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Apollo 16, the penultimate lunar landing mission, began on April 16, 1972, 40 years ago this month. The second of the “J” missions, Apollo 16, like Apollo 15 before it, carried an uprated lunar module, a SIM bay in the CM/SM, and an electric-powered lunar rover. Gemini and Apollo veteran John Young commanded this historic mission. Lunar geologists were anxious to target an Apollo mission for the lunar highlands. You can easily see them if you look at the moon when it is in a phase from waxing or waning gibbous to full. The brighter surface areas are the “highlands”...

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Anthony Watts An embarrasing image for NASA: James Hansen, arrested in front of the White House in Keystone pipeline protest. Image: via Wonk RoomLooks like another GISS miss, more than a few people are getting fed up with Jim Hansen and Gavin Schmidt and their shenanigans. Some prominent NASA voices speak out.Former NASA scientists, astronauts admonish agency on climate change positionFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.comJoint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter...

A new paper in Quaternary Science Reviews titled: Combined dendro-documentary evidence of Central European hydroclimatic springtime extremes over the last millennium…demonstrates that there is evidence for extreme weather during both the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age, in fact it was seen as common according to the tree ring records examined. Unlike the Yamal debacle, it seems they did a much broader sampling of trees, both living and historical fir (Abies alba Mill.), and sampled across France, Switzerland, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Even better, unlike the irascible Dr. Mann, they didn’t have to truncate the tree samples...

Explanation: What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). Pictured above as a star forming region cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The above image spans about 3/4 degree...

Explanation: If our Sun were part of M53, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. M53, also known as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are...

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China will accelerate the use of new-energy sources such as nuclear energy and put an end to blind expansion in industries such as solar energy and wind power in 2012, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says in a government report published on March 5.China will instead develop nuclear power in 2012, actively develop hydroelectric power, tackle key problems more quickly in the exploration and development of shale gas, and increase the share of new energy and renewable energy in total energy consumption.The guidance indicates a new trend for new-energy and renewable energy development in China from 2012. Analysts believe that the...

I've been asked one of those questions so basic that you never know 'til you're asked, that you really don't know. So I tried answers.com and all those other reasonable places and still can't answer. I figure there are enough smart people on FR to improve my chances. Question: When a fire starts, why does it flare up with a sudden burst of energy that is more intense than the subsequent flames? What's going on there? Why does it not kindle gradually, appear first feeble and then grow to its regular intensity?

Let’s be as generous as we can. The IPCC say feedbacks amplify CO2′s warming by a factor of about three. Without the amplification from positive feedback there is no crisis So being nice people, let’s assume it’s warmed since 1979 and assume that it was all due to carbon dioxide. If so, that means feedbacks are …. zero. There goes that prediction of 3.3ºC. Feedbacks are the name of the game. If carbon dioxide doesn’t trigger off powerful positive feedbacks, there was and is no crisis. Even James Hansen would agree — inasmuch as he himself said that CO2 would...

LONG BEACH (CBS) — Marine life along the California coast may have trace amounts of radiation resulting from last year’s nuclear disaster in Japan. KNX 1070′s Margaret Carrero reports the findings come from a new study conducted by researchers at Long Beach State. The study published this month in the scientific journal “Environmental Science and Technology” details the discovery of low levels of radioactive isotopes in seaweed found along the southern Pacific Coast. Researchers at Long Beach State believe the radioactive forms of cesium and iodine blew across the Pacific in a series of storms that doused California shortly after...

A vaccine that can train cancer patients' own bodies to seek out and destroy tumour cells has been developed by scientists. The therapy, which targets a molecule found in 90 per cent of all cancers, could provide a universal injection that allows patients' immune systems to fight off common cancers including breast and prostate cancer. Preliminary results from early clinical trials have shown the vaccine can trigger an immune response in patients and reduce levels of disease. The scientists behind the vaccine now hope to conduct larger trials in patients to prove it can be effective against a range of...

A BRITISH scientist may have fathered 600 children after making donations to a fertility programme he ran with his wife. And one of his biological children has suggested the number may even be as high as ONE THOUSAND. Bertold Wiesner - who was born in Austria - ran the Barton Clinic in London which helped more than 1,500 women conceive. Barry Stevens, a film-maker from Canada, was concieved using Wiesner's donated sperm and said the number could be much higher. He said last night: "He was the one that found the donors so it's possible he didn't tell his wife...

Scientists at the University of Southern California have created a computer within a diamond to test quantum computing theories. This research could lead to super computer speeds, but for the present is still in the experimental stage. A gratuitous tip of the hat to The Weazmeister for the linkage. A qubit can represent a 0 and a 1 at the same time. This is thanks to the quantum property of superposition, and it’s the property that may one day make quantum computers insanely fast. Comments

You know those ants outside between that crack in the concrete sidewalk.........got 10 tons of cement? http://www.dump.com/biggestant/

The University of South Carolina is accepting registrations from volunteers to help excavate archaeological sites along the Savannah River April 30-June 2. The expedition will be led by archaeologist Albert Goodyear, whose discoveries at the Topper site in Allendale County have captured international media attention. Volunteers will learn excavation techniques and how to identify Clovis and pre-Clovis artifacts in several prehistoric chert quarries. This year, some volunteers may also be involved in the excavation of a nearby Paleoamerican site known as the Charles site. The cost is $488 per week ($400 is tax-deductible) and includes evening lectures and programs, lunch...

Explanation: How big is Jupiter's moon Io? The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced "EYE-oh") is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth's single large natural satellite. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this awe inspiring view of active Io with the largest gas giant as a backdrop, offering a stunning demonstration of the ruling planet's relative size. Although in the above picture Io appears to be located just in front of the swirling Jovian clouds, Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at...

Previous research could not accurately date the sea-level rise but now an Aix-Marseille University-led team, including Oxford University scientists Alex Thomas and Gideon Henderson, has confirmed that the event occurred 14,650-14,310 years ago at the same time as a period of rapid climate change known as the Bølling warming... During the Bølling warming high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere warmed as much as 15 degrees Celsius in a few tens of decades. The team has used dating evidence from Tahitian corals to constrain the sea level rise to within a period of 350 years, although the actual rise may well...

A newly translated inscription, dating back about 1,800 years, reveals that Oinoanda, a Roman city in southwest Turkey, turned to a mixed martial art champion to recruit for the Roman army and bring the new soldiers to a city named Hierapolis, located hundreds of miles to the east, in Syria. His name was Lucius Septimius Flavianus Flavillianus and he was a champion at wrestling and pankration, the latter a bloody, and at times lethal, mixed martial art where contestants would try to pound each other unconscious or into submission. Flavillianus proved to be so successful as a military recruiter that...

[snip] Compounds such as ammonium hydroxide, ammonium phosphate and ammonium chloride are considered safe in small amounts. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted ammonium hydroxide status as a GRAS, or Generally Recognized as Safe, substance in 1974. Ammonium hydroxide is also an acceptable ingredient under the conditions of "good manufacturing practices" in dozens of foods, from soft drinks to soups to canned vegetables, according to the General Standards for Food Additives set forth by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a group funded by the World Health Organization and the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization. A trip to the grocery...

Scientists studying 1,600-year-old cotton from the banks of the Nile have found what they believe is the first evidence that punctuated evolution has occurred in a major crop group within the relatively short history of plant domestication. The findings offer an insight into the dynamics of agriculture in the ancient world and could also help today's domestic crops face challenges such as climate change and water scarcity. The researchers, led by Dr Robin Allaby from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, examined the remains of ancient cotton at Qasr Ibrim in Egypt's Upper Nile using high...