The Daily Galaxy: News from Planet Earth & Beyond

Best of The Daily Galaxy: 9/21-28

Coming War for the Arctic?

Annie Dillard on Time -A Galaxy Insight

Genetically-Modified Food -The Big Debate

New Proof from Oxford: Parallel Universes Exist

Vernor Vinge on Human Evolution -A Galaxy Insight

Pangea Ultima: Will This be the Earth in 250 Million Years?

Ice Age Extinction -Caused by Extraterrestrial Impact?

Remains of Four Human-like Creatures Reveals New Insights

SETI Radio: Extraterrestrial & Other Voices -How to Recognize a Message from E.T.

NASA-led Team Creates Models of Possible Earth-sized Planets in Milky Way

European Space Agency's 'Don Quixote' Mission to Save the Planet from Space Rocks

 

SciFi Friday: Could Advanced Technological Civilizations Exist at the Edge of the Milky Way?

Migrating Birds "See" the Earth's magnetic Field, Scientists Report

Space Odyssey 2: Plasma-based Space Travel a Reality -A Galaxy Insight

Minerals 250 Kilometers Down Key to Life on Earth & Other Planets

3 Titans of Asia Face Off: Who Gets the Biggest Chunk of Moon?

R. Buckminster Fuller on Spaceship Earth -A Galaxy Insight

 

Richard Dawkins on the Origin of Life -A Galaxy Insight

Andromeda Strain 2: NASA's Microbes-in-SpaceTest

IMAX Returns to Space for Hubble’s Farewell Tour

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Space Chemistry -Does Life Pervade the Universe? -A Galaxy Insight

"The Earth is not a freak speck around a freak star in a freak galaxy, lost in an immense 'unfeeling' whirlpool of stars and galaxies  hurtling in time and space ever since the Big Bang. The Earth is part, together with trillions of other Earth-like bodies, of a cosmic cloud of 'vital dust' that exists because the universe is what it is.

Christian de Duve - Nobel-Prize -winning biochemist and author of Vital Dust -Life as a Cosmic Imperative.

Rocket Fuel and Shampoo: The Amazing Anatomy of a Twinkie

America is famous across the globe as the country full of fat people. But how can the world judge us when they are not home to the temptingly rich & creamy Twinkie? Over 500 million of the highly popular snacks are sold each year, but what is it that makes them taste so darn good?

10 Discoveries that Rewrote History

Stanford's renowned classical scholar and archaeologist, Patrick Hunt has just published a brilliant book -Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History  (ranging from the mystery of how Hannibal crossed th Alps in 218 BCE with an army accompanied by 25,000 men and 37 elephants to the Dead Sea Scrolls to Machu Picchu).

Twitter: The Ultimate Buzz Tracker

Twitter; it has become the new way for people to micro blog their lives to the world. At first, it received a lot of criticism for the actions of a few that felt that they needed to update everyone on the fact on the minute by minute trajectory of their daily lives. But without a doubt, Twitter is becoming the new ‘hot toy’ across the tech community.

You Create the Caption

NGC 4261: Daily Galaxy from NASA's Great Fleet of Observatories

The Giant Elliptical Galaxy NGC 4261 is one of the twelve brightest galaxies in the Virgo cluster, located 45 million light-years away. Photographed in visible light (white) the galaxy appears as a fuzzy disk of hundreds of billions of stars. The  giant disk of cold gas and dust fuels a possible black hole at the galaxy's core of the galaxy.

New Robot Coach Created to Keep Dieters in Line

Those participating in a study involving having their own robot coach, say sticking to their diet is easier with a mealtime Robocop around to keep you in line. It's a trend that may well take off as desperate dieters take on the battle of the bulge.

European Astronomers Find “Cosmic Butterfly” and New Feature of the Stunning Ant Nebula

A team of European astronomers have found an aged star surrounded by a disc, which is a reservoir of trapped dust that surrounds an elderly star. This discovery provides exciting new clues about the shaping of the one of the most beautiful sights in the universe—the planetary nebulae.

Ha!

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R. Buckminster Fuller on Spaceship Earth -A Galaxy Insight

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.

R. Buckminster Fuller

N180B -The Daily Galaxy from NASA's Great Fleet of Observatories

The ethereal beauty of galaxy N 180B, an active region of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, unveils in wispy clouds of hydrogen and oxygen that swirl and mix with dust.

3 Titans of Asia Face Off: Who Gets the Biggest Chunk of Moon?

Amid a renewed burst of global space agendas, Asian spacefarers are racing to the moon. It seems everyone wants to ensure their piece of the lunar pie. Asian giants Japan, China and India are engaging in a race to map lunar resources and put dibs on the moon as a platform to eventually explore the planets beyond.

You Create the Caption

Severity of Arctic Heat Wave Stuns Int'l Polar-Year Researchers

Extreme and unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer have forced a Queen’s University-led climate-change project to revise their forecasts.

“Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.”

Minerals 250 Kilometers own Key to Life on Earth & Other Planets

If the Earth did not have the ability to store oxygen in the deep reaches of its mantle there would probably be no life on its surface. This is the conclusion reached by scientists at the University of Bonn who have subjected the mineral majorite, which normally occurs only at a depth of several hundred kilometers under very high pressures and temperatures, to close laboratory examination.

Germany & Shanghai Adopt Magnetic Levitation "SciFi" Technology

Magnetic Levitation – or maglev for short – is really one of those technologies that bring us a step closer to the worlds of Star Trek, or your favorite future related sci-fi series. With only one commercially operated train line in existence at the moment, located in Shanghai, China, the opportunities for countries to make a name for themselves are many.

NASA'a "Deep Impact" Comet Mission

July 4th, 2005, NASA once again made the front pages of newspapers around the world with their revolutionary method of getting information out of comets; smack it with a giant explosion!

The mission’s goal was simple; launch a projectile from NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft in to the surface of Tempel 1, a comet half the size of Manhattan and with an elliptical orbit between Jupiter and Mars.

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Space Odyssey 2: Plasma-based Space Travel a Reality -A Galaxy Insight

Someday, the earth will be a place humanity will come back to, sort of like our national park. I don't mean to get rid of the earth like an old shoe. We need to protect it so that we can always come back to it.

Franklin Chang Diaz, former astronaut, president and CEO of Ad Astra Rocket Company, discusses his work on a plasma-based propulsion system that could improve fuel efficiency and get a manned mission to Mars in 39 days in a brilliant wide-ranging interview with MIT's Technology Review below.

   

Migrating Birds "See" the Earth's magnetic Field, Scientists Report

  Scientists have known for many years that birds use an internal magnetic compass to navigate on their epic annual journeys. But exactly how the system works has been a mystery.