of a genetic code found in ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA is central to protein synthesis, but has many other roles. "We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, a component of RNA, non-biologically in a laboratory...

WASHINGTON — A "significant amount" of frozen water has been found on the moon, the US space agency NASA said Friday, boosting hopes of eventually setting up a permanent lunar base. Preliminary data from a moon probe "indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater," NASA said. "The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," it added in a statement.

Evolutionary philosophy is a bottom-up storytelling project: particles, planets, people. Naturalists (those who say nature is all there is) believe they can invent explanations that are free of miracles, but in practice, miracles pop up everywhere in their stories. This was satirized by Sidney Harris years ago in a cartoon that showed a grad student filling a blackboard with equations. His adviser called attention to one step that needed some elaboration: It said, "Then a miracle happens." Examples of miracles in evolutionary philosophy include the sudden appearance of the universe without cause or explanation, the origin of life, the origin...

NASA and Spaceward Foundation Award Prize Money for Successful Wireless Power Demonstration WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded $900,000 in prize money to a Seattle company that successfully demonstrated new wireless energy beaming technology which could one day be used to help power a "space elevator." LaserMotive of Seattle was awarded the money after its performance in the Power Beaming Challenge competition, which was a demonstration of wireless power transmission that enabled a robotic device to climb a vertical cable. The competition was held Nov. 4-6 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. The Spaceward Foundation of Mountain View,...

The former astronaut arrested in an attack against her romantic rival has pleaded guilty to lesser counts this afternoon. Before a packed courtroom 1:30 p.m., Lisa Marie Nowak, 46, pleaded guilty to counts of third-degree burglary of a conveyance and misdemeanor battery. She was originally charged with more-serious counts of attempted kidnapping and burglary with assault in addition to misdemeanor battery. Prosecutors dropped a count of burglary with assault. Orange County Circuit Court Judge Marc L. Lubet sentenced Nowak to two days in Orange County Jail with credit for time served and one year of probation. She must stay away...

<p>COCOA BEACH, Fla. — Legendary space industry engineer Thomas J. O'Malley, 94, died Friday evening, shortly after a phone call from Mercury astronaut and former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, whom O'Malley launched into space in 1962 by pushing a button.</p>

As a child, I marveled at America's first flea-hops into space. I was 10 when Alan Shepard orbited the Earth in 1961, and I had just graduated high school when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in the summer of 1969. I grew up juggling those technological triumphs with political assassinations, watching the first “reality television” through a black-and-white porthole in our living room. President Kennedy pushed us into space before his rendezvous with Lee Harvey Oswald in '63, and both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King died in the spring of '68, when the moon loomed largest in our...

The U.S. space agency says blogs and tweets will be part of the upcoming launch of space shuttle Atlantis and its mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle is to lift off Monday, Nov. 16, at 2:28 p.m. EST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA said the STS-129 mission will be commanded by Charles Hobaugh and piloted by Barry Wilmore. Mission astronauts are Robert Satcher Jr., Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik and Leland Melvin. Wilmore, Satcher and Bresnik will be making their first trips into space. Atlantis and its crew will deliver equipment to the International Space Station....

Why Evolutionary-Based Science Is A Menace To Scientific Research, Discovery, and Progress Evolutionary-based research always begins with the inaccurate and unscientific presupposition that the Theory of Evolution, i.e. the Big Bang, the spontaneous generation of life, and common descent, is true. Due to this systemic problem, scientific discovery and progress is severely hampered, not to mention the hundreds of millions of research dollars that are squandered every year. In a time in which almost ANY alternative thought is given a platform, the evolution industry is silencing dissenting scientific evidence, even when it’s from fellow evolutionists! See the growing list of...

It's blurrier than old MySpace snapshots, but it's there as expected. The Apollo Lunar Modules and the US flag left behind at the Apollo 17 landing site has been caught in a close-up image by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The lander as well as the flag, or rather the remaining flag pole, seen in the image above are exactly where they should be based on this shot by the Ascent Module "right after Apollo 17 lifted off the Moon": Going a step further, the location can be compared to more recent images of the landing site and everything still...

The Boeing Co. announced Friday it will lay off a third of its 1,000-member workforce at Kennedy Space Center next year. The layoffs will come in January, May and August as the shuttle program heads toward retirement. Some 330 workers will be laid off from Boeing's Checkout, Assembly and Payload Processing Services program, which has about 500 workers, spokeswoman Susan Wells said Friday. "Boeing is committed to preserving as many jobs as possible for our valued, highly skilled employees, and the company has taken aggressive steps to lessen the impact of these potential reductions," a company statement said. "These steps...

Many people make a distinction between the origin of life and the evolution of life. In this view, biological evolution refers to the gradual development of the diversity of living things from a common ancestor, while the ultimate origin of life is a separate question. This is a legitimate point, but evolution is about much more than just biology. The evolutionary worldview is that all of physical existence, both living and non-living, arose through purely natural processes. With this broad definition of evolution, abiogenesis--the spontaneous appearance of life from non-living matter--is a necessity. If life did arise on earth by...

Today we will attempt to launch the Space Shuttle replacement again... "today's launch is the first test of the Ares I rocket NASA is designing to carry astronauts after the space shuttle is retired. The unmanned test rocket, called Ares I-X, is powered only by a four-segment shuttle solid rocket booster. Everything above that is a mock-up." Wednesday October 28, 2009 6:46 James Dean

Ares I-X is (hopefully) about to come out of its 20 minute hold. Launch is predicted to take place around 08:30 (or later).

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that...

The latest report of arctic sea ice was released, since the September minimum has passed and ice is now reforming as winter approaches. The National Snow and Ice Data Center report states that this was the third lowest amount of sea ice on record, but I contend that is missing the point. In this era of dire claims of climate marred by the controversy of global cooling, public dissent, and early season snow, a NASA follow up report appears to ignore the good news: The arctic sea ice is actually expanding! --snip-- The first lines of a press release from...

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word. There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap. While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that...

Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock? --snip-- The picture painted by Russell and Martin is striking indeed. The last common ancestor of all life was not a free-living cell at all, but a porous rock riddled with bubbly iron-sulphur membranes that catalysed primordial biochemical reactions...

The U.S. Senate gave final passage to an energy and water spending bill Oct. 15 that denies President Barack Obama’s request for $30 million for the Department of Energy to restart production of plutonium-238 (pu-238) for NASA deep space missions. The House of Representatives originally approved $10 million of Obama’s pu-238 request for next year, but ultimately adopted the Senate’s position before voting Oct. 1 to approve the conference report on the 2010 Energy-Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 3183). The bill now heads to Obama, who is expected to sign it. NASA relies on pu-238 to power long-lasting spacecraft batteries that...

This week Earth will be passing through a debris field left behind by Halley’s Comet, the Orionids. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office says, “Flakes of comet dust hitting the atmosphere should give us dozens of meteors per hour. Since 2006, Orionids have been one of the showers of the year, with counts of 60 or more meteors per hour.”

The nation that made it to the Moon in 12 years now struggles to build a satellite in that time and is at risk of losing its preeminence in space. Those words come from one of the top four space intelligence lawmakers on Capitol Hill, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, chairman of the House Select technical and tactical intelligence subcommittee, who spoke before an audience of some 1,200 intelligence practitioners and industry at the Geoint annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. Ruppersburger noted that 20 years ago the U.S. had 70 percent of the commercial satellite market which is now down to...

Oct 19, 2009 — Science news outlets have put out some bizarre headlines recently.  Readers can judge whether they should be blessed with the label “science” or belong instead at supermarket checkouts. Women are evolving fatter:  New Scientist and PhysOrg said that natural selection is making women shorter, plumper and more fertile.  “The take-home message is that humans are currently evolving,” said Stephen Stearns of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina.  “Natural selection is still operating.” Killer algae heading north:  Science Daily said that toxic algae was a key player in mass extinctions in the past, and...

There was a plume after all. Observers on Earth had their doubts after LCROSS and its Centaur booster rocket hit the Moon on Friday, Oct. 9th. The twin lunar impacts failed to produce visible plumes of debris, prompting speculation that something had gone wrong. On the contrary, members of the LCROSS science team are now calling the experiment "a smashing success." Fifteen seconds after the Centaur hit the shadowy floor of crater Cabeus, the LCROSS spacecraft flying 600 km overhead took the following picture of a plume measuring 6 to 8 km wide: "There is a clear indication of a...

NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious ribbon around our solar system —- a stripe made of hydrogen —- that defies all current expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like. Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, tells NPR's Guy Raz that this discovery is a big moment for the scientific community. "We thought we knew everything about everything, and it turned out that there were unknown unknowns."

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

The global ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa contains about twice the liquid water of all the Earth’s oceans combined. New research suggests that there may be plenty of oxygen available in that ocean to support life, a hundred times more oxygen than previously estimated. The chances for life there have been uncertain, because Europa’s ocean lies beneath several miles of ice, which separates it from the production of oxygen at the surface by energetic charged particles (similar to cosmic rays). Without oxygen, life could conceivably exist at hot springs in the ocean floor using exotic metabolic chemistries, based on...

Editor's note: this article was originally published in Space News and is reprinted here courtesy of its author. On behalf of myself and all of us at Bigelow Aerospace let me first congratulate you on becoming NASA administrator. I'm sure the joy you must feel in being entrusted with leading such an extraordinary organization is only rivaled by the difficulty of the decisions you are now facing.

InfoWorld Home / Applications / News / NASA plans Tweetup for next shuttle launch October 14, 2009 NASA plans Tweetup for next shuttle launch 100 Twitterers will be invited for two-day event surrounding Nov. 12 launch By Sharon Gaudin | Computerworld Share or Email | Print | Add a comment| Recommend This NASA is throwing a Tweetup for its next shuttle launch. The U.S. space agency announced this week that some of its @NASA Twitter followers will be invited to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida next month to view the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis in person. NASA...

Another Insult to Islam NASA Mission Condemned by thelastcrusade.org Muslims have expressed their outrage at NASA for crashing two rockets into the South Pole of the moon. One rockets was the size of a bus; the second of a compact car. The purpose of the mission was to determine if lunar craters contained cakes of ice. The rockets may not have dislodged ice, but they certainly fanned fires throughout the Muslim world. “America does not own the moon,” Shareef Abdel wrote on a blog. “It belongs to us. The moon has always belonged to Islam.” This sentiment was shared...

Enlarge ImageBoom or bust? This near-infrared image of Cabeus crater was taken from Palomar Observatory after the LCROSS impact today. Credit: Palomar Observatory/Caltech NASA officials and scientists spent the better part of an hour in this morning's press conference patting themselves on the back. The LCROSS mission in search of lunar water was a great success, they said, all the while ignoring a very large elephant in the room: No one among the millions watching as a 2-ton hunk of metal slammed into the moon could see the much-ballyhooed spray of dust and debris that they had been told...

LONDON — A Briton accused of hacking into US military and NASA space agency computers was on Friday refused permission to appeal to the new Supreme Court in London against his extradition to the United States. The High Court had turned down Gary McKinnon's extradition challenges and on Friday refused him leave to appeal, ruling that that his case did not raise "points of law of general public importance" -- a prerequisite of being able to pursue a cause in the Supreme Court. The 43-year-old could spend life in prison if convicted by a US court of gaining access to...

This just in from NASA, President Barack Hussein Obama face was found on the surface of Mars! Never before satellite photos have found Barack's face in the sand dunes of Mars and now NASA Scientist ponder how the likeness of Obama has come to form on Mars' surface.

WASHINGTON —  Take that, moon! NASA bulldozed two spacecraft into the lunar south pole Friday morning in a search for hidden ice. Instruments confirm that a large empty rocket hull barreled into the moon at 7:31 a.m., followed 4 minutes later by a probe with cameras taking pictures of the first crash. But initial photos show that the moon didn't give the reaction to the double jabs that NASA expected. And the public definitely didn't get the live explosive views they may have anticipated from the mission called LCROSS, short for Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. Screens got fuzz and...

NASA spokesperson Rachel McDonald stated in a press conference today, that President Barack Obama was the first man to step on the Moon. McDonald stated, "Contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Neil Armstrong wasn't the first man to step on the Moon but was instead the President." She followed, "The first words he uttered were FIRE IT UP...READY TO GO!" FIRE IT UP .... READY TO GO!

Live stream: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA next week begins the most extensive aerial survey of Earth's surface to chart the impact of global warming, with six years of flights over Antarctica to understand the frozen continent's glaciers and ice sheets. The US space agency said the massive aerial survey, part of a program dubbed Operation Ice Bridge, will get underway on October 15. ... Space officials said the plane, crew and scientists depart October 12 from NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California, and fly to Punta Arenas, Chile, where they will be based through mid-November. Some 50 scientists and support...

Oct 7, 2009 — Saturn has a newly-discovered ring to add to its decor – the largest of all. It’s so big, it makes Saturn look like a speck in the middle of it. The ring, located at the orbit of the small outer moon Phoebe, is inclined 27 degrees and revolves backwards around Saturn. This was announced today by...

NASA's Lunar Prospector first detected some hydrogen signatures in craters on the dark side of the moon in 1999. Ever since, researchers have been keen to confirm the presence of water on the moon. The Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) is tasked with crashing through the mists of speculation and conjecture and discover the truth. And you can watch all the action as it happens. LCROSS was launched on June 18th and executed a fly-by of the moon five days later before entering into a wide orbit. On Friday October 9th, the craft will start to make...