Space Science

A New Earth?

I’ve been told by someone at NSF that there may be an announcement today of an extrasolar “earth-like” planet (in terms of mass) at 1 PM. We’ll keep an eye out.

[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]

Here’s a link to a webcast on it, coming up in an hour and a half. The person who notified me of this writes:

“I believe, based on the level of media they’re expecting that it will be an earth-size and mass planet outside of the solar system.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

[Update at 2 PM]

OK, it’s “more earth like than anything previously found,” but still not that earth like. It masses several times as much as the earth, at a distance of only a couple million miles from its star, with a year of only two earth days. Sounds more like a large “Mercury-like” planet.

Political Commentary

Tipping Point

Now that the French and Dutch have rejected the monstrosity that was the EU constitution, the Poles are now expressing their true feelings about it as well:

“The French and Dutch ‘nos’ encouraged people to openly say they were against the treaty but didn’t dare to admit it until now,” said Mikolaj Czesnik, a sociologist at the Polish Academy of Science.

Before voters in the two founder-member states of the EU rejected the constitution, followed closely by a British decision to put its referendum on the treaty on hold, it was “considered politically incorrect in Poland to reject the treaty,” Czesnik said.

“Some people also feared that a Polish ‘nie’ would lead to accusations that Poland was reponsible for the demise of European integration. Those people felt relieved” by the negative votes, Czesnik said.

It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to ratify this thing now, at least in a popular referendum, with the possible exception of the Belgians.

Space

Unfortunate Analogy

Taylor Dinerman says that we should be optimistic about the political staying power of the president’s Vision For Space Exploration.

Unfortunately, the example he uses doesn’t inspire confidence in me, at least in terms of the potential for success of the program, though it may continue to get funding ad infinitum, as our ineffective space activities already have for the past three decades since Apollo. After all, over two decades after Reagan made his “Star Wars” speech, we still don’t have a missile defense.

Weird

Auditioning For A Hitchcock Remake?

I saw this story, via Warren Bell, and was reminded that I was attacked by a bird when I was in Phoenix in April.

I was walking across a shopping mall parking lot by the hotel where I was staying, and felt something hit my right shoulder from behind. I turned around, and saw a bird hovering. I figured it was an accident, and kept walking, but a few seconds later, it did it again.

I was unsure what to do, but figured that the sooner I got to the mall entrance, the better, so I kept moving, though I didn’t run. I was wearing glasses, which I hoped would protect me if it started to peck, but fortunately it didn’t. It hit me one more time, and then flew back to a tree behind me. I figured that I may have walked to close to its nest. After that, I continued the walk to the mall entrance without further events, but I kept an eye over my shoulder.

Technology and Society

Personal Vidcams

Glenn points to this article about battlefield use of high-storage-capacity videocameras.

I suspect that it won’t be long before people start having these installed in their cars to quickly resolve disputes in accidents. It would be particularly helpful against people who deliberately cause fender benders for insurance fraud. I’d think that the insurance industry would start offering discounts for people who have them, and that eventually they’d become factory equipment.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!